Aristotle · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| Since we have in fact already said that one must choose the mean, and neither the excess nor the deficiency, and that the mean is as right reason declares, let us now distinguish this further. For in all the states of character we have discussed, as in other cases too, there is some target which the person who possesses reason keeps in view as he tightens or relaxes, and there is some standard for the means which we say lie between excess and deficiency, being in accordance with right reason. But to speak this way, though true, is not at all clear: for in the other pursuits too, about which there is knowledge, it is true to say that one must labor and take one's ease neither more nor less, but in the mean amount and as right reason prescribes; yet if a person had only this, he would know no more—for example, what he should apply to his body, if someone were to say 'whatever medical science prescribes, and as the one who possesses it prescribes.' Hence in the case of the states of the soul too, it is necessary not merely to state this truly, but also to determine what right reason is, and what its standard is. Now when we divided the virtues of the soul [1139a] we said that some belong to character and some to thought. Concerning the virtues of character we have gone through the discussion; as for the rest, let us speak of them after first saying something about the soul. It was said earlier that the soul has two parts, the one having reason and the one without reason; now we must divide the part having reason in the same way. Let it be assumed that there are two parts having reason: one by which we contemplate those beings whose principles do not admit of being otherwise, and one by which we contemplate what admits of being otherwise; for corresponding to objects that differ in kind, there is also a part of the soul differing in kind
2| ...in kind is what is naturally directed toward each object, given that knowledge occurs in virtue of a certain likeness and kinship between knower and known. Let one of these be called the scientific part and the other the calculative part; for deliberating and calculating are the same thing, and no one deliberates about what cannot be otherwise. So the calculative part is one part of what has reason. We must grasp, then, what the best state of each of these is; for that is the virtue of each, and virtue is relative to the proper function. Now there are three things in the soul that control action and truth: perception, intellect, desire. Of these, perception is not the origin of any action; this is clear from the fact that beasts have perception but have no share in action. What affirmation and denial are in thought, pursuit and avoidance are in desire; so that, since ethical virtue is a state concerned with choice, and choice is deliberate desire, for these reasons, if the choice is to be good, the reasoning must be true and the desire correct, and reason must affirm what desire pursues, and the two must agree. This, then, is thought and truth that is practical; whereas of theoretical thought — thought that is neither practical nor productive — the good and bad states are the true and the false (for this is the function of everything that thinks); while for the part that is both practical and concerned with thought, truth is truth in agreement with correct desire. The origin of action, then, is choice — the source of motion, though not the end for the sake of which — and the origin of choice is desire, and reason directed toward some end. That is why choice does not occur without intellect and thought, nor without an ethical state; for doing well, and its
3| opposite, in action, do not occur without thought and character. Thought by itself, however, moves nothing; only thought that is for the sake of something and practical does. [1139b] For this also governs productive thought; for everyone who produces something produces it for the sake of something, and what is produced is not an end in the unqualified sense (but only relative to something and belonging to someone) — it is what is done that is the end; for doing well is the end, and desire is desire for this. That is why choice is either desiring intellect or thinking desire, and a principle of this kind is a human being. Nothing already past can be an object of choice — for instance, no one chooses to have sacked Troy; for no one deliberates about what has happened, but about what will be and is still possible, and what has happened cannot not have happened; which is why Agathon is right to say: 'of this alone even a god is deprived — to make undone whatever has once been done.' The function of both the intellectual parts, then, is truth. So the states in respect of which each part will most attain truth are the virtues of both. Let us then begin again from the start and speak of them once more. Let it be granted that the ways in which the soul attains truth by affirmation or denial are five in number: these are craft, scientific knowledge, practical wisdom, wisdom, and intellect; for supposition and opinion admit of being false. What scientific knowledge is will be clear from the following, if we are to speak with precision and not go by mere resemblances. We all suppose that what we know scientifically cannot be otherwise; while as for things that can be otherwise, once they pass outside our observation, it escapes us whether they are the case or not. The object of scientific knowledge, then, exists of necessity. It is therefore eternal; for everything that exists of unqualified necessity is eternal, and what is eternal is ungenerated and imperishable.
