What Is Temperance?

Direct Answer

Temperance is the virtue of governing desires and pleasures with reasoned proportion — not hostility toward pleasure but the capacity to enjoy, refuse, or delay without being ruled by appetite. It is one of the four cardinal virtues of classical philosophy, and it concerns the proper relationship between the rational and appetitive parts of the soul.

Historical Context

In Greek philosophy, temperance is one of the four cardinal virtues — along with courage, justice, and wisdom — that Plato identifies in the Republic. For Plato, temperance is not only a personal virtue but a political one: the temperate city is one in which the different classes are harmoniously ordered, each performing its proper function. The analogy between soul and city is central to Plato's understanding of temperance: just as a city is temperate when the rulers rule and the ruled obey, so a soul is temperate when reason governs appetite.

The Stoic treatment of temperance takes a different approach. For the Stoics, temperance is one of the four primary virtues, but it is understood as a form of knowledge — specifically, knowledge of what is worth choosing and what is worth avoiding. Marcus Aurelius repeatedly returns to this theme in his Meditations: the things that most people pursue — pleasure, wealth, reputation — are "indifferents," neither good nor bad in themselves. The temperate person is the one who understands this, who pursues such things (if at all) without attachment, and whose happiness does not depend on obtaining them. Stoic temperance is thus a form of cognitive clarity: seeing things as they are, rather than as desire paints them.

In the Christian tradition, temperance was adopted as one of the cardinal virtues and given a theological interpretation. Thomas Aquinas treats temperance as the virtue that moderates the desires for the greatest pleasures — those of touch — and he distinguishes it from related virtues like continence (restraining desire), clemency (moderating punishment), and humility (moderating the desire for excellence). The Christian tradition also introduced the concept of temperance as a gift of the Holy Spirit, infusing the natural virtue with supernatural grace.

In Eastern philosophy, the Buddhist concept of the Middle Way bears comparison to temperance. The Buddha's rejection of both extreme asceticism and extreme indulgence — his discovery that the path to liberation lies between them — is a kind of temperance applied to the spiritual life. The Buddhist precepts concerning right action, right speech, and right livelihood function as a framework for tempering desire and cultivating a mode of life that is neither self-denying nor self-indulgent.

Philosophical Perspectives

The Greek term sophrosyne, translated as temperance or moderation, carries a richer meaning than either English word fully captures. It combines the sense of sound-mindedness, self-governance, and harmonious proportion. In Plato's Republic, temperance is the virtue that harmonizes the different parts of the soul — reason, spirit, and appetite — so that each performs its proper function without dominating or being dominated by the others. A temperate person is one whose desires are aligned with reason, who wants what reason judges to be good, and who takes pleasure in the right things, in the right way, and at the right time.

Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, defines temperance as a mean with regard to the pleasures of touch — specifically, the pleasures of food, drink, and sex. The temperate person, he writes, occupies a middle position between the self-indulgent person, who pursues these pleasures to excess, and the insensible person, who is deficient in the capacity to enjoy them. Crucially, the temperate person does not simply refrain from pleasure; they take pleasure in the right things and are pained by the wrong ones. The self-indulgent person is pained by missing a pleasure; the temperate person is not. This is the mark of genuine virtue: the emotions and desires themselves are ordered, not merely suppressed by force of will.

What distinguishes temperance from mere self-control (enkrateia) is important. The self-controlled person has strong desires but overcomes them through effort; the temperate person has desires that are already aligned with reason, so that no struggle is necessary. Self-control is a stage on the way to temperance, but it is not the same thing. The goal of moral education is not to produce people who are constantly fighting their desires but people whose desires have been educated to desire what is genuinely good.

A fundamental disagreement concerns whether temperance requires the suppression of desire or its transformation. The Platonic-Aristotelian tradition tends toward transformation: the goal is not to eliminate desire but to educate it, so that we desire what is genuinely good. The ascetic traditions within Christianity and Buddhism, by contrast, sometimes advocate the suppression or transcendence of desire as such — not its redirection but its extinction.

A related disagreement concerns the scope of temperance. Aristotle restricts it to the pleasures of touch; other traditions extend it to all desires. The Stoics, for example, treat temperance as a comprehensive virtue governing all choices and aversions, not just bodily pleasures. The question is whether temperance is a specific virtue with a specific domain or a general orientation toward desire as such.

There is also disagreement about the psychological possibility of temperance. Can desires genuinely be educated, or is the best we can hope for self-control — the constant struggle against desires that remain fundamentally disordered? The Aristotelian answer is optimistic: through habituation, education, and the cultivation of character, desires can be transformed. The skeptical answer — found in some strands of Christian thought and in modern psychology — is that certain desires are ineradicable and that the best we can do is manage them through discipline and the avoidance of temptation.

Modern Reflection

The modern world has largely lost the vocabulary of temperance, replacing it with the language of addiction, self-control, and willpower. This is a loss. The concept of temperance captures something that these modern terms miss: the idea that the proper relationship to desire is not one of constant struggle but of harmony and proportion. A person who is constantly fighting their desires is not temperate; they are self-controlled at best, and their inner life is one of conflict rather than peace.

