Aristotle · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| After this we must speak, taking a fresh starting point, of the fact that there are three kinds of things to be avoided in matters of character: vice, lack of self-control, and brutishness. Two of these have obvious opposites: the opposite of vice we name virtue, and the opposite of lack of self-control we name self-mastery. But as the opposite of brutishness it would fit best to speak of a virtue beyond us, a kind of heroic and divine virtue, just as Homer has made Priam say of Hector that he was exceedingly good, "nor did he seem to be the child of a mortal man, but of a god." So if, as people say, human beings become gods through an excess of virtue, then clearly a state of this kind is the one set opposite the brutish state. For just as a beast has neither vice nor virtue, so neither does a god: rather, the state of a god is something more honorable than virtue, and the state of a beast is a different kind of thing from vice. And since it is rare for a man to be divine — as the Spartans are accustomed to call someone when they are extremely full of admiration for him, saying "a godlike man" — so too the brutish person is rare among human beings. He is found mostly among barbarians, and some cases arise also through disease and disablement; and we also speak in this disparaging way of those human beings who go to excess in vice. But concerning a disposition of this kind we must make some mention later; concerning vice we have spoken already. We must now speak about lack of self-control, softness, and self-indulgent luxury, and about self-control and endurance. [1145b] For we must suppose that neither of these pairs is concerned with the same states as virtue and depravity, nor that each is a wholly different kind of thing. We must, as in the other cases, set down the appearances and, having first worked through the puzzles, in this way show, if possible, all the reputable opinions
2| about these affections, or if not all, then most of them and the most authoritative ones. For if the difficulties are resolved and the reputable opinions are left standing, that would be a sufficient demonstration. Now it seems that both self-control and endurance belong among the things that are excellent and praiseworthy, while lack of self-control and softness belong among the things that are base and blameworthy; and that the same person is both self-controlled and one who abides by his reasoning, while the person lacking self-control is one who departs from his reasoning. And the person who lacks self-control, knowing that what he is doing is base, does it because of an affection, while the self-controlled person, knowing that his appetites are base, does not follow them because of his reason. And people call the temperate person self-controlled and capable of endurance, but as for whether such a person is temperate, some say every self-controlled person is temperate and some do not; and some call the self-indulgent person lacking in self-control and the person lacking in self-control self-indulgent, running the two together, while others say they are distinct. As for the practically wise person, sometimes people say it is not possible for him to lack self-control, and sometimes they say that some people, though practically wise and clever, do lack self-control. Further, people are said to lack self-control with respect to spirit, honor, and gain as well. These, then, are the things that are said. One might raise the puzzle of how someone who grasps things correctly can nevertheless lack self-control. Some say it is not possible for someone who has knowledge to do this: for it would be strange, as Socrates thought, if, when knowledge is present in someone, something else should master it and drag it about like a slave. For Socrates fought against the account altogether, on the ground that there is no such thing as lack of self-control: no one, he held, acts against what is best while supposing that he is doing so, but only through ignorance. Now this account plainly disputes with the observable facts, and we ought to inquire about the affection: if it does occur through ignorance, what is the manner in which that ignorance comes about.
3| For it is clear that the incontinent person does not think, before he comes to be in the grip of the affection, that he ought to act as he does. But there are some who concede some points and not others: they agree that nothing is stronger than knowledge, but they do not agree that no one acts against what he judges to be better, and for this reason they say that the incontinent person, when overcome by pleasures, does not have knowledge but opinion. But if indeed it is opinion and not knowledge — if it is not a strong supposition [1146a] that resists but a weak one, as with people who are in doubt — there is pardon for not standing by it against strong desires; but for wickedness there is no pardon, nor for any of the other blameworthy things. Is it then practical wisdom that resists? For this is the strongest thing. But that is absurd: the same person will be at once practically wise and incontinent, and no one would say it belongs to the practically wise person to do the basest things voluntarily. Besides this, it has been shown earlier that the practically wise person is indeed a person of action (for he is concerned with the last particulars) and possesses the other virtues as well. Further, if the continent person is one who has strong and base desires, then the temperate person will not be continent, nor the continent person temperate: for it does not belong to the temperate person either to have excessive desires or to have base ones. But surely the continent person must have them: for if the desires are good, then the state that prevents him from following them is base, so that continence will not always be excellent; and if the desires are weak and not base, there is nothing impressive in resisting them, nor, if they are base and weak, is there anything great in it. Further, if continence makes one apt to abide by every opinion, it is base — for instance if it makes one abide by a false one; and if incontinence is apt to depart from every opinion, there will be some excellent incontinence, such as Sophocles' Neoptolemus in