4| Further, all scientific knowledge is held to be teachable, and its object learnable. But all teaching proceeds from things already known, as we say also in the Analytics; for it proceeds either by induction or by syllogism. Now induction is a starting point even of the universal, while the syllogism proceeds from universals. There are, then, starting points from which the syllogism proceeds, of which there is no syllogism; it is by induction, therefore, that they are grasped. Scientific knowledge, then, is a demonstrative state, together with whatever further qualifications we add in the Analytics; for a person knows scientifically when he believes in a certain way and the starting points are known to him; since if he is not more certain of the starting points than of the conclusion, he will have the knowledge only accidentally. Let scientific knowledge, then, be defined in this way. [1140a] Among things that can be otherwise there is both what is producible and what is doable; and production and action are different (we can rely here also on the arguments given outside the school); so that the state involving reason concerned with action is also different from the state involving reason concerned with production. That is why neither is included under the other; for action is not production, nor is production action. Since housebuilding is a craft and is precisely a certain state involving reason concerned with production, and since there is no craft that is not a state involving reason concerned with production, nor any such state that is not a craft, craft will be the same as a state involving true reason concerned with production. Every craft is concerned with coming-to-be, with contriving and studying how something that admits of both being and not being may come to be, something whose origin is in the maker and not in the thing made; for craft is not concerned with things that are or come to be of necessity, nor
5| with things that come to be by nature; for these have their origin in themselves. Since production and action are different, craft must be concerned with production and not with action. Chance and craft, moreover, bear in a sense upon identical matters, just as Agathon states: 'craft has cherished chance, and chance craft.' Craft, then, as has been said, is a state involving true reason concerned with production, while lack of craft is, on the contrary, a state concerned with production involving false reason, both being concerned with what can be otherwise. As for practical wisdom, we may grasp what it is by considering whom we call people of practical wisdom. It seems to be characteristic of a person of practical wisdom to be able to deliberate well about what is good and advantageous for himself — not in some particular respect, such as what conduces to health or to strength, but what conduces to living well as a whole. A sign of this is that we also call people prudent in some particular respect, when they reason well toward some worthwhile end of a kind that is not the object of any craft. So that, taking it as a whole, the person of practical wisdom would be the one who is good at deliberating. But no one deliberates about things that cannot be otherwise, nor about things that it is not possible for him to do. So that, given that scientific knowledge involves demonstration, while of things whose starting points can be otherwise there is no demonstration (for such things can all be otherwise), [1140b] and given that it is not possible to deliberate about things that exist of necessity, practical wisdom cannot be scientific knowledge or craft — not scientific knowledge, because what is doable admits of being otherwise, and not craft, because action and production belong to different genera. It remains, then, that it is
6| a true state involving reason, concerned with action, about what is good and bad for a human being. For production has an end other than itself, but this could not be true of action; for doing well is itself the end. This is why we regard Pericles and men of his stamp as prudent — they are able to discern both what is advantageous to themselves and what is advantageous to people generally; and those we judge to have this capacity are the managers of households and the statesmen. This is also why we call temperance by this name, as that which preserves practical wisdom. For it preserves this kind of supposition. For it is not every supposition that pleasure and pain destroy or distort — for instance, the supposition that a triangle does or does not have its angles equal to two right angles — but only suppositions about what is to be done. For the starting points of the things to be done are the ends for the sake of which they are done; and to a person corrupted by pleasure or pain, the starting point immediately fails to appear; he no longer sees that he ought to choose and do everything for the sake of this end and because of it; for vice is destructive of the starting point. So that practical wisdom must necessarily be a true state involving reason, concerned with action about things good for human beings. But further, there is such a thing as excellence in craft, while there is none in practical wisdom; and in craft, one who errs voluntarily is more choiceworthy, but in the case of practical wisdom he is less so, as is also true of the virtues. It is clear, then, that practical wisdom is a virtue and not a craft. Since there are two parts of the soul that have reason, practical wisdom would be the virtue of one of them, the part that forms opinion; for both opinion and practical wisdom are concerned with what can be otherwise. But, further, it is not merely a state involving reason; a sign of this is that forgetting is possible for a state of that kind, but of practical wisdom
