Aristotle (2024) Nicomachean Ethics 3.4

Aristotle (2024). Nicomachean Ethics. Second Edition. Translated With Introduction and Notes By C. D. C. Reeve Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company

 

3.4 Wish

Wish is for the end, as we said, but some people think it is for the good, others that it is for the apparent good.

But for those who say that the object of wish is the good, it follows that when someone who has not chosen correctly wishes for something, what he wishes for is not an object of wish at all (for if it is an object of wish, it will also be a good thing, but, as it happens, it was a bad one).

For those, on the other hand, who say that the object of wish is the apparent good, it follows that nothing is by nature an object of wish, but what seems good to each person is so, with different things—even contrary ones, as it happens—appearing so to different ones.

If, then, these results do not satisfy us, must one therefore say that unconditionally and in truth the object of wish is the good, but to each person it is the apparent good? To the excellent person, it is what is truly the object of wish; to a base one, it is whatever random thing it happens to be. It is just the same in the case of bodies. The things that are healthy for those with good dispositions are the ones that are truly healthy, while for those that are diseased, it is different ones, and similarly with bitter, sweet, hot, heavy, and each of the others; for the excellent person judges each of them correctly, and in each case, what is true is apparent to him.

For each state has its own special set of things that are pleasant or noble, and the excellent person is perhaps distinguished most by his seeing what is true in each case, since he is like a standard and measure of them.210 In the case of ordinary people, however, deception seems to come about because of pleasure, which appears to be a good thing when it is not. They choose the pleasant, then, as good and avoid the painful as bad.