4| the Philoctetes: for he earns praise precisely because he refused to hold to the position Odysseus had talked him into, since lying caused him distress. Further, the sophistic argument is a puzzle when it works by a false step: for because sophists wish to refute paradoxically, so as to seem clever when they succeed, the syllogism that results becomes a puzzle — for the thought is bound fast, since it is unwilling to stand still because it does not like the conclusion reached, and yet is unable to proceed because it cannot dissolve the argument. It follows, then, from a certain argument, that folly combined with incontinence is virtue: for the incontinent person does the opposite of what he supposes, on account of his incontinence, and he supposes good things to be bad and that he ought not to do them, so that he will end up doing the good things and not the bad ones. Further, the person who acts from conviction, pursuing and choosing what is pleasant, would seem better than the one who does so not through reasoning but through incontinence: for he is more easily cured, since he could be persuaded to change his mind. But the incontinent person is liable to the proverb in which we say, when the water is choking you, what need is there to drink on top of it? For if he had been persuaded that what he does is right, [1146b] he would have stopped once persuaded otherwise; but as it is, though persuaded of one thing, he does something else none the less. Further, if incontinence and continence extend to everything, who is the incontinent person without qualification? For no one has all the forms of incontinence, yet we say that some people are incontinent without qualification. Such, then, are roughly the puzzles that arise; of these, some points must be cleared away and others left standing, for the solution of a puzzle is a discovery of the truth. First, then, we must examine whether incontinent people act knowingly or not, and in what sense knowingly; next, with regard to what things we should posit the incontinent and the continent person — I mean, whether with regard to every pleasure and pain, or to certain determinate ones — and whether the continent person and the person of endurance are the same or different; and likewise concerning the other things akin to this inquiry. The starting point of the inquiry is whether
5| the continent person and the incontinent person have their differentia in the things they are concerned with, or in how they are disposed toward them — I mean, whether the incontinent person is incontinent simply by being concerned with these particular things, or not that but by being disposed in this way, or not that but by both together; and next, whether incontinence and continence extend to everything or not. For the person who is incontinent without qualification is not concerned with everything, but with the same things as the licentious person, and it is not simply by being disposed toward these things in general (for that would be the same as licentiousness), but by being disposed toward them in this particular way. For the one is led on by choosing it, thinking that he must always pursue the pleasant thing at hand; the other does not think this, yet pursues it nonetheless. Now on the question of whether the thing incontinent people act against is a correct belief rather than actual knowledge, that distinction changes nothing for our argument: for some who hold opinions do not doubt, but think they know with exactness. If, then, because they believe only mildly, those who hold opinions will act against their supposition more readily than those who know do, knowledge will differ in no way from opinion; for some people are no less confident in what they opine than others are in what they know — as Heraclitus shows. But since we speak of knowing in two senses (for both the person who has knowledge but is not using it, and the person who is using it, are said to know), it will make a difference whether a person who has the knowledge but is not attending to it does what he should not, as against a person who both has it and is attending to it: this latter case seems strange, but not the former, if he is not attending to it. [1147a] Further, since premises are of two kinds, nothing prevents a person who has both from acting against his knowledge, provided he is using the universal premise but not the particular one; for it is particulars that are the objects of action. And the universal itself differs: one kind concerns the agent himself,
6| the other concerns the thing in question — for example, that dry food is beneficial for every man, and that he himself is a man, or that such-and-such a thing is dry; but whether this particular thing is of that kind, the incontinent person either does not have the knowledge, or does not actively exercise it. Between these two modes of having knowledge, then, the gap is vast beyond measure — so that knowing in the first way seems in no way odd, while knowing in the second seems remarkable. Further, the having of knowledge occurs in people in yet another way besides those just mentioned: for in the case of having but not using, we see that the state differs, so that a person in a sense both has and does not have it — as with someone asleep, or mad, or drunk. But this is exactly the condition of people who are in the grip of the passions: for fits of anger, and desires for sexual pleasure, and some other such things, visibly alter the body as well, and in some people they even produce fits of madness. It is clear, then, that we must say the incontinent are in a similar state to these. And the fact that they utter the words that come from knowledge is no proof of knowing: for people in these states of passion also recite demonstrations and verses of Empedocles, and those who have just learned something string the words together but do not yet know them — for the knowledge must grow into them, and this takes time; so that we must suppose that incontinent people speak the way actors do. Further, one might also look at the cause in this way, from the standpoint of natural science. One opinion is universal, the other concerns particulars, of which perception is now in control; and when a single opinion results from the two, the soul must, in the one case, affirm what has been concluded, while in the case of opinions bearing on production it must act on it at once — for example, if one supposes that one must taste everything sweet, and this here is sweet, as
7| one of the particulars, then whoever is able and not prevented must at the same time also act on it. So then, when the universal premise is present forbidding him to taste, and the other premise says that everything sweet is pleasant, and this thing is sweet (and this premise is active), and appetite happens to be present as well, the one premise tells him to avoid this, but the appetite leads him on — for each of the parts of the soul is capable of causing motion — [1147b] so it turns out that a man is incontinent under the influence of reason and opinion in a sense, but an opinion that is not in its own right contrary to right reason, but only accidentally so — for it is the appetite that is contrary, not the opinion — to right reason. And this is also why the beasts are not called incontinent, because they have no universal supposition but only imagination and memory of particulars. As for how the ignorance is dissolved and the incontinent man becomes a knower again, the account is the same as for the man who is drunk or asleep, and it is not peculiar to this affection, but one must hear it from the natural philosophers. Since the last premise is an opinion about a perceptible thing, and it is what governs actions, the man in the grip of the affection either does not have this premise, or has it in such a way that having it is not knowing but merely saying it, the way a drunk man recites the verses of Empedocles. And because the last term is not universal and does not seem to be equally an object of knowledge as the universal term is, the very thing Socrates was looking for seems to result: for it is not what is thought to be knowledge in the strict sense that is present when the affection occurs, nor is this knowledge dragged about by the affection, but rather the perceptual kind of knowledge. So then, concerning whether the incontinent man knows or not, and how it is possible for a man who knows to be incontinent, let this much be said.