7| is not. Since knowledge is a supposition about universals and about things that exist of necessity, and there are starting-points of the things that are demonstrated and of all knowledge (for knowledge involves an account), there could be neither knowledge nor craft nor practical wisdom of the starting-point of what is known: for what is known is demonstrable, [1141a] whereas craft and practical wisdom happen to be concerned with things that admit of being otherwise. Nor indeed is wisdom concerned with these starting-points; for it belongs to the wise person to have demonstration about some things. If, then, the states by which we grasp truth and are never deceived, whether about things that cannot be otherwise or about things that can be otherwise, are knowledge, practical wisdom, wisdom, and intellect, and it is not possible for it to be any of these three (I mean practical wisdom, knowledge, and wisdom), it remains that intellect is the state concerned with starting-points. Now we attribute wisdom, in the crafts, to those who are most exact in their crafts — for example we call Phidias a wise worker in stone and Polyclitus a wise maker of statues — meaning by wisdom here nothing other than that it is the excellence of a craft. But we also think that some people are wise without qualification, not wise in some particular part or in some other limited respect, as Homer says in the Margites: 'The gods had made him neither a digger nor a plowman, nor wise in anything else.' So it is clear that wisdom would be the most exact of the forms of knowledge. The wise person, therefore, must not only know what follows from the starting-points, but must also grasp the truth about the starting-points themselves. So wisdom would be intellect together with knowledge — knowledge, as it were with a head on it, of the most honorable things. For it would be absurd for anyone to think that political science or practical wisdom is the most excellent kind of knowledge, unless man is the best thing in the universe. Now if what is healthy and good is different for men and for fish, while what is white and straight is always the same, everyone would likewise say that the wise is the same for all, but would say that the practically wise
8| is different: for they say that what considers well the things concerning each particular being is practically wise, and will entrust such things to it. That is why they say that some of the beasts too are practically wise — those that plainly have a capacity for forethought concerning their own life. It is also clear that wisdom and political science cannot be the same: for if they are going to call the knowledge concerned with what is advantageous to themselves 'wisdom,' there will be many wisdoms; for there is not one wisdom concerned with the good of all living things, but a different one for each, unless indeed medicine too is one and the same for all existing things. And should someone answer that among living creatures man ranks highest, this changes nothing: nature holds things far more godlike than man, [1141b] most plainly the elements composing the cosmos itself. Given what has now been argued, wisdom plainly combines knowledge with intellect, directed at what nature ranks highest in honor. That is why people say that Anaxagoras and Thales and men like them are wise but not practically wise, when they see them ignorant of what is advantageous to themselves, and they say that such men know things that are extraordinary, marvelous, difficult, and superhuman, but useless, because it is not human goods that they seek. Practical wisdom, on the other hand, is concerned with human affairs and with things about which deliberation is possible: for we say that this above all is the function of the practically wise person, to deliberate well, and no one deliberates about things that cannot be otherwise, nor about things that have no end, an end that is a good achievable by action. The person who deliberates well without qualification is the one who, by reasoning, is good at aiming at the best of the things achievable by action for a human being. Nor is practical wisdom concerned with
9| universals alone, but it must also know particulars: for it is concerned with action, and action is about particulars. That is why some people who do not know are more capable in action than others who do know it, and this holds in other cases too among the experienced: for if someone knew that light meats are easily digested and healthy, but did not know which meats are light, he will not produce health; but the one who knows that the meat of birds is light and healthy will produce it more. Practical wisdom is concerned with action; hence one must have both kinds of knowledge, or this latter kind more. And here too there would be a kind of master-craft. Political science and practical wisdom are the same state, though their essence is not the same. Of the practical wisdom concerned with the city, the kind that functions as master-craft is legislative science, while the kind concerned with particulars has the name common to the whole, political science: and this is concerned with action and deliberation, for a decree is a thing to be done, as the last step. That is why people say only these engage in politics; for these alone act, like craftsmen who work with their hands. Practical wisdom, too, is thought to be, most of all, the kind concerned with oneself, the individual; and this bears the name common to the whole, practical wisdom: of the other kinds, one is household management, another legislation, another political science, and of this last, one part is deliberative, the other judicial. Now knowing what concerns oneself would be one species of knowledge; but there is a great difference among these: [1142a] and the person who knows and occupies himself with what concerns himself is thought to be practically wise, while those engaged in politics are thought to be meddlesome busybodies; hence Euripides: 'How could I be wise, when I might have had, free from trouble, an equal share, numbered among the mass of the army?' For that name applies to those who are exceptional and who do more than is needed: they seek their own good, and think that this is what one ought to do. From this opinion, then, has come the view that these people are practically wise; and yet perhaps one's own good does not exist without household management,
