Ancient Philosophy 29 (2009)

©Mathesis Publications 1

É A k o l a s ¤ a as Radical Ethical Vice:

The Evidence of NE 1140b11-21

Pavlos Kontos

It is commonplace to say that, according to Nicomachean Ethics, pleasures and

vices are to be blamed for perverting practical reason. It is equally evident that
bad (faËlow) is whoever, though able to grasp a sort of practical good, fails to
discern the real good because he substitutes for it the pleasant.
In what follows I attempt to bring ékolas¤a (intemperance) to light in distinc-
tion from mere faulÒthw (badness) in order to show that Aristotle effectively
conceived of an ethical vice that perverts practical reason not by making it con-
fuse the apparent for the true good, but by making it unable actually to grasp any
good whatsoever.1 We thereby gain insight into the particularity of intemperance
as an ethical vice (pertaining to the life of enjoyment) that undermines the very
function of practical reason. To illustrate this point, that is, the totally destructive
effects of intemperance, we assign to it the status of a radical ethical vice.

I
At the risk of repeating commonplaces, let us first focus not on intemperance
but on badness and on why ‘the many’ misunderstand the real content of the
good. Book 3 has definitely crystallized Aristotle’s thesis upon this matter:
Wish (boÊlhsiw), as we have said, is for the end (t°louw), but
some think that this is the good and others that this is only the
apparent good (fainom°nou égayoË) …for the excellent per-
son (spouda¤ƒ), the object of wish is what he should really
wish for [that is, the good], whilst bad men (faÊlƒ) wish for
whatever [that is, the apparent good] (tÚ tuxÒn) …it seems that
it is pleasure that misleads the many, since pleasure appears to
be good, though it is not; so they choose the pleasant, assuming
it is the good. (1113a15-b1)
Here, the Aristotelian thesis is about how the real good is to be dissociated from
the merely apparent one, that is, from the pleasant. We should underline that
Aristotle uses here specific concepts to describe the distinction between the
apparent and the true good: the pair excellent person-bad person (spouda›ow-
faËlow) correlates with the fact that both excellent and bad persons conceive of
the good, that is, of an end; pleasure is taken merely to falsify the content of the
1 With Irwin 1985, we translate ékolas¤a as ‘intemperance’ in order to underline that it stands

for the contrary of temperance.

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good to be attained. Finally, the touchstone of the argument seems to reside

within the term tÚ tuxÒn, constantly designated to explain the apparent good in
its indeterminacy (see below, n16). In other terms, Aristotle aims at explaining
how it is possible for the pleasant to appear as a candidate for the place of the real
good, that is to say, why pleasure makes us recognize only a simulacrum of the
good. As it is well-known, the further elaboration of the question concerning how
the access to the real good might be feasible is undertaken in book 6, wherein
Aristotle definitely states that prudence is conditioned by ethical dispositions that
risk corrupting practical reason and veiling the real good in favor of the pleasant.
Aristotle then concludes: ‘it is obvious that nobody can be prudent without being
good’ (1144a36-b1).
The question arises as to whether Aristotle’s concept of intemperance
(ékolas¤a) just reflects the aforementioned distinction between the true and the
apparent good. Admittedly, all ethical vices represent particular cases of badness;
besides, by locating the issue of temperance and intemperance (NE iii 9-10)
between the topics of courage (iii 6-8) and liberality (iv 1), Aristotle creates the
impression that no special status should be attributed either to the vice of intem-
perance or to the virtue of temperance.
Book 6, however, seems to draw a complementary picture of both temperance
and intemperance, by assigning to the former a prominent function, a special
bond with prudence: ‘that is why we attribute to temperance (svfrosÊnhn) this
name to the extent that it preserves prudence’ (1140b11-12). Assuming that tem-
perance preserves practical reason in a prominent way, one may wonder whether
the vice of intemperance enjoys a similar particularity, in that it totally perverts
practical reason.
It is noteworthy from this point of view that Aristotle seems to advocate a
triple modality of ethical vices (attributable to three ways in which pleasure inter-
feres in our moral life), wherein a restricted concept of intemperance is to be dif-
ferentiated both from badness (i.e., the case of whoever confuses the apparent for
the true good) and from incontinence (i.e., the case of whoever, though able to
make the correct decision, has no control over his desires).2 This is so despite the
possibility that these terms, and their connections to the synonyms kak¤a and
moxyhr¤a, cannot preclude a possible overlapping or even a lack of clarity. Then,
the following clause might prove revealing as to the aforementioned triple
modality (as indication rather than evidence): ‘not everyone whose actions are
guided by pleasure is either intemperate (ékÒlastow) or bad (faËlow) or incon-
tinent (ékratÆw)’ (1151b21-22).
In fact, if one presumes that intemperance has simply no access to the noble,
that is, to the real good that virtuous men exclusively can unveil, he is obliged
inescapably to identify intemperance with badness. 3 Instead, our working
2 I use the terms ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’ to describe whatever concerns ethical dispositions (virtues