8| Next we must state whether there is someone incontinent without qualification, or whether everyone is incontinent only in a particular respect, and if the former, with regard to what things he is incontinent. That the continent and the persevering, and the incontinent and the soft, are concerned with pleasures and pains, is plain. But since, among the things that produce pleasure, some are necessary, while others are choiceworthy in their own right but admit of excess — the necessary ones being the bodily ones (I mean things of this sort: those concerning food and the use of sexual pleasures, and the bodily matters of this kind with regard to which we located self-indulgence and temperance), while the others are not necessary but are choiceworthy in their own right (I mean, for example, victory, honor, wealth, and other good and pleasant things of this sort) — those, then, who exceed the proper measure within themselves with regard to these latter things, contrary to right reason, we do not call incontinent without qualification, but we add a qualification and call them incontinent with regard to money, or gain, or honor, or spirit, but not incontinent without qualification, as being different people called so only by way of resemblance, just as a man is called 'human' who wins at the Olympic games: [1148a] for in his case the common account differed little from the account peculiar to him, and yet it was different. Here is a sign of this: incontinence is blamed not merely as an error but also as a kind of vice, either without qualification or in a particular respect, whereas none of the former cases is so blamed. Among those concerned with bodily enjoyments, the ones with regard to which we speak of the temperate man and the self-indulgent man, the one who pursues the excesses of pleasant things not by choice — and avoids the excesses of painful things, of hunger and thirst and heat and cold and everything having to do with touch and taste — but contrary to his choice and his rational calculation, is called incontinent, not with an added qualification specifying the sphere, as one does with anger, but simply and without qualification. Here is a sign of this: it is with regard to these bodily things that men are called soft, but with regard to none of the others.
9| And this is why we class the incontinent man together with the self-indulgent man, and the continent man with the temperate man, but none of the others with any of these, because they are concerned in a way with the same pleasures and pains; but though these people are concerned with the same things, they are not so in the same manner, but some choose them and others do not choose them. This is why we would call a man more self-indulgent who pursues excesses without appetite, or with only mild appetite, and avoids moderate pains, than one who does so because of strong appetite — for what would the former do, if a youthful appetite were added, along with intense pain over the lack of necessary things? Since, among appetites and pleasures, some belong to the class of things fine and excellent in kind (for some pleasant things are choiceworthy by nature), while others are the contraries of these, and others are in between, as we distinguished earlier — for example, money and gain and victory and honor — with regard to all of these and things of this kind, and the intermediate ones too, people are blamed not for being affected by them and desiring and loving them, but for how they do so and for exceeding the mean (which is why those who, contrary to reason, are either overcome by or pursue any of the things that are by nature fine and good — for example those who are more concerned with honor than they ought to be, or with their children and parents, are blamed; for these too are among the good things, and those who are concerned about them are praised — but nevertheless there is a kind of excess even in these cases, if someone, like Niobe, should fight even against the gods, or, like Satyrus,
10| [1148b] who was nicknamed 'father-lover,' behave toward his father — for he seemed to be excessively foolish). There is, then, no depravity at all concerning these things, for the reason stated, that each of them is by nature choiceworthy for its own sake, but the excesses of them are bad and to be avoided. Likewise there is no incontinence concerning them either — for incontinence is not only to be avoided but is also among the blameworthy things; but because of a resemblance in the affection, people add the qualification and speak of incontinence with regard to each of these things, the way they speak of a bad doctor and a bad actor, whom they would not call bad without qualification. Just as, then, in that case, because each of these is not a vice but only resembles one by analogy, so it is clear that in the other case too we must suppose that incontinence and continence, properly speaking, exist only with regard to the same things as temperance and self-indulgence, and that we speak of incontinence with regard to spirit only by way of resemblance — which is why we add the qualification and say 'incontinent with regard to spirit,' just as with honor and gain. Since some things are pleasant by nature, and of these some are pleasant without qualification and others according to the kinds of animals and of men, while other things are not pleasant by nature but come to be so, some through mutilation, some through habituation, and some through depraved natures, it is possible to observe, with regard to these too, states resembling the ones just discussed; I mean the bestial states, such as that of the woman they say rips open pregnant women and devours the infants, or the sort of things some of the savage tribes near the Black Sea are said to delight in, some eating raw meat, some human flesh, some lending their children to one another for a feast, or the story told about Phalaris. These are bestial states; still others come about through disease (in some people through madness, as happened with the man who slew his own mother as a sacrificial victim and then ate her flesh, and with the one who devoured the liver of a fellow slave); others are morbid, arising from habit, such as pulling out one's hair and gnawing one's nails, and further, eating coals and earth, and in addition to these, sexual relations between males — for these arise in some by nature