10| nor without a constitution. Further, how one ought to manage one's own affairs is unclear, and needs to be examined. A sign of what has been said is also this: young people become geometers and mathematicians and wise in such things, but a young person does not seem to become practically wise. The reason is that practical wisdom is also concerned with particulars, which become known through experience, and a young person is not experienced; for a quantity of time is what produces experience. One might also consider this: why a child can become a mathematician, but cannot become wise or a natural philosopher. Is it because the objects of mathematics exist by abstraction, while the starting-points of the other subjects come from experience, and although the young speak of these physical things, they do not believe them, whereas the what-it-is of mathematical objects is not obscure to them? Further, error in deliberation is either about the universal or about the particular: either the error is that all heavy waters are bad, or that this particular water is heavy. That practical wisdom is not knowledge is clear: for it is concerned with the last particular, as has been said; for the thing to be done is of that sort. It stands opposed, then, to intellect: for intellect is of the defining terms, of which there is no account, while practical wisdom is of the last particular, of which there is no knowledge but perception — not the perception of the special objects of each sense, but a perception like that by which we perceive that the last figure in mathematics is a triangle: for there too the process will come to a stop. But this is perception rather than practical wisdom, though it is a different species from that other, ordinary perception. Inquiring and deliberating are different: for deliberating is a kind of inquiring. We must also grasp what excellence in deliberation is — whether it is a kind of knowledge, or opinion, or good guessing, or some other kind of thing. Now it is not knowledge: for people do not inquire about things they already know,
11| [1142b] Good deliberation is a kind of deliberation, and the person deliberating inquires and calculates. But surely it is not good guessing either: for good guessing occurs without an account and quickly, whereas people deliberate for a long time, and we say that one must act quickly on what has been deliberated but deliberate slowly. Again, quickness of mind is different from good deliberation; quickness of mind is a kind of good guessing. Nor, then, is good deliberation any sort of opinion. But since the person who deliberates badly makes an error, and the person who deliberates well does so correctly, it is clear that good deliberation is a kind of correctness — but correctness neither of knowledge nor of opinion. For there is no correctness of knowledge (nor error, for that matter), and the correctness of opinion is truth; and at the same time, whatever is an object of opinion is already determined. But surely good deliberation does not occur without an account either. What is left, then, is that it belongs to thought: for thought is not yet an assertion — indeed opinion is not an inquiry but already a kind of assertion, whereas the person deliberating, whether deliberating well or badly, is inquiring into something and calculating. But good deliberation is a certain correctness of deliberation; hence one must first inquire what deliberation is and what it concerns. Since correctness is spoken of in several ways, it is clear that not every kind is meant: for the person who lacks self-control and the bad person will get, by their reasoning, what they set out to see, so that they will have deliberated correctly but will have obtained a great evil. But deliberating well is thought to be something good: for it is this sort of correctness of deliberation that is good deliberation — the sort that hits upon the good. But it is possible to hit even upon this by a false syllogism, and to get what one ought to do but not through the means by which one ought, the middle term instead being false; so that not even this yet is
12| good deliberation, by which one hits upon what one ought but not through what one ought to. Again, it is possible to hit upon it by deliberating for a long time, and another by deliberating quickly. So that is not yet good deliberation either, but rather it is the correctness that accords with what is beneficial — both what one ought and how and when. Further, one can deliberate well either without qualification or with reference to some particular end. Deliberating well without qualification is what succeeds correctly with reference to the end without qualification, while deliberating well in a particular respect is what succeeds with reference to some particular end. If, then, deliberating well belongs to people of practical wisdom, good deliberation would be correctness with respect to what is advantageous toward the end of which practical wisdom is a true grasp. [1143a] There is also comprehension and good comprehension, in virtue of which we call people comprehending and good at comprehending — these are neither entirely the same as knowledge or opinion (for then everyone would be comprehending) nor are they any one of the particular branches of knowledge, such as medicine concerned with matters of health or geometry concerned with magnitudes; for comprehension is not concerned with things that are eternal and unchanging, nor with anything whatever that comes to be, but with matters about which someone might be at a loss and might deliberate. Hence it is concerned with the same things as practical wisdom, yet comprehension and practical wisdom are not the same. For practical wisdom issues commands — its end is what one ought to do or not do — while comprehension only judges. (For comprehension and good comprehension, and comprehending people and those good at comprehending, are the same thing.) Comprehension is neither having practical wisdom nor acquiring it; but just as learning is called comprehending when one is using one's knowledge, so comprehension consists in using opinion to judge about the matters with which