or vices). See, helpfully, 1152b5.

3 See, e.g., Burnyeat 1980, 83, 87 and Sherman 1989, 106-117. Even Rorty 1989, 274-284, while

discussing the eventual distinction between the intemperate and the bad men, does finally obliterate
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hypothesis will be that the particularity of intemperance is owed not to any con-
fusion about what the real good implies, but to the fact that certain agents (prãt-
tontew) are deprived of any actual use of practical reason, insofar as ‘nothing
appears [to them] as that for the sake of which and due to which [they] should
choose and act in all [their] choices and actions’ (1140b18-19, my italics). Pro-
vided that intemperance proves to provoke such total a deprivation, we are enti-
tled to regard it as a radical ethical vice.

II
Let us first point out Aristotle’s theses that produce evidence in support of the
claim that intemperance, while simply encountered among the ethical vices, rep-
resents a radical vice. In particular, we will detect the signs of its radical charac-
ter in the very comparisons Aristotle has recourse to each time he attempts to
explain intemperance, namely, in the comparisons with children and with beasts.
As a matter of fact, when Aristotle introduces intemperance in its explicit con-
tradistinction to temperance, he is concerned with restricting intemperance into a
particular kind of pleasure, by progressively leaving out the non-bodily pleasures
and those connected to our higher perceptual senses, in order to finally maintain
that: ‘temperance and intemperance concern those pleasures which man shares
with the lower animals and which consequently appear slavish and bestial
(éndrapod≈deiw ka‹ yhri≈deiw). These are the pleasures of touch and taste’
(1118a23-26). It results that, from the beginning, Aristotle treats intemperance in
terms of animality, an approach we come across throughout the whole treatise:
1095b19-20 has already suggested that the life (b¤ow, not zvÆ) devoted to enjoy-
ment is utterly bestial, as the further analysis of intemperance within book 7 reaf-
firms, by juxtaposing intemperance to bestiality (1145a16-17).
What is more, animality does not merely denote what we share with lower
organisms, but also points to the capacities that should (normally) let us partici-
pate in the realm of practical reason. That is why Aristotle feels entitled to under-
line that intemperance exists in us ‘not as human beings, but as animals’
(1118b2-3),4 while emphasizing that animals should not be regarded as intemper-
ate because they lack practical reason by nature. The Aristotelian explanation of
this shift from the case of beasts, which are not considered intemperate, to intem-
perance as an ethical vice does not pose a mystery; the explanans is no other than
the very concept of privation.
One may wonder how we should visualize the fundamental privation proper to
intemperance. Book 3 provides for us a significant indication, by suggesting that
the moral status of intemperate men should be envisaged as the correlate of the
status that Aristotle attributes to children: ‘The term intemperance is also
assigned to the errors (èmart¤aw) committed by children… For children, like
intemperate men, live at the prompting of appetite; …and if appetites are large

