Aristotle · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| One might raise the puzzle whether it is possible to use each friend both for the purpose for which he is naturally suited and otherwise, and whether such use is either in its own right or accidental — for example, whether an eye can be used to see, or also, otherwise, by squinting, to look past things so that one thing appears as two. Both of these uses belong to the eye as an eye; but there is another use that is accidental, as if one were to sell it or eat it. It is the same with knowledge: one can use it both truly and to make an error, as when someone deliberately writes something incorrectly — in that case he is using his knowledge now as if it were ignorance, just as if he had turned his hand backward; and dancing-girls sometimes use the foot as a hand and the hand as a foot. If, then, all the virtues are forms of knowledge, it would be possible to use justice as one uses injustice, and so a man doing unjust acts would be acting unjustly from justice, just as errors of ignorance would be done from knowledge; but if this is impossible, it is clear that the virtues cannot be forms of knowledge. [1246b] Nor, even if it is not possible to be ignorant as a result of knowledge but only to err, and to do the same things one would do from ignorance, will such a man be acting from justice as one acts from injustice. But since practical wisdom is a form of knowledge, and something true, the same reasoning will apply to it as well:
2| for it would then be possible to act foolishly as a result of practical wisdom, and to make the very same errors as the foolish person. But if the use of each thing, as that thing, were single and simple, then people acting in this way would in fact be acting with practical wisdom. Now in the case of the other branches of knowledge, some other governing power produces the perverse turn; but what produces it for the power that governs all of them? For it can no longer be knowledge or intellect. But surely it is not virtue either, for virtue makes use of it. For the virtue of the ruling part makes use of the virtue of the ruled part. What, then, is it? Is it as when lack of self-control is called a vice of the irrational part of the soul, and the person who lacks self-control is, in a way, licentious even while possessing intellect? But if, when the appetite is strong, it perverts reason and reason calculates the opposite of what it should, then clearly, even if there is virtue in the appetitive part while there is ignorance in the rational part, the two exchange their roles. So that it will be possible to use justice both justly and badly, and practical wisdom both wisely and foolishly; and so too the opposite virtues. For it would be absurd if vice, arising at some point in the irrational part, could pervert the virtue in the rational part and make it fall into ignorance, while virtue in the irrational part, when ignorance is present in the rational part, does not in turn pervert that ignorance and make it judge with practical wisdom and choose what is needed, and again if practical wisdom in the rational part does not make the licentiousness in the irrational part act with self-control —
3| which is precisely what self-control seems to be. So there would also be a using of things with practical wisdom that stems from ignorance. But these consequences are absurd, and above all the idea of using something with practical wisdom as a result of ignorance, for we see this happening in none of the other cases — just as licentiousness does not pervert medicine or grammar. But in any case, whoever holds the ignorance, if it is opposed to virtue — since what is present is not superiority but virtue itself — is, on the whole, rather disposed toward vice when in such a condition. For indeed the unjust man can do everything the just man can do, and in general incapacity is included within capacity. So it is clear that those other states are at once practically wise and good, and the Socratic saying is correct, that nothing is stronger than practical wisdom. But in saying that it was knowledge, he was not correct; for it is virtue, and not knowledge, but another kind of cognition. But since it is not only practical wisdom and virtue that produce success,