11| and in others from habit, as in those who have been sexually abused from childhood. Now whoever has these states because of nature, no one would call incontinent, any more than one would call women incontinent because they do not mount but are mounted; and likewise no one would call incontinent those who are in a morbid condition as a result of habit. Now the having of each of these states [1149a] lies outside the bounds of vice, just as bestiality does too; and for a man who has such a state to master it or be mastered by it is not incontinence without qualification but incontinence only by resemblance, just as with a man who is in this condition with regard to fits of anger — one must speak of this affection as resembling incontinence, but not call it incontinence. For every excessive folly and cowardice and self-indulgence and harshness is either bestial or morbid: a man who is by nature such as to fear everything, even the squeak of a mouse, is cowardly with a bestial cowardice, while another feared the weasel because of a disease; and among the foolish, some are irrational by nature and live by perception alone, and are bestial, like certain tribes of distant barbarians, while others are so because of diseases, such as epilepsy, or are morbidly foolish through madness. Of these states it is possible sometimes merely to have one without being mastered by it — I mean, for example, if Phalaris restrained himself though desiring to eat a child, or desiring some monstrous sexual pleasure; but it is also possible to be mastered, not merely to have the state. Just as, then, with depravity, one kind is called depravity in a human being without qualification, and another is called so with an added qualification, because it is bestial or morbid, but not depravity without qualification, in the same way it is clear that incontinence too is in one sense bestial and in another morbid, but without qualification
12| is the one according to human self-indulgence alone. That lack of self-control and self-control, then, are only about the same things as self-indulgence and temperance, and that there is another kind of lack of self-control concerning other things, spoken of by metaphor and not without qualification, is clear. But that the lack of self-control involving spirit is less shameful than that involving the appetites, let us now examine. For spirit seems to listen to reason to some extent, but to mishear it, like quick household servants who dash off before catching everything that was said, and only afterward bungle the order, or like dogs that bark the instant they hear a noise, without first checking whether it is a friend. In the same way, spirit, because of the heat and quickness of its nature, hears reason but does not hear the command, and rushes off to take revenge. For reason or imagination has shown that there has been an insult or a slight, and spirit, as if it had inferred that it ought to make war on such a thing, is instantly roused to anger. Appetite, on the other hand, if reason or perception merely says that something is pleasant, rushes off to enjoy it. [1149b] So spirit follows reason in a way, while appetite does not. It is therefore more shameful. For the person who lacks self-control through spirit is defeated by reason in a way, while the other is defeated by appetite and not by reason. Further, it is more forgivable to follow natural desires, since it is also more forgivable to follow appetites of the kind that are common to everyone, and to the extent that they are common; and spirit, and the harshness that goes with it, is more natural than are appetites for excess and for what is not necessary — like the man defending himself for striking his father, who said, "He too struck his own, and his struck his own before him,"
13| and pointing to his child said, "And this one will strike me, when he becomes a man — for it runs in the family"; and the man being dragged along by his son who told him to stop at the door, since he himself had dragged his own father only that far. Further, the more scheming a person is, the more unjust he is. Now the spirited man is not scheming, nor is spirit itself — it is open; but appetite is, as they say of Aphrodite, "guileful daughter of Cyprus," and of her embroidered girdle Homer says, "beguilement, which steals away the wits even of the sensible." So if this lack of self-control through appetite is more unjust and more shameful than that involving spirit, it is both lack of self-control without qualification and a kind of vice as well. Further, no one commits outrage while feeling pain, but everyone who acts in anger acts while feeling pain, whereas the man who commits outrage does so with pleasure. If, then, the things that most justly provoke anger are more unjust, so is lack of self-control through appetite more unjust — for there is no outrage in spirit. That the lack of self-control concerning appetites, then, is more shameful than that concerning spirit, and that self-control and lack of self-control are about bodily appetites and pleasures, is clear. But we must grasp the differences among these bodily pleasures themselves. For as was said at the start, some are human and natural both in kind and in degree, some are bestial, and some are due to mutilations and diseases. Of these, temperance and self-indulgence concern only the first kind; that is why we do not call beasts either temperate or self-indulgent, except by metaphor, and only in cases where one whole kind of animal differs from another in outrageousness, destructiveness, and indiscriminate eating — for a beast has no choice
14| nor calculation, but is a departure from nature, as madmen among human beings are. [1150a] Bestiality is a lesser thing than vice, but more frightening; for in a beast the better part has not been corrupted, as it has in a human being — it simply does not have it. So the comparison is like comparing something without a soul to something with one, to ask which is worse: for the badness of a thing that has no starting-principle is always less harmful, and intellect is a starting-principle. So comparing injustice to an unjust man is similar. For each is in a sense worse than the other: a bad man could do ten thousand times more evil than a beast. Concerning the pleasures, pains, appetites, and aversions that arise through touch and taste, in respect of which self-indulgence and temperance were defined earlier, it is possible to be in such a state as to be overcome even by things that most people master, or to master even things that most people are overcome by. Of these, the man who is overcome regarding pleasures is the one without self-control, the one who masters them is the one with self-control; and regarding pains, the one who gives way is soft, the one who holds out is tough. The state of most people falls between these, even if they lean more toward the worse states. Since some pleasures are necessary and others are not, and necessary ones only up to a point, while their excesses are not necessary, nor are their deficiencies — and it is the same with appetites and pains — the man who pursues excesses of pleasant things — or pursues them to excess — or does so by choice, for their own sake and for the sake of nothing else that results from them, is self-indulgent; for such a man must be incapable of regret, and so is incurable, since the man without regret is incurable. The man who falls short is the opposite kind, and the man in the middle is temperate. Similarly there is the man who avoids bodily pains not because he is overcome but by choice.