13| practical wisdom is concerned, when someone else is speaking — and to judge well; for "well" here is the same as "finely." And it is from this — from the sense involved in learning — that the name "comprehension," in virtue of which people are good at comprehending, has come: for we often call learning "comprehending." What is called good sense, in virtue of which we say people are forgiving and possess good sense, is correct judgment of what is decent. A sign of this: we say the decent person is especially disposed to forgive, and it is decent to be forgiving about certain things. Forgiveness is good sense that judges correctly what is decent; and correct judgment is judgment of what is true. All these states reasonably tend toward the same thing: for we attribute good sense, comprehension, practical wisdom, and intellect to the same people, when we say they now have good sense and intellect and are people of practical wisdom and comprehending. For all these capacities are concerned with ultimate particulars, with what is particular: and in being able to judge about the things with which the person of practical wisdom is concerned, one is comprehending and has good judgment or is forgiving; for what is decent is common to all good people in their dealings with another. All matters of action belong to particulars and to what is ultimate: for the person of practical wisdom must know these, and comprehension and good sense are concerned with matters of action, and these are ultimate particulars. And intellect is concerned with ultimates in both directions: for it is intellect, and not reasoned account, that grasps both the first terms and the ultimate ones — [1143b] the intellect at work in demonstrations grasps the unchanging and first terms, while the intellect at work in practical matters grasps the ultimate, variable term, the other premise; for these are starting points of the end aimed at, since it is from particulars that
14| universals arise. One must therefore have perception of these particulars, and this perception is intellect. This is why these capacities are thought to be natural, and why, although no one is wise by nature, people do have good sense, comprehension, and intellect by nature. A sign of this is that we think these follow the stages of life, and that a particular age possesses intellect and good sense, on the assumption that nature is the cause. Hence intellect is both a starting point and an end: for demonstrations proceed from these and are about these. So one ought to pay attention to the undemonstrated assertions and opinions of experienced and older people, or of people of practical wisdom, no less than to demonstrations; for because experience has given them an eye, they see correctly. We have said, then, what practical wisdom and wisdom are, and what each is concerned with, and that each is the virtue of a different part of the soul. One might be puzzled about them as to what use they are. For wisdom will contemplate none of the things that will make a person happy (since it is concerned with no coming-to-be), while practical wisdom does have this concern — but then for the sake of what is it needed? If practical wisdom is concerned with what is just and fine and good for a human being, and these are what it belongs to the good man to do, then knowing them makes us no more capable of doing them, if indeed the virtues are states of character — just as knowing what is healthy or what conduces to good condition, insofar as these are said not with reference to producing them but with reference to arising from the state, makes us no more capable of doing them: for we are no more capable of doing medical or gymnastic acts simply by possessing medicine or gymnastics. But if practical wisdom is to be said to exist not for the sake of these but for the sake of becoming good, it would be of no use to those who are already good;
15| and further, not even to those who lack it: for it will make no difference whether they have it themselves or are persuaded by others who have it, and here too we would be adequately placed, exactly as with health: we want to be well, yet that wish alone never sends us off to study medicine. Besides this, it would seem strange if, being inferior to wisdom, it were to be more authoritative than it, since the thing that produces rules and gives orders concerning each matter. About these questions, then, something must be said; for as it stands they have only been raised as puzzles. [1144a] Let us say, first, that they must necessarily be choiceworthy in their own right, being virtues, each of them, of each part of the soul, even if neither of them produces anything at all. Next, they do in fact produce something — not as medicine produces health, but as health itself does; that is how wisdom produces happiness: for being a part of virtue as a whole, by being possessed and by being active it makes a person happy. Further, the function is brought to completion in accordance with practical wisdom and moral virtue: for virtue makes the aim correct, while practical wisdom makes correct the means toward this. Regarding the fourth part of the soul, its nutritive part, no virtue of that kind exists, since nothing about acting or not acting depends upon it. As for the claim that we are made no more capable of doing fine and just actions on account of practical wisdom, one must begin a little further back, taking this as one's starting point. For just as we say that some people who do just things are not yet just — for instance, those who do what the laws prescribe unwillingly, or through ignorance, or for some other reason and not for the sake of the acts themselves (although they do what they should and everything the good person ought to) — so too, it seems, there is a certain way of being disposed in doing each action that makes one good, one that consists, I mean, in acting through choice and for the sake of the acts themselves