4| [1247a] but we also say that fortunate people fare well, on the assumption that good fortune too produces success, and produces the same effects as knowledge, we must examine whether one person is by nature fortunate and another unfortunate, or not, and how matters stand concerning these things. For we see that there are indeed some people who are fortunate. Though they are foolish, they succeed in many things in which chance is decisive; and further, also in things where there is a craft, but where a great deal of chance is nevertheless present too, such as generalship and navigation. Are such people fortunate, then, because of some state they possess, or is it not through their own being of a certain kind that they are effective at achieving strokes of luck? For at present people think of it in this way, as though it belonged to certain people by nature: nature makes people of a certain kind, and they differ from birth, just as some are grey-eyed and others dark-eyed because having such-and-such a quality goes along with being of such-and-such a kind — so too with the fortunate and the unfortunate. For it is clear that they do not succeed by practical wisdom. For practical wisdom is not irrational, but has an account of why it acts as it does, whereas these people could not say why they succeed (for then it would be a craft); further, it is evident that, being foolish, it is not merely that they are foolish about other matters (for there would be nothing strange in that:
5| For example, Hippocrates, though he was a geometer, seemed in other respects to be stupid and senseless, and while sailing he lost a great deal of gold to the toll-collectors at Byzantium through simplicity, as they say -- but the point is that men are senseless even in the very matters in which they are lucky. For in shipowning it is not the cleverest who are lucky, but, as in a throw of dice, one man throws nothing while another throws a high score, in accordance with a nature by which he is lucky -- or through being loved, as people say, by god, and success being something that comes from outside. For example, a badly built ship often sails better, not because of itself, but because it has a good pilot; but this man is lucky in that he has, as his pilot, a good guardian spirit. But it is strange for a god or a guardian spirit to love a man of this sort rather than the best and the most practically wise man. If then success must come about either by nature or by intellect or by some superintending care, and the latter two are not the case, then the lucky would be lucky by nature. But nature, indeed, is a cause either of what is always so or of what is so for the most part, whereas luck is the opposite. If then succeeding contrary to reasonable expectation is thought to belong to luck, then, if a man is lucky through luck, the cause could not be of the sort that produces the same result always or for the most part.
6| Further, if a man succeeds or fails because he is of such-and-such a sort -- as, because he is grey-eyed, he does not see sharply -- the cause is not luck but nature; he is not lucky, then, but rather well-endowed by nature. So this would have to be said, that those we call lucky are not lucky through luck. Then they are not lucky at all: [1247b] for luck is the cause, when good luck is a cause, of good things among things that belong to luck. But if this is so, is it that there will be no luck at all, or that there will be luck, but it will not be a cause? But it is necessary both that it exist and that it be a cause. It will then be a cause of certain good things or bad things for someone. But if it must be done away with altogether, and we must say that nothing comes about from luck, but that, there being some other cause, we call it luck because we do not see that cause (which is why, in defining luck, people set it down as a cause that human calculation cannot account for, on the assumption that some nature is at work) -- this, then, would be a different problem. But since we see some people succeed by luck once, why should they not succeed again as well? It is because of bringing off one success, and then again another; for the same cause is at work. This, then, will not belong to luck; but when the same thing keeps turning out, among things unlimited and indeterminate, the result will indeed be good or bad, but there will be no knowledge of it, because of that very unlimitedness -- since otherwise some people would learn how to be lucky, or indeed all the sciences would be, as Socrates said, forms of good luck. What then prevents such things from happening to a person one after another many times in succession -- not because it must be so, but simply as it might happen that the dice always fall on the lucky throw?
