Two Terms of Patristic Ethics: Egkrateia and Sophrosyne

Many common terms in Scriptural or Patristic Greek collect around themselves a constellation of connotations: something as seemingly simple as νους (nous), typically translated "mind," becomes a backbone of philosophy.  The many-headedness of the term λογος (logos) is well-known: word, speech, reason, discourse, etc.  Here I will cover two such terms, key in the realm of Patristic ethics: egkrateia and sōphrosynē.

Εγκρατεια (egkrateia when transliterated letter-by-letter, though it's pronounced enkrateia) is typically translated as "self-mastery" or "self-control."  Buried within the word is the root κρατ- (krat-), which has meanings like "power," "might," "rule," "grasping."  It's part of the title Pantokrator, "All-Mighty" or "All-Ruler," whose icon usually adorns the inside dome of a Byzantine church.  (I wrote about this icon over a decade ago.)  If we wanted to split up the word and translate it piece-by-piece, egkrateia could mean "inward-rule" or "inward-might," that is, dominance turned inwards, towards oneself.  At least in basic definition, it recalls the Nietzschean concept of "self-overcoming" (selbstüberwindung).  

Why do we have to "dominate" ourselves in the first place?  Because of our evil impulses, our tendency to sin, what Judaism calls yetzer hara (יֵצֶר הַרַע) and the Latin tradition concupiscence.  There are always impulses in us--whether from body or soul or psyche--tempting us towards sin; St. Paul, describing this in the bodily realm, speaks of "another law in my members warring against the law of my mind (νους) and taking me captive in the law of sin, the one that is in my members" (Rom 7:23).  

Now, not every impulse we feel is necessarily evil; some impulses are good, and some are neutral.  (We could go even further: Dietrich von Hildebrand, in his Ethics, has the category of the "good for me," where something typically neutral becomes a positive good for a person, based on his individual condnitions.  But that is going too far afield.)  To have egkrateia means that we are not overwhelmed by these impulses, that we can look at each one rationally, apathetically (απαθεια, apatheia, meaning "passionlessness"), and decide whether to follow it.  Thus part of the importance of fasting is to train our egkrateia.  For all foods are clean for us, as St. Peter saw in his vision (Acts 10), and, as we hear in the reading for Meatfare Sunday, food in itself gives neither reward or curse: "neither if we do not eat do we lack, nor if we eat do we abound" (1 Cor 8:8).  By training ourselves to resist even neutral impulses, we strength our egkrateia to better resist the evil ones.

It is no surprise, then, that egkrateia is a virtue recommended numerous times in the Scriptures: Gal 5:23, Acts 24:25, 2 Pet 1:6.  Thus, too, St. Asterius of Amasa, in the homily I have been translating (§1), declares that "the majority and the dominant part of sacred philosophy revolves around the aforesaid self-mastery (egkrateia)," for what use are the other virtues if we cannot rule ourselves?  How can we even gain the other virtues if we cannot rein in our impulses and guide our thoughts and actions towards the good?  Consider Plato's image of the soul as a pair of horses with a charioteer (Phaedrus 253D-254E): the evil part of the soul, the "crooked, bulky" horse, tries to lead the soul away from the good and the beautiful, until the charioteer makes him feel the bit and the fall, and then "having suffered this many times, the wicked one leaves off his insolence, having been humbled."  This repetition is the inculcation of habit, that concept beloved by Aquinas and Dewey alike.  

As a final point, I should note that, despite the generality of the term etymologically, the Fathers often use egkrateia to specifically refer to sexual self-restraint.

So much for egkrateia, "self-mastery": the more complicated term is our second one, σωφροσυνη (sōphrosynē or sōphrosunē).

Sōphrosynē I have translated as "sobriety," but, in this case, it means "sober-minded" rather than "non-intoxicated" (which is νηφων, nēphōn).  Such is the old translation used by the KJV, whenever the term appears in Scripture (Acts 26:25, 1 Tim 2:9,15).  Other common translations are "moderation," "reasonableness," "prudence."  Splitting the term up etymologically, we get σοος (soos: safe, sound) and φρην (phrēn: mind, wits); re-adding, we get "sound-mindedness."  (These roots are better seen in the adjectival form: σωφρων, sōphrōn).

