The Seba library treats Sophrosune in 9 passages, across 5 authors (including Jean-Pierre Vernant, Martha C. Nussbaum, Arthur W.H. Adkins).
Corresponding to sophrosyne, the virtue of the happy medium, is the image of a political order that sets up an equilibrium between opposing forces, establishing an accord between rival groups.
Vernant situates sophrosune as the civic analog of psychic balance, embodied in Solon's constitutional role as immovable boundary between factional extremes.
, The Origins of Greek Thought, 1982thesis
The ex-lover, by contrast, is said to have acquired 'insight (nous) and self-possession (sophrosune) in place of eros and mania' (241A). Clarity and true insight require the death of passion.
Nussbaum reads the Phaedrus' first speech as making sophrosune the product of passion's annihilation, rehearsing the Republic's equation of reason's sovereignty with the silencing of appetite.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986thesis
Plato sketches in a city which is sophron and dikaios in the ordinary usage of Greek; and at the end of this 'finds' dikaiosune and sophrosune in his city in the sense discussed above.
Adkins argues that Plato exploits the double register of sophrosune — ordinary Greek usage and his own philosophical redefinition — to perform a sleight of hand that the interlocutors are not positioned to resist.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
Dikaiosune and sophrosune, in the sense in which these terms are ordinarily understood, have not been shown to be essential to eudaimonia; and in the peculiar Platonic sense t
Adkins delivers his critical verdict: Plato's argument fails to demonstrate that either justice or sophrosune, in any defensible sense, is constitutive of eudaimonia.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
We should naturally expect the Stranger to apply the same principles, mutatis mutandis, in his analysis of sophrosune, and it is true that he begins by saying that it belongs to the class of opposing qualities, such as quietness, slow
Hobbs examines how the Politicus' Stranger frames sophrosune as the polar opposite of andreia in a typological classification of virtues, revealing an instability in Plato's late account of their relationship.
, Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness and the Impersonal Good, 2000thesis
the theme of a particularly close connection between the two reappears in certain passages of the Laws, a work which is also devoid of at least any explicit tripartite psychology.
Hobbs demonstrates that the tension between andreia and sophrosune persists into the Laws even without an explicit tripartite soul-theory to organize it.
, Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness and the Impersonal Good, 2000supporting
The sense of aidos as 'chastity' comes particularly close to that of sophrosune in erotic contexts.
Konstan notes that in erotic and Stoic registers, aidos and sophrosune functionally converge, sharing the regulatory role over sexual conduct and its display.
, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, 2006supporting
in the earlier Hippolytus arete was used to commend Hippolytus' chastity — for, Eur. frag. 446 Nauck, arete is equated with sophrosune, in explicit reference to Hippolytus
Adkins traces the early tragic identification of sophrosune with sexual chastity as one of the first infiltrations of 'quiet' moral values into the vocabulary of arete.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
Rademaker 2005: 158 notes that, in Euripidean tragedy, absence of jealousy, and absence of possessive infatuation
Konstan, via Rademaker, gestures toward sophrosune's relevance in Euripidean erotic psychology as the absence of possessive passion, without developing the point at length.
, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, 2006aside