7| But what then? Are there not, in the soul, impulses -- some arising from calculation, others from irrational desire, and are the latter prior? For if the desire that comes about through appetite for the pleasant is by nature, then everything would by nature tend toward the good. If, then, there are some who are well-endowed by nature -- just as there are people who cannot sing correctly by knowledge, yet are so well constituted that they are moved without reason -- their nature is so constituted that they desire this object, and at this time, and in this way, as they ought, and where they ought, and when: these people will succeed, even though they happen to be senseless and without reason, just as some people will sing well without being able to teach singing. Those of this sort are the lucky ones -- all those who, without reason, succeed for the most part. The lucky, then, would be lucky by nature. Or is good luck spoken of in more than one sense? For some things are done from impulse, by people who have chosen beforehand to act, while others are not, but the opposite. And in the case of those in which people seem to have calculated badly, we say that they succeeded and had good luck; and again, in the case of these others, we say it if they would have deliberated to the same effect, or would have gotten a lesser good. Those in the first class, then, can be lucky through nature (for the impulse and desire, being directed at what was needed, succeeded, while the calculation was foolish;
8| and in their case, whenever the calculation, though it does not seem to be correct, is nevertheless the one credited with the result, it is really luck that is the cause of it -- luck itself being, in this case, correct, and so it saved him -- though at other times, because of desire, he calculated in the same way again and also failed): but in the case of the others, how will good luck come about, in line with a natural aptitude of desire and appetite? [1248a] But surely good luck and luck in this case are twofold, and it is the same there too, or else there are several kinds of good luck. But since we observe that some people are lucky in spite of all the sciences and correct calculations, it is clear that the cause of their good luck must be something else. But is that good luck, or is it not, in which a man desired what he needed, and when he needed it, when human calculation could not account for it? For this is not entirely without reason, nor is the desire natural, but it is corrupted by something. It is thought, then, to be good luck, because luck is the cause of things that happen contrary to reason, and this is contrary to reason (for it goes against scientific knowledge and the universal); but, as it appears, it is not from luck, though it is thought to be for this reason. So this argument does not show that good luck is by nature, but that not all those who seem to be lucky succeed through luck, but rather through nature; nor does it show that luck is the cause of nothing at all, but only that it is not the cause of all the things it is thought to be. But one might raise this difficulty: is luck the cause of this very thing, of desiring what one ought and when one ought? Or will it be so of everything in this manner? For it will apply also to thinking and to deliberating:
9| for surely a man did not deliberate by already having deliberated, and deliberate this too by a prior deliberation, but there is some starting point; nor did he think by already having thought before he thought, and so on to infinity. Intellect, then, is not the starting point of thinking, nor is deliberation the starting point of deliberating. What else, then, is there besides luck? So that everything would come to be from luck. Or is there some starting point outside of which there is no other, and can this, simply by being what it is, produce a result of this kind? What is being sought is this: what is the starting point of motion in the soul? Clearly, just as in the universe as a whole it is god, so too in the soul. For the divine element in us somehow moves everything; and the starting point of reason is not reason, but something better. What, then, could be better than knowledge and intellect, except god? For virtue is an instrument of intellect. And this is why, as the ancients used to say, those are called lucky who, whatever they set out to do, succeed though they are without reason, and for whom deliberation is of no use. For they have a starting point of this sort, one better than intellect and deliberation (others have reason, but do not have this), and inspiration -- though they cannot exercise this by method. For being without reason, they hit the mark; and among these, the divination even of the practically wise and the wise is quick, and one must set aside, almost entirely, the sort that comes from reasoning; some use it through experience, others through habit in observation:
10| but these faculties belong to god. This element sees well both what is to come and what now is, and it belongs to those in whom this reason is set loose. That is why melancholic people have vivid dreams. For it seems that the starting point has more strength once reason is set loose: [1248b] and just as the blind remember better once released from attention to visible things, because the faculty of memory becomes stronger. It is clear, then, that there are two kinds of good luck: one divine (which is why the lucky man is thought to succeed on account of god), the other by nature. This latter kind operates by correcting impulse, the other kind operates apart from impulse; both kinds are without reason. And the one is the more continuous good luck, while the other is not continuous. Now, each virtue has been discussed individually before; but since we have distinguished their power separately, we must also articulate the virtue that arises out of them, which we have already called nobility-and-goodness. That the person who is truly to attain to this name must possess the individual virtues is clear. For it is not possible for it to be otherwise in any other case either. For no one is healthy in the whole body while none of its parts is healthy, but it is necessary that all, or most and the most authoritative, parts should be in the same condition as the whole. Being good, then, and being noble-and-good, are not the same only in name, but have a difference in their own right. For of all good things there are ends, which are choiceworthy for their own sake.
