Knowing Your Limitations

Movie lines can become iconic for their brevity in expressing a general truth recognizable instantly by most persons as applicable to their own lives. One such line is utterer by Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character, speaking his words of sagacity to his corrupt lieutenant.  Inspector Callahan (a/k/a Dirty Harry) ensured his lieutenant’s demise (blown up in a car), but this outcome, in Callahan’s estimation, resulted from the lieutenant’s blindness to his own inadequacies, and in failing to recognize his limitations, the lieutenant brought about his own downfall. We do not need to inhabit such dramatic situations to recognize the wisdom of avoiding undertaking what is manifestly outside of our capabilities. Yes, it is only by pushing ourselves, even pushing ourselves beyond what we thought we were capable of, that we discover capacities we had not known we possess, but this fact does not undermine the truth that all beings have limitations, and that it is advisable that we not endeavor to wholly ignore or even actively spurn those limitations. Much misery has resulted from an individual’s inability to or unwillingness to accept his or her limitations.
​
Whenever we value moderation and self-control, and seek to manifest these traits in ourselves, then we are honoring Sophrosyne (sophrosune), the Greek goddess exemplifying these qualities. She is the daimona, or personified spirit, who is best represented as temperance, that is, the sort of self-restraint and self-control that derive from self-knowledge. Implicit in self-knowledge is knowing one’s limitations. If one follows the Delphic Oracle's command to "know thyself," and therefore one is aware of one's limitations, and most importantly one is aware of what one does not know, then the spirit of Sophrosyne is evoked. Socrates, we should recall, was deemed the wisest of the citizens of Athens because he recognized the limitations of his own knowledge. Now, Socratic irony is not to be doubted, and Socrates surely understood himself as possessing knowledge far less limited than that possessed by the average Athenian, but this reality does not negate the fact that much of Socrates’s wisdom resides in his recognition of the limitations of human knowledge, and the foolishness of believing oneself possessed of knowledge that in fact one lacks.

Sophrosyne is the subject matter of Plato's dialogue Charmides, wherein is discussed self-knowledge, and the wisdom and moral health that are attainable through rational understanding of oneself, and particularly of understanding oneself as a being with limitations. The dialogue does not achieve any strong resolution on the question of sophrosyne. What the dialogue does reveal is that sophrosyne is a virtue, and as such represents a state that people of excellence recognize and honor, for it is an aristocratic virtue, one that represents self-command through self-knowledge, and through sophrosyne we achieve a level of dignity appropriate for a human being of excellent character. An inseparable part of this self-knowledge is knowledge of what we owe to others, according to the nature of our relations to particular others. If we possess the requisite self-knowledge, then we are able to 'mind our own business' in relation to others, for self-knowledge informs us of the worth and the significance of our experiences, of our social standing, and of what and what are not appropriate ambitions for ourselves, as established by our abilities and our limitations.  
Sophrosyne should not be understood as being opposed to passions, but as requiring moderation of the passions, but only in the sense that one has the self-knowledge and the self-control necessary to discern the proper proportion of passion to express for the particular moment in the particular circumstances. Sophrosyne requires soundness of mind. That is, passion yes, but order and harmony and prudence as well. As Helen North writes, “At the deepest level, sophrosyne is related to the Greek tendency to interpret all kinds of experience – whatever moral, political, physical, or metaphysical – in terms of harmony and proportion…it is an expression of the self-knowledge and self-control that the Greek polis demanded of its citizens” (Sophrosyne in Rome, in Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature, 1966).

The concept of sophrosyne was central to the thinking of Aesara of Lucania, a woman philosopher of ancient times who, similar to Socrates, saw the soul as tripartite, consisting of mind (intellect: nous), spirit, and desire. One who pursues sophrosyne seeks to understand the nature of, and cultivate a balance amongst, these three (often) competing aspects of the human condition. If one is capable of grasping sufficiently these constituents of human nature, and one works to bring them into balance, that is, one endeavors to not allow one aspect to exceed its just proportion and thus dominate the others, thereby disordering the self, then one is able to realize the harmony of soul all reasonable persons seek to establish and to enjoy.