Aristotle (2024) Nicomachean Ethics 3.5

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

 

3.5 Character and end

 

Since, then, wish is for the end, and the objects of deliberation and of delib erate choice are things that further the end, actions concerned with these would be in accord with deliberate choice and voluntary. Also, the activi ties of the virtues are concerned with these things.

Virtue too is up to us, then, and, similarly, vice; for where acting is up to us, so is not acting. And where to not act [is up to us], also to act [is up to us], so that if acting, when it is noble, is up to us, not acting, when it is shameful, will also be up to us.211 And if not acting, when it is noble, is up to us, acting, when it is shameful, will also be up to us. But if doing noble actions or doing shameful ones is up to us and, similarly, also not doing them (which was what being good people and being bad people consisted in), then being decent or base will be up to us.

To say that no one is voluntarily wicked or involuntarily blessed seems to be partly false and partly true; for, while no one is involuntarily blessed, depravity is a voluntary thing.

Or must we dispute what has been said just now and say that a human being is not a starting-point or begetter of his actions as of his children?214 But if what we have said does appear to be the case and we cannot refer our actions back to any starting-points beyond the ones in us, then, since they are indeed things that have their starting-points in us, they themselves are also up to us and voluntary.

The behavior of private individuals and of legislators themselves seems to testify to this; for they punish and take revenge on anyone who does a depraved action, provided it was not forced or done because of ignorance for which he himself was not responsible, while they honor anyone who does noble actions, on the supposition that this will encourage the one and pre vent the other. Further, no one encourages us to do actions that are neither up to us nor voluntary, on the supposition that for us to be persuaded not to feel hot, suffer, feel hungry, or anything of this sort is pointless; for being per suaded will not make us feel these things any less. For they also punish some one for ignorance itself, if he seems to be responsible for the ignorance—as, for example, when penalties are doubled in cases of drunkenness; for the starting-point is in the agent; for not to get drunk was in his control and that was what was responsible for his ignorance.215 Also, they punish someone for ignorance of things in the laws that one should have scientific knowledge of and that are not difficult, and similarly in other cases where someone seems to be ignorant because of neglectfulness, on the supposition that it is up to him not to be ignorant; for to take care was in his control.

Presumably, though, he is the sort of person not to take care. But people are themselves responsible for becoming like that because of living in a loose way, and for being unjust or intemperate because of malice or because of spending their time drinking and the like; for it is the activities in each case that produce people of the corresponding character. This is clear from those who practice for any sort of competition or action, since they prac tice the relevant activity continually. To be ignorant, then, that in each case it is from engaging in the activity that the corresponding state comes about is characteristic of an altogether insensitive person.

Further, it is unreasonable to suppose that the person who is acting unjustly does not wish to be unjust or that someone doing intemperate actions does not wish to be intemperate. But if someone non-ignorantly does the actions that would result in his being unjust, he will be voluntarily unjust. This does not mean that if he wishes, he will stop being unjust and will be just instead. For the diseased person will not be healthy that way either, even if, as it happens, he is diseased voluntarily because of living a life that lacks self-control and disobeying his doctors. At one time, cer tainly, it was possible for him not to be sick. Once he has let himself go, however, it is no longer possible, just as when someone has let a stone go it is no longer possible for him to get it back. Nonetheless, throwing it was up to him; for the starting-point was in him. In the same way, it was possible at the start for the unjust and the intemperate person not to become like that, which is why such people are voluntarily unjust and intemperate. But once they have become like that, it is no longer possible not to be.

It is not only vices of the soul that are voluntary, but in some cases vices of the body are as well—these being the ones that we also admonish; for no one admonishes people who are by nature ugly, but those who are so because of lack of athletic training or neglectfulness. It is the same way in the case of those who are weak or disabled; for no one would admonish someone who was by nature blind or blind as the result of a disease or as the result of a blow but would rather pity them, while those who are so as a result of drunkenness or of other sorts of intemperance everyone would admonish. Among the vices of the body, then, it is the ones that are up to us that are admonished, while those that are not up to us are not. And if that is so, then also in other cases the vices that are admonished would be the ones that are up to us.

Suppose that someone were to say that everyone aims at the apparent good but that we do not control its appearance. Instead, whatever sort of person each of us happens to be also determines the sort of end that appears to him. But if each individual is somehow responsible for his own state [of character], he is also somehow responsible for the appearance in question. If not, no one is responsible for his own malice but does these things because of ignorance of the end, thinking that because of doing them he will achieve what is best for him. His seeking of the end in ques tion is not self-chosen, rather, we must be born possessed of a sort of sight by which to judge correctly and choose what is truly good, and a person in whom this by nature operates correctly is naturally well disposed; for this is what is greatest and noblest and is not the sort of thing we can get from someone else or learn but the sort of thing whose condition at birth is the one in which it will later be possessed and, when it is naturally such as to be in a good and noble condition, would be the naturally good disposition of the complete and true sort.

If all this is true, then, how will virtue be any more voluntary than vice? For to both the good and the bad alike the end appears—or is determined by nature or by whatever it is—and whatever other actions they do, they do with reference to that end. If it is not by nature, then, that the end appears to each person in whatever way it does, but there is also something con tributed by the person himself or, if the end is something natural, but the excellent person’s virtue is voluntary because he does the rest of the actions voluntarily, vice would be no less voluntary than virtue. Similarly, in the case of the bad person there is something that comes about in his actions through himself, even if not in his end. If, then, as is said, the virtues are voluntary (for we are in a way ourselves contributing causes of our states, and it is by being people of a certain sort that we suppose the end to be so-and-so), the vices would also be voluntary; for the two are alike.

We have now discussed in outline the virtues collectively and their kind, saying that they are means and states, that the sorts of things they arise from are the very sorts virtues lead us to do in accord with themselves, and that they are up to us and voluntary and such as correct reason prescribes.

But actions and states are not voluntary in the same way; for we control our actions from their starting-point up to their end because we know the particulars. With states, however, we control their starting-point, but the particulars of their development are not known to us any more than with diseases. But because it was up to us to use the states in a given way or not in that way, they are voluntary.

Let us resume and, as regards each particular virtue, say what it is, what it is concerned with, and in what way. It will be clear at the same time how many they are