their difference.
4 For intemperance and animality, see Young 1988 and Curzer 1997.
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and intense, they even expel rationality’ (ka‹ tÚn logismÚn §kkroÊousin,
1119a33-1119b10). In other terms, the errors committed by children appear to
mirror intemperance in that they result in expelling reason from their lives. We
should read the established analogy in light of Aristotle’s conviction that ‘the
young are not fit to be students of political science’ (1095a2-3), as long as their
dispositions are solely formed by their desires. Children and intemperate men are
disqualified as actual and appropriate learners (ofike›ow ékroatÆw), unable as
they are to make any use of practical reason (1095a8-9). That is why the cultiva-
tion of (correct) ethical dispositions is prior to any teaching on practical matters:
‘theory and teaching are not equally efficacious in all cases…the soul of the
learner must have been prepared in advance (prodieirgãsyai) by the cultivation
of habits, so as to like and to dislike aright’ (1179b23-26).5 Evidently, Aristotle
adds, this childish attitude is not a question of age (1095a7), and intemperance is
precisely meant to describe the childish comportment into which mature men are
entrapped. However, in opposition to children, intemperate men should be held
entirely responsible for their dispositions and, hence, blameworthy—once again,
Aristotle explains this disparity by pointing to the notion of privation.
It results that, his conduct being childish, the intemperate is considered not to
be an appropriate auditor of what reason demands. This is the meaning of the fea-
tures Aristotle ascribes to the intemperate: he is incurable (én¤atow) and without
regret (émetam°lhtow), inasmuch as no eventual revision of his principles is pos-
sible, that is to say, no appeal to his practical reason could be efficient. Hence,
although the intemperate might change his conduct because of fear or punish-
ment, any attempt to direct him to the noble is meaningless, since he is not even
an actual auditor of practical reason. That is why intemperate men are equally a-
political, in the sense that one is justified in ‘banishing the incurable men out of
the state’ (1180a9-10).
One might object that Aristotle does not consider this particular excessive
intemperance to be a real case of human vices, presuming that such a privation
witnesses a total bestial insanity:
That is why we do not say that lower animals are either
s≈frona or ékÒlasta…for animals have neither proa¤resin
nor logismÒn, but they are aberrations from nature, like men
who are insane (mainÒmenoi). Bestiality is less evil than vice,
though more horrible, for in their case the highest part [that is,
practical intellect] is not corrupted (oÈ går di°fyartai), as is
the case with humans, but is lacking. (1149b31-1150a3)
However, upon close inspection it appears that this passage only invites us not to
take into consideration the cases of men who, due to an error of nature, have been
deprived of reason in general (not of practical reason in particular): they are
pathologically insane/irrational. By contrast, it clearly suggests that there are
intemperate men whose practical reason is so excessively damaged that their atti-

5 See the comments by Burnyeat 1980, 75ff.

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tude is a bestial one, even if they are not considered insane. What is more, it is
emphasized that intemperance is an ethical vice to the extent that it conveys a
total perversion of practical reason in the case of men who are, by nature,
equipped with the relevant potentiality.
Before we elucidate why, nonetheless, this total perversion should not be iden-
tified with mere bestiality, it is opportune to scrutinize the exact meaning of the
radical vice intemperance consists in.

III
Our hypothesis according to which intemperance represents a radical ethical
vice will be explicated and consolidated by a key passage standing at the heart of
book 6. The passage at stake describes the function of temperance and, inversely,
the impact sustained by practical reason once intemperance has occupied the
whole range of the capacities directing our conduct within the practical field. As
a matter of fact, one should take for granted that, in line with iii 9-10, the oppo-
site of temperance is here nothing else than intemperance itself, although the lat-
ter is not mentioned by name. Let it be also noted in advance that the passage to
be quoted is situated just after the initial definition of prudence as an intellectual
virtue, where Aristotle solely describes the meaning of prudence in relation to
men’s ability to discern, and to aim at, ‘things that are good for themselves and
for humans in general’ (1140b9-10). It is in this context that Aristotle claims:
That is why we attribute to temperance this name, to the extent
that it preserves prudence, namely, by preserving the belief
(ÍpÒlhcin) which is proper to prudence. Because the pleasant
and the painful (τὸ ἡδύ καὶ τὸ λυπηρόν) do not pervert
(diafye¤rei) any sort of belief (as, for instance, the belief that
the triangle does or does not have two right angles), but only
that about what is achievable through action. That is because
the principles of what is achievable through action are their
ends. But if someone is perverted because of pleasure or pain,
no appearance of any principle is, from the outset, possible
(eÈyÁw oÈ fa¤netai érxÆ), that is to say, nothing appears to
him as that for the sake of which and due to which he should
choose and act in all his choices and actions. For vice corrupts
any principle (fyartikØ érx∞w). And so prudence is a correct
disposition accompanied by reason (ßjin e‰nai metå lÒgou
élhy∞), a practical disposition concerning human goods.
(1140b11-21)
I have quoted this passage at length, and also insisted upon a literal reading that
resists the supposed self-evident explications (or omissions!) within the current
translations, in order to make explicit what Aristotle really means to say.6
Taken as a comprehensive argument, these phrases are quite unambiguous:

6 E.g., Irwin 1985 and Rowe 2002 entirely omit the term eÈyÊw.
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temperance constitutes a sine qua non condition in order for prudence to func-
tion. Why? Because temperance saves prudence from the eventual harm that is
provoked by the excessively strong desires of pleasure and pain. These desires
pervert us and do not let prudence operate as it should. Why? Because, assuming
these desires pervert us, no appearance of any principle is, from the outset, possi-
ble.
In order to establish my reading against the interpretations assuming that the
passage at issue merely explains how our ethical vices make us confuse the
apparent for the true good,7 we should take into consideration the very terms
used by Aristotle:
(a) eÈyÊw means from the beginning, immediately, straight away, and displays
both temporal and modal connotations; that is to say, the intemperate men are
immediately and absolutely deprived of any access to principles;
(b) ‘by preserving the belief (ÍpÒlhcin) which is proper to prudence’ cannot
be properly understood unless one elucidates the meaning of the term ÍpÒlhciw,
which is indeed ambiguous in that it may denote both a correct belief and a belief
susceptible of being either correct or false. Nonetheless, book 6 has significantly
introduced the term in his second meaning; as a matter of fact, within the context
of the programmatic distinction between the five intellectual virtues (prudence
included) that are constantly true, ÍpÒlhciw is assimilated to dÒja since ‘belief
and opinion are susceptible of error’ (1139b17-18). We are then justified in pre-
suming that saving the belief proper to prudence should not be tantamount to sav-
ing its correctness, but rather to saving the very capacity of such a belief. In this
sense, both the recognitions of the true good and of the apparent good represent
two alternative possibilities of the belief at issue. This assessment should not
sound strange, insofar as to grasp the apparent good presupposes a certain intel-
lectual habit; that is to say, though eventually incorrect, this habit remains intel-
lectual. ÑUpÒlhciw is precisely a neutral term designated to also cover a case like
this;
(c) oÈ fa¤netai érxÆ is misunderstood through introducing a definite article
(≤ érxÆ), since Aristotle refers to whatever appears as good, no matter what its
real content might be. Consequently, though representing an ethical virtue among
others, temperance does not represent a simple disposition regarding the choice
to be made between the real and the merely apparent good. Instead, the present
passage explicitly thematizes the possibility of the very manifestation of any
good whatsoever. Hence, temperance constitutes the ethical virtue upon which
prudence should be built and, correlatively, intemperance represents a radical
vice since it causes the total perversion of the very capacity human beings have
in order to conceive of practical ends in general.8