15| Of those who do not act by choice, one is led on by the pleasure, the other by his wish to avoid the pain that comes from the appetite, so that they differ from one another. Everyone would think a person worse if he did something shameful while feeling no appetite, or only a mild one, than if he did it while feeling strong appetite, and would judge him worse for striking a blow with no anger at all than for striking one in a fit of anger — for what would such a man have done had he truly been overtaken by passion? For this reason the self-indulgent man is worse than the man who lacks self-control. Of the two states described, then, the one is more a form of softness, the other is self-indulgence. Opposed to the man without self-control is the man with self-control, and opposed to the soft man is the tough man; for holding out consists in resisting, while self-control consists in mastering, and resisting and mastering are different things, just as not being defeated is different from winning. That is why self-control is more choiceworthy than toughness. [1150b] The man who falls short in resisting things that most people both resist and are able to resist is soft and given to luxury — for luxury too is a kind of softness. He is the sort who lets his cloak trail so as not to bear the pain of holding it up, and who imitates the sick man without thinking himself wretched, though he resembles someone who is wretched. The same holds for self-control and lack of self-control. It is not surprising if someone is overcome by strong and extreme pleasures or pains — it is even forgivable, if he resists, as Theodectes' Philoctetes is when bitten by the viper, or Cercyon in Carcinus's Alope, or as people trying to hold in their laughter burst out in one great fit, as happened to Xenophantus. But if someone is overcome by, and unable to resist, things that most people are able to withstand — not because of some natural trait of his kind, or through disease, as with the Scythian kings
16| whose softness is due to their stock, and as the female differs from the male — that is different. The playful man too seems to be thought self-indulgent, but he is really soft. For play is a form of relaxation, if it is indeed a form of rest, and the playful man is one who goes to excess in this. Of lack of self-control, one kind is impetuousness, the other weakness. Some people, after deliberating, fail to abide by what they decided, because of their feeling; others are carried along by their feeling because they never deliberated at all. Some people, just as those who have first tickled themselves are not ticklish, likewise, by perceiving in advance, foreseeing, and rousing themselves and their reasoning beforehand, are not overcome by their feeling, whether it is pleasant or painful. It is above all the quick-tempered and the melancholic who are subject to the impetuous kind of lack of self-control: the quick ones because of their speed and the intense ones because of the force of their feeling, never pause for reason first, since they are inclined to follow whatever appears to them. The self-indulgent man, as was said, is not given to regret, for he abides by his choice; but the man who lacks self-control is always given to regret. So it is not as we were puzzled earlier — rather, the one is incurable and the other curable; for vice resembles diseases like dropsy and consumption, while lack of self-control resembles epilepsy — the one is a continuous evil, the other not continuous. And in general the kind to which lack of self-control belongs is different from that of vice: vice goes unnoticed by the person who has it, lack of self-control does not. [1151a] Of these people themselves, those who lose themselves entirely are better than those who possess reason but do not abide by it; for they are overcome by a lesser feeling, and are not without prior deliberation as the others are. For the man who lacks self-control is like people who get drunk quickly and on
17| less wine, and less than most people. That lack of self-control is not vice, then, is clear (though it may be so in a certain way): for the one is against choice, the other in accordance with choice. Still, in terms of actions the two are alike, just as Demodocus said of the Milesians — the Milesians are not stupid, but they do the things stupid people do — so too the unrestrained are not unjust, but they will act unjustly. Now since one sort of person is such as not to pursue, on the strength of being persuaded of it, the bodily pleasures that go beyond measure and against right reason, while another is persuaded, because he is the sort of person to pursue them, that this is what he must do — the former is easily persuaded out of it, the latter is not. For virtue and vice each preserve or destroy the starting point respectively, and in actions the starting point is the end for the sake of which one acts, as the hypotheses are in mathematics. Neither there, then, is argument what teaches the starting points, nor here — rather, it is virtue, whether natural or formed by habit, that produces correct belief about the starting point. Such a person, then, is temperate, and the opposite sort is self-indulgent. But there is also a certain person who, because of feeling, is driven out of right reason — one whom feeling overpowers to the point that he does not act according to right reason, but does not overpower to the point that he becomes the sort of person to be persuaded that he ought to pursue such pleasures without restraint. This is the person who lacks self-control, and he is better than the self-indulgent person, and not simply bad, since the best thing — the starting point — is preserved in him. There is another, opposite sort, the person who holds firm and is not driven out, at least not by feeling. It is clear from all this, then, that the one state is excellent and the other bad. Is the person of self-control, then, someone who holds firm to any reasoning and any choice whatever, or someone who holds firm to the correct one, and is the person who lacks self-control someone who fails to hold firm to any choice and any reasoning whatever, or someone who fails to hold firm to reasoning that is not false and to correct choice, as was raised as a puzzle before?
