Discipline

Discipline is a cognate of power related primarily to self-control, or power over oneself. Whoever has power over his or her self has discipline. By extension, discipline relates to power over others in the sense of training or having instilled training in others such that one is able to successfully command them. An army that obeys has discipline. Although they are distinct, obedience is sometimes confused with discipline. The sort of discipline exhibited by armies involves a command-obey structure containing two distinct parties and a hierarchical arrangement of some sort. In its wider senses, for example when scholarship or the sciences are referred to as disciplines, discipline implies obedience to rules and expectations, but need not imply two parties nor any sort of hierarchy.

Self-control has usually been understood as the ability to command and obey oneself. Another understanding takes self-control as the ability to make oneself fully submit to an authority, such as a leader, community, or scripture. The latter has been common among military and religious orders, whereas the former has been a prime area of concern for philosophers.

For many philosophers, such as Aristotle and Niccolò Machiavelli, self-control is a prerequisite for attaining and maintaining power over others. For Aristotle, it is required for gaining mental and physical skills in general, but is especially crucial for acquiring a virtuous, well-rounded character. The virtues are conceived as a set of habits, and Aristotle believed it was possible to train oneself to have virtuous habits. For example, if one talks too much or too little, then to achieve the virtuous mean between them requires restraint from speaking in the first case and motivation to speak in the second. Repeated application of the proper principle will yield the habit of speaking a moderate, virtuous amount. For other thinkers, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, independence of mind requires self-discipline, because “he who cannot obey himself will obey someone else.”

For Machiavelli, the first task of a would-be sovereign is to raise and discipline a militia. The militia will tend to reflect the character of its sovereign even more than will the populace at large, and thus an obedient militia requires a leader who publicly exhibits exquisite self-control, even if he or she privately lacks it. Similarly, leaders of monastic orders must exhibit a high degree of self-control in the sense of total submission to monastic principles, even if they privately lack it.