7 In fact, Burnet 1900, 263 speaks as if the passage at issue were intended to highlight the dis-

tinction between the true and the apparent good. Thereafter, one unanimously (with the exception of
Greenwood, see below n10) subscribes to this interpretation (cf. Aubenque 1976, 60 and Broadie
1991, 258, 265).
8 Hence, Korsgaard 1998, 215 erroneously assigns to the incontinent the distinctive future proper
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There is more. This perversion of our capacity to grasp any kind of practical
ends is further explained: ‘nothing appears as that for the sake of which and due
to which he should choose and act in all his choices and actions’. Not grasping
practical ends at all is then tantamount to disusing or to distorting practical rea-
son (by which is meant that these men are not simply irrational and insane): the
intemperate does not actually apprehend the very function that any practical end
is designated to fulfil, namely, to represent something for the sake of which we
act. Hence, intemperate actions neglect what the status of an end really implies,
namely, the bounding status of a distant (future) end requiring the choice of cer-
tain present means. In temporal terms, the blindness regarding practical ends
mirrors the temporality of intemperance insofar as, by merely pursuing tÚ parÚn
≤dÊ (1146b23), the intemperate is captured into a locked presence.9
We should conclude: temperance preserves prudence considered as our intel-
lectual disposition to understand practical ends in general.
Is this too strong a claim? Indeed, one might wonder whether it is legitimate to
discern two meanings of prudence: on the one hand, prudence as our intellectual
disposition (i.e., capacity) to understand practical ends in general and, on the
other, prudence in our well-known image of a complete intellectual virtue enjoy-
ing the view of the noble. Obviously, these two ‘aspects’ of prudence do not
admit of any gradual relationship in terms of excellence, since Aristotle hastens
to insert the following clarification: ‘there is no excellence in prudence’
(1140b22). However, Aristotle’s own confirmation is sufficient to vindicate any
suspicion of over-interpretation. Let us only recall how Aristotle concludes the
long aforementioned argument: ‘prudence is a correct disposition accompanied
by reason’ (ßjin e‰nai metå lÒgou élhy∞, 1140b20-21, trans. Gauthier-Jolif
2002, ii 473).
This conclusion has not attracted, as far as we know, the attention it deserves.
In fact, it is worth noticing that Aristotle does not identify prudence with a dispo-
sition metå lÒgou élhyoËw, accompanied by correct reason; what is more, had
he reached this conclusion, his argument would be unsound: what has been
proven so far is not how true reason is here implicated (that is, how the choice
between true and apparent good should be decided), but merely how reason is
conditioned by a disposition (namely, a vice) which, provided that temperance
does not interfere, risks prohibiting any use of practical reason. The long tradi-
tion of scholars suggesting that our passage should be corrected, by means of
substituting lÒgou élhyoËw (correct reason) for ßjin élhy∞ (correct disposi-
tion), fails to discern the real target of the argument. As a matter of fact, Aristotle
uses the former formulation: ‘correct reason’ (1139a24), once the question about
our choice between the noble and the pleasant arises. By contrast, in our actual

to the intemperate man, when she stresses that ‘[t]he incontinent person does not act from
choice…because his calculations are not about what contributes to an end at all’.
9 ‘[Practical] intellect advises us to resist because it has a view to the future, whilst appetite has a

view to what is present (≥dh). For what is pleasant at present seems to be absolutely pleasant and
absolutely good, because appetite cannot see the future’ (DA 433b7-10).
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passage, temperance and intemperance, respectively, preserve and pervert the

