ETHICS in plain language (book7.1)

Subject: ETHICS in plain language (book7.1) Wed 09 Jan 2008, 11:20 pm

19 March, 2000

Author: George Irbe

Back to George's Views

ARISTOTLE'S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

Translators:

TI- Terence Irwin, Hackett Publishing Co.
1985
DR - David Ross, Oxford University Press 1980
JT - J.A.K. Thomson, Penguin Books 1955

BOOK 7

Text Remarks

[DR, JT, TI] The moral states to be avoided are vice, incontinence and brutishness. The contraries of two of these are obvious: we call one of them virtue and the other continence. The contrary to bestiality is most suitably called virtue superior to us, a heroic, indeed divine, sort of virtue.	The moral states of virtue, continence, and divine virtue have as their contraries vice, incontinence, and bestiality.
[DR] Both continence and endurance are thought to be included among things good and praiseworthy, and both incontinence and softness among things bad and blameworthy. The incontinent man, knowing that what he does is bad, does it as a result of passion, while the continent man, knowing that his appetites are bad, refuses on account of rational principle to follow them. The temperate man all men call continent and disposed to endurance. Men are said to be incontinent even with respect to anger, honor, and gain.	Continence and steadfastness have the undesirable contraries of incontinence and softness. The incontinent man succumbs to his passions, the temperate man does not.
[JT] One can forgive a man for not standing by his opinions in the face of powerful desires, but one cannot forgive wickedness or any other culpable attitude. A temperate man will have neither excessive nor bad appetites.	The weakness of the incontinent can be forgiven, but not deliberate wickedness.
[TI] The intemperate person acts on decision when he is led on, since he thinks that it is right in every case to pursue the pleasant thing at hand; but the incontinent person thinks it is wrong to pursue it, yet still pursues it.	The intemperate man believes that pursuit of pleasure is never wrong. The incontinent man knows it is wrong but cannot resist it.
[DR] Since we use the word 'know' in two senses (for both the man who has knowledge but is not using it and he who is using it are said to know), it will make a difference whether, when a man does what he should not, he has the knowledge but is not exercising it, or is exercising it; for the latter seems strange, but not the former.	It is worse to act wrongly after due deliberation of the act and its consequences than to commit it in an impetuous manner.
[DR] When the universal opinion is present in us restraining us from tasting, and there is also the opinion that 'everything sweet is pleasant', and that 'this is sweet' (now this is the opinion that is active), and when appetite happens to be present in us, the one opinion bids us avoid the object, but appetite leads us towards it (for it can move each of our bodily parts); so that it turns out that a man behaves incontinently under the influence (in a sense) of a rule and an opinion, and of one not contrary in itself, but only incidentally - for the appetite is contrary, not the opinion - to the right rule.	Our appetites can tempt us to go against our better judgment, making us behave incontinently.
[TI, DR, JT] Some sources of pleasure are necessary; others are choiceworthy in themselves, but can be taken to excess. The necessary ones are the bodily conditions, i.e. those that concern food, sexual intercourse, and the bodily matters with which we defined self-indulgence and temperance as being concerned. Other sources of pleasure are not necessary, but are choiceworthy in themselves, e.g. victory, honor, wealth and similar good and pleasant things. Now those who indulge to excess in this second class of pleasures, contrary to the right principle within them, we do not call incontinent without qualification.	Enjoyment of the necessary bodily pleasures can be temperate or self-indulgent. Incontinence in the pursuit of pleasures of the ego is of a different kind.
[DR, JT] Incontinence either without qualification or in respect of some particular bodily pleasure is blamed not only as a fault but as a kind of vice, while none of the people who are incontinent in these other respects [victory, honor, wealth] is so blamed. But in the case of bodily enjoyments, which we hold to be the sphere of the temperate and licentious, the man who pursues excessive pleasures and avoids excessive pains like hunger and thirst, heat and cold, and all the discomforts of touch and taste, not from choice but in opposition to it and to his reasoning, is described as incontinent without any added determinant.	Incontinence in bodily pleasures is a vice, but not in the pursuit of pleasures of the ego. Lack of self-discipline in curbing of excessive pursuit of pleasure and inordinate avoidance of pain is incontinence pure and simple.
[DR] We group together the incontinent and the self-indulgent, the continent and the temperate man. Some of them make a deliberate choice while the others do not. We should describe as self-indulgent rather the man who without appetite or with but a slight appetite pursues the excess of pleasure and avoids moderate pains, than the man who does so because of his strong appetites.	The incontinent man is driven to excess by an uncontrollable appetite. The self-indulgent man practices excess deliberately.

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