17.10.2026 Diary XLVII Sophrosyne: hearing the measure

17.10.2026 Diary Page XLVII

Measure is not a ruler. It is an ear you gain over time.

Saturday. There is coffee on the desk, the notebook is open, the weather is mild for Ankara.

Today's word is sophrosyne. It is pronounced something like so-fro-see-nee. Turkish has no exact equivalent. I say moderation, but the word is wider than that. The Greeks used it to mean knowing yourself, not going to extremes, and having your head in the right place, all at once.

While choosing the word, I thought of something. In me, measure always swings between two extremes: all or nothing. When I get into something I don't get out, and when I get out I never get back in. I wonder whether there is a place in the middle.

The soundness inside the word

The adjective sophron comes from the words sos and phren. Sos means sound, unharmed. Phren, in Homer, is the chest area, where thought and feeling sit. So sophron, roughly, is a person with a sound inner world.

Plato plays with this word in the Cratylus. Sophrosyne, he says, is like the preservation of phronesis, that is, practical wisdom. This is an etymology close to a joke. Not all linguists take it seriously, but the meaning is beautiful: measure is what keeps wisdom standing.

In the phronesis entry I wrote about the kind of mind that works where rules are not enough. Sophrosyne sits down beside it and asks the question of how much.

Two sentences at Delphi

The travel writer Pausanias reports that certain sayings were written at the entrance of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Two of them: "know yourself" and "nothing in excess." Ancient sources attribute these sayings to the Seven Sages, but who said them was disputed even in that period. That is why I don't give a name either.

I like that these two sentences were written side by side. As if one is the condition of the other. To notice what is excessive, you first need to know your own limit.

As far as I know myself, my limit works sneakily in me. On a day when I am doing very well, the limit is invisible. On a day when I am doing very badly, it is invisible too. It only seems to exist when I am somewhere in the middle.

No answer in the Charmides

Plato's Charmides is a dialogue written about sophrosyne. Socrates has come back from war and meets the young Charmides, known for his beauty. The subject is whether he considers himself sophron.

Charmides tries a few definitions. The first is doing everything calmly and slowly. Socrates objects: when reading, when learning, being quick can also be good. I love this objection. Measure, it turns out, is not slowness.

Then comes modesty, then doing one's own work. In the end Critias takes over the discussion and proposes knowing yourself. His argument rests on the Delphic inscription: know yourself and be moderate are actually the same thing. Socrates picks this apart too, and the dialogue ends without answering the question of what sophrosyne is. That is, with an aporia. In the aporia entry I wrote about the impasse. This dialogue is exactly that kind of impasse.

There is a detail I can't forget. At the beginning Socrates describes a remedy: according to what Thracian physicians said, to heal the head you first had to heal the whole, that is, the soul. And the soul was healed with beautiful words. Socrates relays this saying he heard it from a physician. I relay it too; I can't test whether it is true. But the idea that measure has to do first with the body, then with words feels close to me.

Aristotle and Milo's food

In Aristotle, measure is a mean. But not an arithmetic mean. In the Nicomachean Ethics he gives an example: for the wrestler Milo, ten minas of food may be too much, two too little. But the trainer will not give everyone six minas. Measure depends on the person.

This comforts me. If measure is not a universal number, then my measure not looking like someone else's is not a flaw.

Aristotle connects sophrosyne especially with bodily pleasures: eating, drinking, touch. There is also a deficient end, that is, insensitivity to pleasure. He writes that it is rarely found. In me, both are around: sometimes I eat too little because I forget, sometimes I eat too much because I don't notice.

There is one more difference, which I remember from the akrasia entry too. The self-controlled person struggles with their desire and wins. In the sophron person, desire already follows the direction reason points to. In the akrasia entry I wrote about not being able to do what you know. Sophrosyne is not that struggle won, it is the state in which the struggle never arises. For me this is still a place I haven't reached.

Is measure a rule

I love rules. When I set a rule, I relax, because deciding is tiring. One hour a day, three days a week, stopping after two.

Then one day the rule breaks. For me, a rule breaking once often takes the whole rule with it. When I skip one day, I keep skipping. When I do too much one day, the next day I do nothing at all. It feels as if things might go better without the rule. All-or-nothing thinking is exactly this.

And hyperfocus: when I get into something, measure disappears. In hyperfocus the hours go by, meals are forgotten. Writing this, I don't want to be angry at myself. Measure there doesn't come from a rule, because the attention that would remember the rule is somewhere else.

In Plato's Republic there is another image for sophrosyne. There, measure is a kind of harmony and attunement, something spread across all the strings. This part I am adding, it is not Plato's sentence: when a string is too tight or too loose the sound goes wrong, but the right tension is not a number, it is found by ear. Someone tuning an instrument does not work with a ruler.

I experience something similar when cooking. The recipe gives a measure for salt, but when the dish is done I taste it. I don't know the measure because I memorised the recipe. I have an ear because I salted it and got it wrong many times. Getting it wrong is the school of measure.

The same happens when I walk. I love walking very much and usually notice tiredness late. The body reports the measure late. That is why I need to train my ear, that is, learn to listen early. Today, instead of setting a rule, I want to try this.

I leave the question to myself: do I have to stop setting rules, or should I hold a rule like a tuning key, not in place of the ear, but as something that helps the ear?

Proportionality in law

As a lawyer, let me add a note. Article 13 of the Constitution says that restrictions on fundamental rights and freedoms cannot be contrary to the principle of proportionality. This principle usually works with three questions: is the measure suitable for the aim, is it necessary, and is the balance between the aim and the means reasonable?

This is not Aristotle's Milo, but it is the same intuition: the weight is adjusted to what is being restricted. Here law has turned the ear into a test.

A piece next to the concept

Johann Sebastian Bach: Goldberg Variations, Aria.

The work was published in 1741. The title in Bach's own edition does not carry the name Goldberg; it has a phrase like "an aria with diverse variations." The name Goldberg was attached much later, through a story told by Forkel: a sleepless count asking his young harpsichordist Goldberg to play him something. I am not sure the story is true. Researchers look at it with suspicion.

The aria is thirty-two bars long, a slow sarabande. The thirty variations follow not the melody but the bass line and the harmonic skeleton. Then the aria comes back unchanged.

I chose this piece for measure. The same skeleton returns thirty times and none of them is the same. There is a limit, and a lot can happen inside it. When I listen to the aria again, it doesn't sound like the aria I first heard; it sounds like an aria that has passed through thirty variations.

Toward tomorrow

Tomorrow is Sunday. Eudaimonia. In Greek, eu means good, daimon means spirit or fortune. We usually translate it as happiness, but for Aristotle it is not a feeling but a life lived with virtue. Is this where measure is headed? That is what I will ask.

For today, just one thing: not starting anything new before I finish my coffee. If I have to start measure from somewhere, this much is enough.