very function of practical reason and, in this sense, intemperance constitutes a
radical ethical vice.10
Nevertheless, one might object, this interpretive model is not in continuity with
Aristotle’s sayings about the fellow disposition of prudence within the calcula-
tive part of human soul, namely about art (t°xnh). The scholars advocating that
we should correct our key passage point, unanimously, to a phrase a few lines
above, wherein art was defined as ßjiw tiw metå lÒgou élhyoËw (1140a20-21,
a9-10).11 How should we understand this obvious disparity?
It is worth noticing that the case of t°xnh, instead of undermining our argu-
ment, further reinforces its plausibility. Once again, we should merely take à la
lettre the terms in which Aristotle reasons. It then appears that the initial defini-
tion of t°xnh, in its opposition to action,12 does not reside within the aforemen-
tioned phrase, but has been twice announced some lines before, where t°xnh is
not considered an intellectual virtue but an intellectual disposition: t°xnh is ‘a
productive disposition accompanied by reason (metå lÒgou poihtikØ ßjiw
§st¤n)’ (1140a7-9). As we can easily realize, no truth/correctness assigned either
to disposition or to reason is here implicated. Why?
A few lines later, Aristotle will introduce a double alternative regarding the
role with which reason might be bestowed, provided that t°xnh is envisaged in
its general status (that is, defined as a disposition accompanied by reason): t°xnh
might be either ßjiw metå lÒgou élhyoËw poihtikÆ, a productive disposition
accompanied by correct reason (i.e., an intellectual virtue), or metå lÒgou ceu-
doËw poihtikØ ßjiw, i.e., a productive disposition accompanied by incorrect rea-
son (1140a20-22). The second alternative is, in fact, termed étexn¤a;
nonetheless, this negation should not lead us astray, given that étexn¤a is equally
defined as metå lÒgou [ceudoËw] poihtikØ ßjiw, that is, as t°xnh. No special
argument is needed in order for these conceptual pairs to be accurately compre-
hended. We all are aware of the fact that an architect might be good or bad, that
is, good or bad texn¤thw, only insofar as he is precisely a texn¤thw. Admittedly,
there is a limit as to how excessively bad a texn¤thw he might be; however, it
holds true that defining t°xnh as ßjiw metå lÒgou (1140a7-9) is not, by itself,
tantamount to defining it as ßjiw metå lÒgou élhyoËw. The former definition is
framed in terms of dispositions while the second in terms of an (intellectual)
virtue.13
10 Our argument confirms and intensifies what Greenwood 1909, 53 has suggested only hesi-

tantly (‘it is perhaps possible to distinguish…’), though clearly: ‘in this passage, 1140b11-20,
svfrosÊnh is then not a mean but an absolute state: not depending on prudence, but securing room
for the activity of prudence… Likewise, ékolas¤a [represents] the absolute vice, opposed to the
absolute virtue which is svfrosÊnh’ (my italics).
11 See, suggestively, Susemihl’s edition of Nicomachean Ethics (Teubner) and Aubenque 1976,

34.
12 As to the question why defining both prudence and art presupposes distinguishing between

one another, see Kontos 2002, 38-64.

13 Consequently, we disagree with Dirlmeyer 1960, 448 who advocates that étexn¤a constitutes
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There is, however, a final point that remains perplexing and causes the shadow
of inconsistency to reappear. Indeed, t°xnh in its broader meaning was defined as
disposition accompanied by reason (ßjiw metå lÒgou), while prudence was
defined as a correct disposition (ßjin metå lÒgou élhy∞). Why is this reference
to truth/correctness or untruth/wrongness a necessary complement of the practi-
cal disposition that prudence consists in (assuming it is, respectively, preserved
or not by temperance), while the technical disposition embodied by t°xnh is not
susceptible to this sort of correctness/wrongness?
Obviously, this question touches the innovatory postulate that one should grant
to Aristotle: the agent is threatened by perverse dispositions that tend to expel
reason and thereby to deprive our ethical life of any guidance. This threat is not
present at all in the realm of t°xnh, which is immune to any inherent absolute
vice. Evidently, a builder might be excessively lazy and might progressively lose
his technical dispositions; nevertheless, laziness is not a vice emerging within the
realm of t°xnh, but precisely an ethical vice. In Aristotelian terms, t°xnh repre-
sents a disposition devoted to producing something on the basis of a given idea
(1140a6-23) and, hence, no vice is thereby implicated. Thus, defining t°xnh as
an ßjin metå lÒgou élhy∞ would be redundant, not to say paradoxical, at least in
Aristotle’s eyes, precisely because the alternative of an ßjin poihtikØn metå
lÒgou ceud∞ is pure nonsense. By contrast, we are entitled to define intemper-
ance, notwithstanding Aristotle’s neglect to term it so, as ßjin praktikØn ceud∞,
namely, as an incorrect ethical disposition that totally perverts practical reason.
Correlatively, the correctness ascribed to the virtue of temperance should be
regarded as what preserves our very capacity of using our practical reason.14
And, hence, we are equally entitled to claim that, once regarded as the disposition
that totally perverts practical reason, intemperance constitutes a radical vice.