18| Or is it that incidentally it is any reasoning whatever, but in its own right it is true reasoning and correct choice that the one holds firm to and the other does not? For if someone chooses or pursues this on account of that, [1151b] in its own right he pursues and chooses that, but incidentally this. And we speak of "in its own right" without qualification. So that in a sense it is to any opinion whatever that the one holds firm and the other departs from, but without qualification it is to the true one. There are certain people who hold firm to their opinion, whom people call stubborn — hard to persuade and not easily talked round. These have something in common with the person of self-control, just as the extravagant person has something in common with the generous person and the rash person with the courageous person, but they are different in many respects. For the person of self-control does not change on account of feeling and appetite, since he will readily be persuaded, when the occasion arises, that is what self-control means; but the stubborn are not persuaded by argument at all, since they too do acquire appetites, and many of them are led by pleasures. Now the stubborn include the opinionated, the ignorant, and the boorish — the opinionated on account of pleasure and pain: for they enjoy winning if they are not talked out of their position, and they are pained if their decisions are made void, like decrees that fail to pass. So that they resemble the person who lacks self-control more than the person of self-control. But there are some who do not hold to their own opinions, and not on account of lack of self-control — for example, in Sophocles' Philoctetes, Neoptolemus: yet even though he did not hold firm it was on account of pleasure, but a fine pleasure,
19| for speaking the truth was a fine thing to him, and he was persuaded by Odysseus to tell a lie. For not everyone who does something on account of pleasure is self-indulgent, or bad, or lacking self-control, but only the one who does it on account of a shameful pleasure. But since there is also a sort of person who takes less pleasure than he should in bodily things, and does not hold to reasoning, the person of self-control stands between this person and the one who lacks self-control: for the one who lacks self-control does not hold to reasoning because of feeling something too much, while this other person does not hold to it because of feeling something too little; but the person of self-control holds firm, and does not change on account of either. If, then, self-control is to be a good thing, both opposite states must be bad, as indeed they appear to be. But because one of them is evident in only a few people and only rarely, self-control seems, just as temperance seems to be opposed only to self-indulgence, to be opposed only to lack of self-control. Since many things are called by a name on the basis of resemblance, the self-control of the temperate person has come to be so called by resemblance: for both the person of self-control and the temperate person are the sort to do nothing contrary to reasoning on account of bodily pleasures, [1152a] but the one has base appetites and the other does not, and the one is the sort not to feel pleasure contrary to reasoning, while the other is the sort to feel pleasure but not to be led by it. The person who lacks self-control and the self-indulgent person also resemble each other, though they are different: both pursue bodily pleasures, but the one thinks he ought to, the other does not think so. Nor can the same person be at once practically wise and lacking in self-control: for it has been shown that the same person is at once practically wise and good in character. Further, one is practically wise not merely by knowing but also by being capable of action; but the person who lacks self-control is not capable of action —
20| though nothing stops a shrewd person from also lacking self-control — which is why some are sometimes taken to be practically wise yet unrestrained at once, since shrewdness parts ways with practical wisdom in the manner set out earlier, in our opening discussion: close to it in point of reasoning, but distinct from it in point of choice. Nor does the person who lacks self-control resemble someone who knows and is attending to the matter, but rather someone asleep or drunk. And he acts willingly (for in a way he knows both what he is doing and the end for which he does it), but he is not wicked, since his choice is decent; so he is half-wicked. Nor is he unjust, for he is not a schemer: one type of person who lacks self-control does not hold firm to what he has deliberated, while the melancholic type does not deliberate at all. And indeed the person who lacks self-control resembles a city that votes for everything it should and has good laws, but makes no use of them — as Anaxandrides mocked it: 'the city wanted it, the city that cares nothing for its laws' — whereas the wicked person resembles a city that does use its laws, but uses bad ones. Lack of self-control and self-control concern what exceeds the state of most people: for the one holds firm more than most people's power allows, the other less. Of the forms of lack of self-control, the more curable is the one the melancholic suffer from — that of people who deliberate but do not hold firm — and those who lack self-control through habituation are more curable than those who do so by nature: for it is easier to change a habit than to change nature. And this is exactly why habit is hard to shift — because it resembles nature, as Evenus too says: 'I say that lasting practice, my friend, becomes in the end nothing other than nature for men.' So much, then, has been said about what self-control is, what lack of self-control is, and what endurance is
21| and what softness is, and how these states stand toward one another. [1152b] But it belongs to the person who studies political philosophy to examine pleasure and pain: for he is the master craftsman of the end, with a view to which we call each thing, without qualification, bad or good. Further, it is also one of the necessary things to look into: for we set down both virtue and vice of character as concerned with pains and pleasures, and most people say happiness involves pleasure — which is why they have named the blessed man from the word 'to rejoice.' Now some think that no pleasure is a good, either in its own right or incidentally, on the grounds that the good and pleasure are not the same thing; others think that some pleasures are good, but most are base. And there is a third view besides these: that even if all pleasures were good, still the best thing could not be pleasure. The argument that pleasure is not a good at all runs: every pleasure is a perceptible coming-to-be toward a nature, but no coming-to-be is akin to its ends, just as no building is akin to a house. Further, the temperate person avoids pleasures. Further, the practically wise person pursues what is free from pain, not what is pleasant. Further, pleasures are an obstacle to thinking, and the more one enjoys them the more of an obstacle they are — as with the pleasure of sex: for no one, they say, could think of anything while engaged in it. Further, there is no craft of pleasure, and yet every good is the product of some craft. Further, children and animals pursue pleasures. As for the claim that not all pleasures are excellent: some are shameful and a matter of reproach, and some are harmful, since some pleasant things are unhealthy. And as for the claim that pleasure is not the best thing: it is not an end but a coming-to-be. These, roughly, are the views people express.