The translation "sobriety" comes from the fact that sōphrosynē describes a kind of "level-headedness," not one that is "out there" and wild.  An unbalanced mind is, metaphorically, equated with drunkenness: consider the ecstatic madness associated with Dionysius, the god of wine.  Along with an "unbalanced" or "drunken" mind, sōphrosynē also opposes "mindlessness," aphrosynē (αφροσυνη).  Such "mindlessness" appears in today's reading from Proverbs: "Leave off mindlessness, so that you might rule unto the age, and seek sense (φρονησιν, phronēsin), and set understanding (συνεσιν, synesin) upright in your mind (γνωσει, gnōsei)" (Prv 9:6).  All of these are philosophical--perhaps better "psychological"--terms in Greek, to which single-word translations do not do justice.

I mentioned above the concept of apatheia, "passionlessness" or "dispassion."  A passion is something that we receive, that we "suffer" (hence Christ's Passion), that comes to us from outside; for some of the Fathers, these passions are always evil, while, for others, they are neutral, or even good, if they are kept in check through egkrateia.  For the latter Fathers, "dispassion signifies a state in which the passions are exercised in accordance with their original purity and so without committing sin in act or thought.  Dispassion is a state of reintegration and spiritual freedom; when translating the term into Latin, Cassian rendered it 'purity of heart.'  Such a state may imply impartiality and detachment, but not indifference."  (This is from the Glossary of the Philokalia; see source below.)  In its balance, in its impartiality, sōphrosynē shares much with apatheia.

The key to sōphrosynē is the idea of "nothing in excess," that Golden Mean preached by Aristotle.  Too little mental activity and we have mindlessness (aphrosynē) or listlessness (acedia); too much mental activity, and we have mania, ecstasy, pseudo-drunkenness.  Another form of "mental excess" is demonic possession: Mark describes a cured demoniac as one who is now "being sober-minded," σωφρονουντα (sōphronounta) (Mk 5:15).  One could possibly connect it to the balanced, "clear-mindedness" encouraged by Taoism, yet the Taoist ideal usually has a level of indifference, of detachment, that is not found in sōphrosynē.  The Taoist concept of wu-wei, of "no-action," of "going with the flow," is often understood in the sense of having no desires, of willing nothing, though others interpret it as simply meaning action that is always in accord with nature.  Sōphrosynē, though, always has an active vibe to it, a sense that this sobriety allows one to act sober-mindedly.  

We could, perhaps, combine our two terms here, and say that egkrateia describes the struggle of controlling one's impulses, while sōphrosynē is the condition of having controlled impulses.  Such is how Plato describes it: "Sōphrosynē is some kind of beautiful-order (κοσμος, kosmos) and egkrateia of certain pleasures and desires" (Republic IV, 430E).  He also quotes a common description, that the man with sōphrosynē is "greater than himself," "stronger than himself," "master of himself" (κρειττω αυτου, kreittō autou).  Thus we use the struggle of egkrateia, of "self-overcoming," in order to reach the state of sōphrosynē, in which we can act sober-mindedly, sensibly, moderately, temperately.  (It is worth mentioning that, in the schema of the four cardinal virtues, drawn from the just-cited passage of Plato, sōphrosynē is translated as "temperance.")  

It is good, then, during this season of fasting, which is "sobriety's teacher" (St. Asterius, Homily 14, §2), for us to exercise our self-mastery, to rein in our insolent impulses and passions, in order to gain a moderation of mind.  And it is good to remember that our fasting from food is only a goad to moderation in all areas, for, as St. Diadochos of Photiki says, "Self-control is common to all the virtues, and therefore whoever practices self-control must do so in all things.  If any part, however small, of a man's body is removed, the whole man is disfigured; likewise, he who disregards one single virtue destroys unwittingly the whole harmonious order of self-control" (On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination §42).  Or, to paraphrase with our terms, "He who disregards egkrateia in one area destroys unwittingly the whole harmonious order of sōphrosynē."

Sources: The definition of apatheia is from The Philokalia: The Complete Text compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth, tr. G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1979), I:359, though the glossary is reprinted in each of the four volumes.  The quotation from St. Diadochos is from Philokalia, I:266.  For background and Biblical references, I have used the entries in Frederick William Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 274 and 986-987.

Text ©2023 Brandon P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the author.