Metriopatheia

Measure, not extinction

Where the Stoics demanded apatheia, the extinction of the passions, the Peripatetics and many Platonists urged metriopatheia: not to abolish feeling but to bring it to due measure under reason. The passions belong to our nature and, rightly proportioned, serve virtue — courage needs spirited feeling, justice a love of the right. It is the mean applied to the life of emotion.