11| Among these, the things that are fine are all those that are praiseworthy simply for being what they are. For these are the things from which both the actions are praiseworthy and the things themselves are praiseworthy: justice itself and just actions, and temperate people, for temperance too is praiseworthy. But health is not praiseworthy, nor is its function; nor is being strong praiseworthy, nor is strength. These are goods, but not praiseworthy things. And the same is clear likewise in the other cases, by induction. A good man, then, is one for whom the things good by nature are good. For the things fought over and thought to be the greatest goods -- honor, wealth, bodily excellences, good fortune, and positions of power -- are goods by nature, but it is possible for them to be harmful to some because of their states of character. For neither a senseless man nor an unjust or licentious one would benefit at all from using them, just as a sick person does not benefit from using the diet of a healthy person, nor does a weak or maimed person benefit from the equipment of the healthy and the whole-bodied. A man is fine-and-good in that the fine things among goods belong to him for their own sake, and in that he is someone who does fine actions, and does them for their own sake. And the fine things are the virtues and the deeds that come from virtue.
12| There is a certain political state of character, of the sort the Spartans have, or others like them might have. This state is of the following kind: for there are those who think one must have virtue, but for the sake of the things good by nature.
13| [1249a] That is why such men are good -- for the things good by nature are good for them -- but they do not have fineness-and-goodness. For the fine things do not belong to them for their own sake; whereas fine-and-good men choose them for their own sake, and not only these but also things that are not fine by nature but are good by nature, which become fine for men of this kind. For things become fine whenever that for the sake of which people act and choose is fine, and this happens because for the fine-and-good man the things good by nature are fine. For the just is fine, and this is what accords with worth, and such a man is worthy of these things. And the fitting is fine, and these things are fitting for him: wealth, good birth, power. So that for the fine-and-good man the very things that are advantageous are also fine; but for most people this does not hold together. For the things that are good without qualification are not good for them in the same way, but good for the good man; whereas for the fine-and-good man they are also fine. For he has done many fine actions for their own sake. But the man who thinks he must have the virtues for the sake of external goods does fine actions only incidentally. Fineness-and-goodness, then, is complete virtue. And concerning pleasure it has been said what sort of thing it is and how it is a good, and that the things pleasant without qualification are also fine, and the things good without qualification are also pleasant. But pleasure does not arise apart from activity; and for this reason the truly happy person will also live most pleasantly, and people do not claim this without reason. Now since there is also some standard for the doctor, by reference to which he judges what is healthy for the body and what is not, and up to what point each thing is to be done while the body is still well and healthy -- and if less or more is done, it is no longer so -- in the same way, for the excellent person too, concerning actions and choices among the things good by nature but not praiseworthy, there must be some standard, both of the state of character and of the choice, and concerning avoidance
14| [1249b] and concerning abundance and scarcity of money, and concerning good fortunes. Now in what was said earlier, the standard given was 'as reason dictates'; but this is just as if someone, in discussing diet, were to say that it is as medicine, and as its reasoning, prescribes. This is true, but it is not clear. One must, then, as in the other cases too, live with reference to the ruling element, and with reference to the state of character in accordance with the activity of the ruling element -- as a slave lives with reference to his master, and each thing with reference to the rule appropriate to it. And since a human being too is by nature composed of a ruling element and a ruled element, each person ought to live with reference to his own ruling principle (and this is twofold: for the ruling principle of medicine is one thing, and health another; and the former exists for the sake of the latter) -- and this is how it stands with respect to the contemplative element. For god does not rule by giving orders, but is that for the sake of which practical wisdom gives its orders (and the 'that for the sake of which' is twofold; this has been distinguished elsewhere), since that god at any rate needs nothing. Whichever choice and possession, then, of the things good by nature -- whether of body or money or friends or the other goods -- will most produce the contemplation of god, that is the best, and that standard is the finest; and whichever, either through deficiency or through excess, prevents one from serving and contemplating god, that is bad. And the soul has this same relation, and this is the best standard for the soul: to perceive the irrational part of the soul as little as possible, insofar as it is such. Let it, then, be said what the standard of fineness-and-goodness is, and what the aim of the things good without qualification is.