Contemporary psychology has rediscovered something like the Aristotelian insight through research on self-regulation and habit formation. The work of psychologists like Roy Baumeister on ego depletion suggests that willpower is a limited resource that can be exhausted — which implies that the goal of moral education should not be to strengthen the will but to automate virtue through habituation, so that good choices become effortless. This is precisely what Aristotle argued: the temperate person does not need to exert willpower because their desires already point in the right direction.

Related Thinkers

• Plato — Provides the first systematic account of temperance in the Republic, analyzing it as the harmony of the tripartite soul — reason, spirit, and appetite — where the temperate person is one in whom reason rules with the consent of the appetites.
• Aristotle — Refines Plato's account in the Nicomachean Ethics, locating temperance specifically in relation to the pleasures of touch and defining it as a mean between excess and deficiency. His analysis of the distinction between temperance and self-control remains one of the most important contributions to moral psychology.
• Marcus Aurelius — Offers a Stoic vision of temperance grounded in the distinction between what is within our control and what is not, training himself to desire only what is up to him and to regard everything else as indifferent.
• Confucius — In the Confucian tradition, the concept of li (ritual propriety) functions as a kind of social temperance — the ordering of desire and behavior through the cultivation of appropriate forms of conduct, where the gentleman is moderate in his desires.
• Thomas Aquinas — Treats temperance as the virtue that moderates desires for the greatest pleasures, distinguishing it from continence, clemency, and humility, and infusing the natural virtue with theological grace.

Related Books

• Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle — The primary text for understanding temperance as a mean between excess and deficiency, and for the crucial distinction between temperance and self-control (Book III, Chapters 10-12).
• Republic by Plato — The foundational text for temperance as the harmony of the tripartite soul and the analogy between the temperate soul and the temperate city (especially Book IV).
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius — Stoic reflections on the distinction between genuine goods and indifferents, and the practice of temperance as cognitive clarity.

Related Quotes

• "We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts" — Nicomachean Ethics, 1103a
• "Virtue is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us" — Nicomachean Ethics, 1105a
• "The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury" — Meditations, Book 6.6
• "He who knows himself is enlightened; he who conquers himself is stronger" — Tao Te Ching, verse 33
• "In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped" — Tao Te Ching, verse 48

Related Topics

• Discipline — The habituation and practice through which temperance is cultivated, moving from self-control to the effortless alignment of desire with reason.
• Simplicity — The orientation toward what is genuinely good rather than the endless accumulation of pleasures, central to the temperate life.
• Wisdom — The practical wisdom (phronesis) that guides temperance, distinguishing genuine goods from mere pleasures.
• The Good Life — Temperance as one of the four cardinal virtues that constitute the foundation of the good life across classical traditions.
• What is virtue? — The broader category of which temperance is a species
• What is practical wisdom? — The intellectual virtue that guides temperance
• How to build self-discipline? — Practical approaches to self-governance

Further Learning

Temperance is not about denying oneself pleasure but about being free in relation to pleasure. The person who cannot say no to a desire is not free; they are ruled by it. The person who cannot enjoy a pleasure without guilt or anxiety is also not free; they are ruled by their fear of pleasure. Temperance is the mean between these two unfreedoms — the capacity to enjoy what is good, to refuse what is not, and to be at peace either way.

Cultivating temperance begins with attention to desire itself. What do you actually want? Why do you want it? What happens when you get it? What happens when you do not? These questions, asked honestly and repeatedly, begin to reveal the patterns of desire that govern our lives. The practice of temperance involves not the suppression of these patterns but their gradual reordering — learning to want what conduces to genuine well-being rather than what merely satisfies an immediate impulse.

Is temperance the same as abstinence? No. Abstinence is the refusal of a particular pleasure; temperance is the right ordering of desire. A temperate person may enjoy pleasures that an abstinent person refuses — the difference is that the temperate person enjoys them in the right way, at the right time, and in the right measure.

Does temperance require giving up all pleasure? Not at all. The temperate person takes pleasure in the right things. Aristotle notes that the temperate person enjoys food, drink, and sex — but not to excess, and not in a way that interferes with health, reason, or the pursuit of genuine goods.

How is temperance different from self-control? Self-control is the struggle against disordered desires; temperance is the harmony of desires with reason. Self-control is a stage on the way to temperance, but it is not the same thing. The goal is to reach a state where the right choice feels natural, not forced.

Can temperance be developed in adulthood? Yes. While the Aristotelian tradition emphasizes the importance of habituation in childhood, it also recognizes that reflection, practice, and the cultivation of practical wisdom can reshape character at any stage of life. The process is gradual, but it is possible.

• Read Nicomachean Ethics — Book III, Chapters 10-12 for Aristotle's definition of temperance as a mean
• Read Republic — Book IV for Plato's account of temperance as the harmony of the soul
• Compare with the Buddhist Middle Way — temperance applied to the spiritual life
• Examine one desire you regularly act on: ask whether it serves genuine well-being or merely satisfies an immediate impulse

Sources

The primary sources for the concept of temperance are Plato's Republic (especially Book IV), Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (especially Book III, Chapters 10-12), and the Stoic writings of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. Thomas Aquinas's treatment appears in the Summa Theologica (II-II, Questions 141-170). For the Buddhist concept of the Middle Way, see the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (the Buddha's first discourse). Contemporary work on self-regulation is represented by Roy Baumeister's research on willpower and ego depletion.