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Moderation often seems less a political position than a personal disposition — the absence, and not the presence of strongly held positions. In a sense, it is the conceptual equivalent of a plaid sweater, accepted by all yet admired by few. But, as the lives and writings of French moralists from Michel de Montaigne to Albert Camus make clear, true moderation is very different and infinitely more demanding. There is no better time than now, in an age where voices of moderation, both in the halls of power and in the groves of academe, seem to have lost their conviction while the extremes are full of passionate intensity, to invoke and investigate the work of writers who sacrificed so much on behalf of the ideal of measure.