16| ...of the things done. Now virtue makes the choice correct, but the doing of whatever things are naturally done for the sake of that choice belongs not to virtue but to a different capacity. We must speak about these matters more clearly once we have paused to consider them. There is a capacity that people call cleverness, and it is of such a kind that it can do the things that tend toward whatever mark has been set up, and hit that mark. Now if the mark is fine, the capacity is praiseworthy, but if the mark is base, the capacity is unscrupulous cunning — which is why we call practically wise people clever, and also why we call unscrupulous people clever. Practical wisdom is not this capacity, but it does not exist without this capacity. This state comes to be in that eye of the soul not without virtue, as has been said and as is clear: for the syllogisms concerning things to be done have a starting point, namely, that the end and the best good is of such-and-such a kind, whatever it may be (for the sake of argument let it be whatever you like) — and this does not appear as it truly is except to the good person. For depravity distorts us and makes us be deceived about the starting points for action. Hence one cannot be practically wise unless one is also good — that much is now plain. [1144b] So we must again examine virtue as well. For virtue stands to cleverness in a way closely parallel to how practical wisdom stands to cleverness — not the same, but similar — and likewise natural virtue stands to virtue in the authoritative sense. For it seems to everyone that each of the traits of character belongs to us by nature in some way: we are just, temperate, courageous, and so on straight from birth. And yet we still look for something else, the good in the authoritative sense, and we look for such qualities to belong to us in another way. For natural states belong to children and to beasts as well, but without intellect they are evidently harmful.
17| Except this much seems observable: just as a strong body moving without sight happens to stumble badly because it lacks sight, so too here. If it takes on intellect, it makes a difference in action; and the state, though similar as before, will then be virtue in the authoritative sense. Just as the opinion-forming part of the soul divides into cleverness and practical wisdom, the character-forming part likewise splits in two, natural virtue and virtue properly so called, and the latter of these never arises apart from practical wisdom. This is why some people say that all the virtues are forms of practical wisdom, and Socrates was on the right track in one respect and mistaken in another. He was mistaken in thinking that all the virtues are forms of practical wisdom, but he spoke well in saying that virtue does not exist without practical wisdom. Here is a sign of this: even now, everyone, when they define virtue, adds — after stating the state and what it is a state with respect to — that it is a state in accordance with right reason; and right reason is reason in accordance with practical wisdom. So it seems that everyone somehow divines that a state of this kind, the one in accordance with practical wisdom, is virtue. But we must shift slightly. For virtue is not merely the state in accordance with right reason, but the state accompanied by right reason; and right reason about matters of this sort is practical wisdom. Socrates, then, thought the virtues were forms of reason (for he thought they were all forms of scientific knowledge), whereas we think they involve reason. It is clear from what has been said, then, that it is not possible to be good in the authoritative sense without practical wisdom, nor to be practically wise without ethical virtue. But this also resolves the argument by which someone might contend that the virtues are separable from one another: since the same person is not the best-natured for all of them,
18| so that he will already have acquired one virtue but not yet another. With the natural virtues such partial possession can occur, [1145a] yet among the virtues by which a person is called good without qualification it cannot occur: the moment practical wisdom alone is present, every other virtue follows along with it. And it is clear that even if practical wisdom were not concerned with action, we would still need it because it is the virtue of that part of the soul, and because the choice will not be correct without practical wisdom or without virtue: for the one makes us carry out the end, the other makes us carry out the things that lead to the end. But all the same, practical wisdom does not govern wisdom, nor the better part of the soul, any more than medicine governs health: for medicine does not make use of health but sees to it that health comes about; medicine gives its orders for the sake of health, not to health. Further, it would be like someone saying that the political art rules the gods, because it gives orders about everything in the city.