You Need Self-control. Here's How to Start

Aristotle defines self-control and temperance to give us words for our pursuit of self-control. We need to know these words to understand what we are aiming at.

We struggle with constant distractions. Our phones demand attention, notifications pull us away from important tasks, and our goals often remain unrealized despite our best intentions.

But distraction is not destiny. Self-control is possible. We can overcome our appetites.

In this article, I will share four words that name what it means to be self-controlled and temperate so that you can take the first steps of taking back control.

While I cannot promise perfection, I can offer you a time-tested approach to self-control. This approach is grounded in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Bks 3 and 7) and provides the grammar of virtue to help us know what self-control is and how to attain it.

Word 1: Temperance (Sophrosyne)

Temperance, or sophrosyne in Greek, is a cardinal virtue that represents the ability to have only what you need in life. Whether it's food, drink, or any kind of regular pleasure, to be temperate is to desire and take things in moderation, avoiding both excess and deficiency (not partaking in what you need).

The key distinction is that temperance isn't the fight itself. It's what you call someone who has gained the ability to not desire strongly or have appetite strongly for things that are unnecessary.

We become temperate largely because we become the kind of person who naturally doesn't seek excess or deficiency—deficiency being not getting enough of what you need, such as eating too little food and becoming sick.

Temperance primarily concerns our bodily pleasures and appetites, especially those related to food, drink, and sex. It speaks to the proper and ordered enjoyment of pleasure. It aligns with reason naturally, and so we might say it comes to us naturally.

Word 2: Self-Control (Enkrateia)

By contrast, self-control (in Greek: enkrateia) names a fight. For Aristotle, self-control describes someone who has not yet gained the virtue of temperance. The reason is because they have an overwhelming desire or appetite to do something that they should not do.

A self-controlled person overcomes these desires, which is a good thing, but the fact that they have these overwhelming desires in the first place is already a problem. They face strong desires and appetites that are HARD to stop. Hence, it takes self-control.

Word 3: Lack of self-control (Akrasia)

Lack of self-control, or akrasia, occurs when a person knows what is right but fails to act accordingly because of strong appetites or emotions. The akratic person experiences the same internal conflict as the enkratic (self-controlled) person but gives in to their appetites.

Word 4: Intemperance (Akolosia)

In Book 7, Chapter 8 of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that an intemperate person is not the sort of person to have regrets, since they choose wickedness by rational choice and stand by it. In contrast, the person who lacks self-control is curable of their wickedness because they struggle against what they do not want to do and give in, but they still don't want to do evil.

In other words, Aristotle says that people who lack self-control are not unjust in character, but they will at certain times do unjust things against their rational choice due to temptation. This is a curable condition.

This is why intemperance is so much worse—because an intemperate person, by rational conviction, chooses to do evil.

Aristotle explains the distinction in his Nicomachean Ethics in this way:

“For both the self-controlled and the temperate person are the sort to do nothing contrary to reason for the sake of bodily pleasures. But the self-controlled person has bad appetites, while the temperate person does not; and the temperate person is the sort to feel no pleasure contrary to reason, while the self-controlled person is the sort to feel such pleasure but not to be led on by it.

The incontinent and the intemperate person are like one another as well. Though they are different, they both pursue bodily pleasures; but the intemperate person thinks that it is right to do so, while the incontinent does not.” (NE 7.9)

Hierarchy of words

It's best to be temperate because you act in harmony with reason. You always do what is right and just and wise.

But if you can't be temperate, having self-control is the next best thing because when you have self-control, it means that you may have strong desires, temptations, and appetites, but you fight through them to conquer them. You're not as advanced as the temperate person, mind you. You're still suffering under passions, but you're much better off than someone who lacks self-control.

And that's the next category. If you can't have self-control, it's better to lack self-control than to be intemperate because the person who lacks self-control knows what is right but fails to do it.

This person desires to do what's rational, but he has given in to the desires and passions of the flesh. You ate too many donuts, you didn't get work done that you promised to get done, you slept in past when you wanted to wake up. Importantly, you still want to do the right thing, and so this is a curable disease, not a sickness that lasts forever.

The worst state to be in is to be intemperate. That's when you, by reason, know what you're doing, and you choose to be lazy, you choose to not succeed, you choose wickedness, and you stand by your rational choice. There is no healing for such a person except for a complete regeneration of what it means to be a human being. That's the realm of religion, and there's no way that wisdom can help such a person apart from an experience of God.

Becoming Temperate and Self-Controlled

It is not my purpose to provide practical steps to attain self-control—that requires a long contemplation in the same direction (wisdom) and the pursuit of justice. But I would like to make some notes to give you some tools for the self-control trade:

• Habits become second nature after a very long time. It can take years to overcome bad habits. Nothing good happens fast.

• Self-control takes a relentless battle before you can even think of gaining temperance.

• Practice acting by choosing what you know by reflection to be true, rather than trusting your feelings. Train your feelings to align with reason. Eventually, feelings will become a friend. For now, they have become weak since you have never trained them, but let them dominate you. You do as you feel because your feelings are your master. Change that relationship.

• Change happens in community alongside real friends. A friend unites with you around common objects of love. Love sports together; love virtue together; and love God together. In other words, go to church because that’s the gymnasium for virtue as people gather around a common object of love (God).

• True temperance is impossible without God since the virtue implies a perfect harmony of reason and desire, but I know of almost no one who claims to have reached that level of perfection. In other words, the pursuit of temperance shows us that we need something outside ourselves to bring us into harmony or peace with ourselves, each other, and even God.