Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle (little readers .TXT) 📕

of such a nature as to take delight in, but not to be swayed by such things.

The incontinent and the profligate also resemble each other, though they are different: both pursue bodily pleasures, but the latter pursues them on principle,201 while the former does not.

X

It is impossible for the same man to be at once prudent and incontinent; for we have shown that man cannot be prudent without being at the same time morally good.

Moreover, a man is not prudent simply because he knows⁠—he must also be apt to act according to his knowledge; but the incontinent man is not apt to act according to his knowledge (though there is nothing to prevent a man who is clever at calculating means from being incontinent; and so people sometimes think a man prudent and yet incontinent, because this cleverness is related to prudence in the manner before202 explained, resembling prudence as an intellectual faculty, but differing from it by the absence of purpose): nor indeed does he know as one who knows and is now using his knowledge, but as one may know who is asleep or drunk.

He acts voluntarily (for in a manner he knows what he is doing and with what object), and yet is not bad: for his purpose is good; so he is only half bad. Moreover, incontinent men are not unjust,203 for they are not deliberately malicious⁠—some of them being apt to swerve from their deliberate resolutions, others of melancholic temper and apt to act without deliberating at all. An incontinent man, then, may be compared to a state which always makes excellent decrees and has good laws, but never carries them out; as Anaxandrides jestingly says⁠—

“So willed the state that takes no heed of laws.”

The bad man, on the contrary, may be compared to a state that carries out its laws, but has bad laws.

Both incontinence and continence imply something beyond the average character of men; for the one is more steadfast than most men can be, the other less.

Of the several kinds of incontinence, that of the melancholic temper is more curable than that of those who make resolutions but do not keep them, and that which proceeds from custom than that which rests on natural infirmity: it is easier to alter one’s habit than to change one’s nature. For the very reason why habits are hard to change is that they are a sort of second, nature, as Euenus says⁠—

Train men but long enough to what you will,
And that shall be their nature in the end.

We have now considered the nature of continence and incontinence, of hardiness and softness, and the relation of these types of character to each other.

Of Pleasure XI

The consideration of pleasure and pain also falls within the scope of the political philosopher, since he has to construct the end by reference to which we call everything good or bad.

Moreover, this is one of the subjects we are bound to discuss; for we said that moral virtue and vice have to do with pleasures and pains, and most people say that happiness implies pleasure, which is the reason of the name μακάριος, blessed, from χαίρειν, to rejoice.

Now, (1) some people think that no pleasure is good, either essentially or accidentally, for they say that good and pleasure are two distinct things; (2) others think that though some pleasures are good most are bad; (3) others, again, think that even though all pleasures be good, yet it is impossible that the supreme good can be pleasure.

(1) It is argued that pleasure cannot be good, (a) because all pleasure is a felt transition to a natural state, but a transition or process is always generically different from an end, e.g. the process of building is generically different from a house; (b) because the temperate man avoids pleasures; (c) because the prudent man pursues the painless, not the pleasant; (d) because pleasures impede thinking, and that in proportion to their intensity (for instance, the sexual pleasures: no one engaged therein could think at all); (e) because there is no art of pleasure, and yet every good thing has an art devoted to its production; (f) because pleasure is the pursuit of children and brutes.

(2) It is argued that not all pleasures are good, a because some are base and disgraceful, and even hurtful; for some pleasant things are unhealthy.

(3) It is argued that pleasure is not the supreme good, because it is not an end, but a process or transition.⁠—These, then, we may take to be the current opinions on the subject.

XII

But that these arguments do not prove that pleasure is not good, or even the highest good, may be shown as follows.

In the first place, since “good” is used in two senses (“good in itself” and “relatively good”), natures and faculties will be called good in two senses, and so also will motions and processes: and when they are called bad, this sometimes means that they are bad in themselves, though for particular persons not bad but desirable; sometimes that they are not desirable even for particular persons, but desirable occasionally and for a little time, though in themselves not desirable; while some of them are not even pleasures, though they seem to be⁠—I mean those that involve pain and are used medicinally, such as those of sick people.

In the second place, since the term good may be applied both to activities and to faculties, those activities that restore us to our natural faculties [or state] are accidentally pleasant.

But in the satisfaction of the animal appetites that which is active is not that part of our faculties204 or of our nature which is in want, but that part which is in its normal state; for there are pleasures which involve no previous pain or appetite, such as