22| That it does not follow from these arguments that there is no good, nor any best thing, is clear from the following. First, since the good is spoken of in two ways (one sense being the good without qualification, the other the good for someone), natures and states will follow this distinction accordingly, and so will motions and comings-to-be; and among things that seem base, some are base without qualification but not for a given person, and are choiceworthy for him, while others are not even choiceworthy for him except at some particular moment and for a short time, but not without qualification; and some are not even pleasures, but only appear so — namely those that involve pain and are undergone for the sake of a cure, such as the pleasures of the sick. Further, since one part of the good is activity and another is a state, the things that restore us to our natural state are pleasant only incidentally; the actual activity at work in such cases belongs to the appetites for the remaining state and nature, since there are pleasures even without pain and appetite, [1153a] such as the activities of contemplation, in cases where nature is not in a condition of deficiency. A sign of this is that people do not take pleasure in the same pleasant thing while their nature is being replenished and while it is settled: when settled, they take pleasure in things pleasant without qualification, but while being replenished, even in the contraries of these; for they take pleasure in sharp and bitter things, none of which is pleasant by nature or without qualification. So the pleasures taken in them are not the same kind of pleasures either: for as pleasant things stand to one another, so do the pleasures arising from them. Further, it is not necessary that there be something else better than pleasure, as some say the end is better than the coming-to-be that leads to it; for not all pleasures are comings-to-be, nor accompanied by a coming-to-be, but are activities, and an end; nor do they occur while things are coming to be, but while things are being used; and the end is not, for all of them, something other than themselves, but only for those that are stages leading toward the completion of their nature. That is why it is not right to say that pleasure is a perceptible coming-to-be; rather it should be called an activity of the state that accords with nature,
23| and in place of 'perceptible' we should say 'unimpeded.' Some people think pleasure is a coming-to-be because it is, properly speaking, a good: for they suppose that activity is coming-to-be, but it is something different. The claim that pleasures are base because some pleasant things are unhealthy is the same as saying that some healthy things are base for the making of money. On this ground, then, both are base, but they are not base on that account, since even contemplating sometimes harms one's health. Practical wisdom is impeded by no pleasure that belongs to it, nor is any other state impeded by the pleasure that belongs to it, but only by pleasures foreign to it, since the pleasures arising from contemplating and learning will make one contemplate and learn all the more. That no pleasure is the product of a craft has happened reasonably enough; for craft is not the craft of any other activity either, but of the corresponding capacity — and yet perfumery and cookery are thought to be crafts concerned with pleasure. As for the claim that the temperate person avoids pleasure and the practically wise person pursues the painless life, and that children and beasts pursue pleasure — all these are resolved by the same point. For since it has been stated in what sense pleasures are good without qualification and in what sense not all of them are good, it is pleasures of that latter sort that both beasts and children pursue, and it is freedom from the pain of these that the practically wise person pursues — the pleasures that involve appetite and pain, and the bodily pleasures (for these are of that sort), and the excesses of these, which are what make the self-indulgent person self-indulgent. That is why the temperate person avoids these, since there are pleasures that belong to the temperate person too. [1153b] But indeed it is agreed that pain too is bad and to be avoided: for one kind of pain is bad without qualification, and another is bad because it is in some way an impediment. But the contrary of what is to be avoided, insofar as it is bad and to be avoided, is good. Pleasure, then, must necessarily be some good. For as
24| Speusippus tried to resolve it, the resolution does not work — as if the greater stood contrary both to the lesser and to the equal; for he would not say that pleasure is precisely a bad thing. And nothing prevents the best thing from being some pleasure, even if some pleasures are base, just as some form of knowledge may be the best thing even though some kinds of knowledge are base. Indeed it is perhaps even necessary, if each state has unimpeded activities, that whether happiness is the activity of all the states or of some one of them, this activity, if unimpeded, should be most choiceworthy of all; and this is pleasure. So it would follow that some pleasure is the best thing, even though most pleasures happen to be base, without qualification. And this is why everyone thinks the happy life is a pleasant one, and weaves pleasure into happiness — reasonably so, since no activity is complete while impeded, and happiness belongs among complete things. That is why the happy person needs, in addition, the goods of the body, external goods, and fortune, so that he not be impeded in these respects. Those who say that a man broken on the wheel, or one who falls into great misfortunes, is happy provided he is good, are talking nonsense, whether they mean to or not. And because happiness needs the addition of fortune, some people think good fortune is the same thing as happiness — it is not, since even good fortune, when it is excessive, is itself an impediment, and perhaps it is then no longer right to call it good fortune at all; for its boundary is fixed by reference to happiness. And the fact that all things, both beasts and men, pursue pleasure is some sign that it is in some way the best thing: no report is ever wholly lost that many peoples repeat. But since it is neither the same nature nor the same state that is best, nor is thought to be,