IV
Nevertheless, it remains to be explained why intemperance, though it totally
perverts practical reason, is not considered a case of mere bestiality but rather a
radical ethical vice. As previously announced, one can cope with this question by
just appealing to the Aristotelian concept of privation:
(a) The potentiality of action and choice is inherent in every human being, once

no t°xnh at all. By contrast, our reading is in line with Eustratius’ comments on 1140a20 and
1140b21 (Commentaria In Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea VI, XX, 91r and 93v).
14 Assuming our argument is judicious, our key-passage should be differentiated from the well-

known passage 1144a31-36: ‘For syllogisms about practical matters have the following major
premise: “since the end and the best good is of this sort”, whatever it might be; let it be anything, for
the sake of the argument. (§peidØ toiÒnde tÚ t°low ka‹ tÚ êriston, ıtidÆpote ˆn (¶stv går lÒgou
xãrin tÚ tuxÒn)). But toËto [namely, this first premise] is apparent only to the virtuous man, because
vice perverts us and makes us hold false views concerning practical principles’. Evidently, we take
toËto (1144a34) as a reference to the major premise; relating it to êriston not only presupposes an
odd use of the term tÚ tuxÒn, but also condemns the whole argument to an unavoidable unsoundness.
We adhere thereby to the translation proposed by Gauthier-Jolif 2002, i 181, Dirlmeyer 1960, 138,
and Greenwood 1909, 121.
10

the case of the pathological insane has been excluded; that is why other animals
could not be said to be intemperate. ‘For in their case the highest part (that is,
practical intellect) is not corrupted, as is the case with humans, but is lacking’
(1150a2-3). Here, lacking does not mean misused or distorted, as is the case with
humans, but lacking by nature. By contrast, provided that the potentiality of
action and choice is exclusively assigned to mature human beings, neither to ani-
mals nor to children (1111a25-26), intemperance should be considered a sort of
privation.
(b) Book 3, just before addressing the question of intemperance, explains that
voluntary and involuntary are not a matter of an original decision we should
detect in our personal biography, in order for us to be held as responsible for our
actions, since this attempt would lead to an infinite regress. Every human being,
the intemperate included, should be recognized as an agent, that is, as the origin
of his actions: ‘the érxÆ is in the agent himself’ (1114a19; see also: 1111a23,
1113b21). Mature human beings are always already held responsible for their
actions, as if they had already, from the outset, ‘thrown a stone’ (1114a17): this
very throw depicts our moral identity in terms of dispositions and makes us what
we are, that is, makes the initial demarcation between svfrosÊnh and
ékolas¤a. Our way of life, poyÉ ßkastÚw §st¤n (1114b1), has the status of an
ethical disposition, for which everyone is responsible. No further proof of this
initial responsibility is either possible or required.
(c) Aristotle seems to believe that the very desire to be intemperate is ‘less’
voluntary than the particular actions attributed to intemperance (1119a33). This
distinction between particular actions within intemperance and the very choice of
becoming intemperate should not be puzzling insofar as it merely reiterates the
customary double account of the voluntary to which Aristotle has adhered, in
order to conclude, as we previously saw, that even our initial dispositions should
be acknowledged as voluntary. The particular actions of intemperate men witness
their incapacity to actualize their (inherent) capacity to discern what a practical
end stands for. That is why Aristotle keeps emphasizing that, in his particular
choices, the intemperate is led by his desires: êgetai ÍpÚ t∞w §piyum¤aw
(1119a2), êgetai proairoÊmenow (1146b22). It is thus not an exaggeration to
say: although he constitutes the origin of his actions, the intemperate substitutes
his desires for what should be a reasonable choice.
By defining intemperance as a total perversion of practical reason that is
thereby disqualified for grasping any good whatsoever, Aristotle stresses that,
while resembling the status of children and displaying bestial and slavish disposi-
tions, intemperance is not exonerated from responsibility, but constitutes a radi-
cal ethical vice, i.e., a vice much more destructive than those that merely cause a
confusion about the distinction between the apparent and the true good.
Department of Philosophy
University of Patras
26500 Patras, Greece
 11

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