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    		•

    Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (ed. H. Rackham)

    Book 7

    Editions and translations: Greek (ed. J. Bywater) | English (ed. H. Rackham)
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    But whereas the self-restrained man has evil desires,1 the temperate man has none; he is so constituted as to take no pleasure in things that are contrary to principle, whereas the self-restrained man does feel pleasure in such things, but does not yield to it. [7] There is also a resemblance between the unrestrained man and the profligate, though they are really distinct: both pursue bodily pleasures, but the profligate thinks it right to do so, the man who lacks self-restraint does not.

    X. Again, the same person cannot be at once unrestrained and prudent, for it has been shown2 that Prudence is inseparable from Moral Virtue. [2] Also, Prudence does not consist only in knowing what is right, but also in doing it; but the unrestrained man does not do the right.3 (Cleverness on the other hand is not incompatible with Unrestraint--which is why it is sometimes thought that some people are prudent and yet unrestrained--because Cleverness differs from Prudence in the manner explained in our first discourse4 : as being intellectual faculties5 they are closely akin, but they differ in that Prudence involves deliberate choice.) [3] Nor indeed does the unrestrained man even know the right in the sense of one who consciously exercises his knowledge, but only as a man asleep or drunk can be said to know something. Also, although he errs willingly (for he knows in a sense both what he is doing and what end he is aiming at) , yet he is not wicked, for his moral choice is sound, so that he is only half-wicked. And he is not unjust, for he does not deliberately design to do harm,6 since the one type of unrestrained person does not keep to the resolve he has formed after deliberation, and the other, the excitable type, does not deliberate at all.In fact the unrestrained man resembles a state which passes all the proper enactments, and has good laws, but which never keeps its laws: the condition of things satirized by Anaxandrides--

    The state, that recks not of the laws, would fain . .

    [4] whereas the bad man is like a state which keeps its laws but whose laws are bad.

    Both Self-restraint and Unrestraint are a matter of extremes as compared with the character of the mass of mankind; the restrained man shows more and the unrestrained man less steadfastness than most men are capable of.

    Reformation is more possible with that type of Unrestraint which is displayed by persons of an excitable temperament than it is with those who deliberate as to what they ought to do, but do not keep to the resolution they form. And those who have become unrestrained through habit are more easily cured than those who are unrestrained by nature, since habit is easier to change than nature; for even habit is hard to change, precisely because it is a sort of nature, as Evenus says:

    Mark me, my friend, 'tis7 long-continued training,
    And training in the end becomes men's nature.

    [5] We have now discussed the nature of Self-restraint and Unrestraint, and of Endurance and Softness, and have shown how these dispositions are related to one another.

    1 Though he conquers them.

    2 Cf. 6.13.6.

    3 This parenthesis would come better before the preceding sentence.

    4 Cf. 6.12.9.

    5 Or perhaps, with the Aldine scholiast, ‘in definition.’

    6 Cf. 6.3.

    7 i.e., ‘habit is’ : the subject of emenai seems to have been ethos in the preceding verse.

    Preferred URL for linking to this page: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Aristot.+Nic.+Eth.+1152a+1

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    This text is based on the following book(s):
    Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 19, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1934.
    OCLC: 39541390
    ISBN: 0674990811

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