25| people do not all pursue the same pleasure either, though all pursue pleasure. And perhaps they do not even pursue the pleasure they think they do, nor the one they would say they do, but the same pleasure in every case; for everything has by nature something divine in it. But the bodily pleasures have taken over the inheritance of the name because people resort to them most often and all share in them; and so, because these alone are familiar, people think they alone exist. [1154a] It is also plain that if pleasure and the activity are not a good, the happy person will not be able to live pleasantly; for what would he need pleasure for, if it is not a good, when it is even possible to live in a state of pain? For pain is neither bad nor good, if pleasure is not either; so why would one avoid it? Nor, indeed, would the life of the excellent person be more pleasant, unless his activities were too. But concerning bodily pleasures we must examine the position of those who say that some pleasures are very much worth choosing — the fine ones — but not the bodily pleasures, that is, the ones the self-indulgent person is concerned with. Why then are the contrary pains bad? For the contrary of a bad thing is good. Or are the necessary pleasures good in this sense, that even what is not bad is good? Or are they good only up to a point? For in the case of states and motions in which there is no excess of the better, there is no excess of the pleasure either; but in those where there is such excess, there is an excess of pleasure too. Now there is an excess of bodily goods, and it is by pursuing the excess that the base person is base, not by pursuing the necessary pleasures — for everyone takes some pleasure in fine food, wine, and sex, but not everyone as he ought. It is the opposite with pain: one does not avoid the excess of it, but avoids it altogether;
26| For pain is not the opposite of excess, but only to the man who pursues the excess. Since one must not only state the truth but also the cause of the false belief -- for this contributes to conviction: for when it becomes apparent why something that is not true appears true, this makes people trust the truth more -- so we must say why bodily pleasures appear more choiceworthy. First, then, because pleasure drives out pain: and because of excesses of pain, people pursue excessive pleasure, and bodily pleasure generally, as though it were a cure. And these cures become intense, which is why they are pursued, because they appear so by contrast with their opposite. And pleasure is thought not to be a serious matter for these two reasons, as has been said: because some pleasures are actions of a base nature (either from birth, as with an animal, or through habit, as with base people), while others are cures, because of some deficiency, and it is better to have health than to be coming to have it -- [1154b] while others come about in the process of reaching completion; so they are serious only incidentally. Further, they are pursued because they are intense, by people who are unable to enjoy anything else: at any rate they contrive certain thirsts for themselves. Now when these are harmless, this is not to be blamed, but when they are harmful, it is base. For such people have nothing else in which to take pleasure, and a neutral state is painful to many because of their nature. For the animal is always in some toil, as the natural philosophers also testify, saying that seeing and hearing are painful; but we are by now used to it, as they say. Similarly, in youth, because of growth, people are disposed like those who are drunk, and youth is pleasant. But those who are melancholic by nature always need a cure: for their body, because of its mixture, is continually being gnawed at, and they are always in violent craving: and pleasure drives out pain, whether the opposite pleasure or any pleasure whatever, provided it is strong: and for these reasons
27| such people become intemperate and base. But pleasures that involve no pain admit of no excess; and these belong to the things pleasant by nature and not incidentally. By 'pleasant incidentally' I mean the things that cure: for because it happens that the person who endures treatment is cured by doing something, it appears for this reason to be pleasant; but things pleasant by nature are those that produce an action of this kind of nature. Nothing is always pleasant to the same person, because our nature is not simple, but there is present in us also another element, in virtue of which we are perishable, so that if one element acts, this is contrary to nature for the other element, and when the two are balanced, what is done seems neither painful nor pleasant: since if anyone's nature were simple, the same action would always be most pleasant to him. This is why god always enjoys a single and simple pleasure: for actuality belongs not only to motion but also to rest, and pleasure lies more in rest than in motion. But change in all things is sweet, as the poet says, on account of some badness: for just as a bad man is easily changed, so too is the nature that needs change: for it is not simple nor decent. So then we have discussed self-restraint and lack of self-restraint, and pleasure and pain, both what each of them is and how some of them are good and some bad: it remains for us to speak also about friendship.