The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle

is, what Imperfection of Self-Control, what Endurance, and what Softness, and how these states are mutually related. APPENDIX. Book VII. Chapters 12 to 15. (Bekker.) To consider the subject of Pleasure and Pain falls within the province of the Social-Science Philosopher, since he it is who has to fix the Master-End which is to guide us in dominating any object absolutely evil or good. But we may say more: an enquiry into their nature is absolutely necessary. First, because we maintained that Moral Virtue and Moral Vice are both concerned with Pains and Pleasures: next, because the greater part of mankind assert that Happiness must include Pleasure (which by the way accounts for the word they use, μακάριος; χαίρειν being the root of that word). Now some hold that no one Pleasure is good, either in itself or as a matter of result, because Good and Pleasure are not identical. Others that some Pleasures are good but the greater number bad. There is yet a third view; granting that every Pleasure is good, still the Chief Good cannot possibly be Pleasure. In support of the first opinion (that Pleasure is utterly not-good) it is urged that: 1. Every Pleasure is a sensible process towards a complete state; but no such process is akin to the end to be attained: _e.g._ no process of building to the completed house. 2. The man of Perfected Self-Mastery avoids Pleasures. 3. The man of Practical Wisdom aims at avoiding Pain, not at attaining Pleasure. 4. Pleasures are an impediment to thought, and the more so the more keenly they are felt. An obvious instance will readily occur. 5. Pleasure cannot be referred to any Art: and yet every good is the result of some Art. 6. Children and brutes pursue Pleasures. In support of the second (that not all Pleasures are good), That there are some base and matter of reproach, and some even hurtful: because some things that are pleasant produce disease. In support of the third (that Pleasure is not the Chief Good), That it is not an End but a process towards creating an End. This is, I think, a fair account of current views on the matter. But that the reasons alleged do not prove it either to be not-good or the Chief Good is plain from the following considerations. First. Good being either absolute or relative, of course the natures and states embodying it will be so too; therefore also the movements and the processes of creation. So, of those which are thought to be bad some will be bad absolutely, but relatively not bad, perhaps even choice-worthy; some not even choice-worthy relatively to any particular person, only at certain times or for a short time but not in themselves choice-worthy. Others again are not even Pleasures at all though they produce that impression on the mind: all such I mean as imply pain and whose purpose is cure; those of sick people, for instance. Next, since Good may be either an active working or a state, those [κινήσεις or γενέσεις] which tend to place us in our natural state are pleasant incidentally because of that tendency: but the active working is really in the desires excited in the remaining (sound) part of our state or nature: for there are Pleasures which have no connection with pain or desire: the acts of contemplative intellect, for instance, in which case there is no deficiency in the nature or state of him who performs the acts. A proof of this is that the same pleasant thing does not produce the sensation of Pleasure when the natural state is being filled up or completed as when it is already in its normal condition: in this latter case what give the sensation are things pleasant _per se_, in the former even those things which are contrary. I mean, you find people taking pleasure in sharp or bitter things of which no one is naturally or in itself pleasant; of course not therefore the Pleasures arising from them, because it is obvious that as is the classification of pleasant things such must be that of the Pleasures arising from them. Next, it does not follow that there must be something else better than any given pleasure because (as some say) the End must be better than the process which creates it. For it is not true that all Pleasures are processes or even attended by any process, but (some are) active workings or even Ends: in fact they result not from our coming to be something but from our using our powers. Again, it is not true that the End is, in every case, distinct from the process: it is true only in the case of such processes as conduce to the perfecting of the natural state. For which reason it is wrong to say that Pleasure is “a sensible process of production.” For “process etc.” should be substituted “active working of the natural state,” for “sensible” “unimpeded.” The reason of its being thought to be a “process etc.” is that it is good in the highest sense: people confusing “active working” and “process,” whereas they really are distinct. Next, as to the argument that there are bad Pleasures because some things which are pleasant are also hurtful to health, it is the same as saying that some healthful things are bad for “business.” In this sense, of course, both may be said to be bad, but then this does not make them out to be bad _simpliciter_: the exercise of the pure Intellect sometimes hurts a man’s health: but what hinders Practical Wisdom or any state whatever is, not the Pleasure peculiar to, but some Pleasure foreign to it: the Pleasures arising from the exercise of the pure Intellect or from learning only promote each. Next. “No Pleasure is the work of any Art.” What else would you expect? No active working is the work of any Art, only the faculty of so working. Still the perfumer’s Art or the cook’s are thought to belong to Pleasure. Next. “The man of Perfected Self-Mastery avoids Pleasures.” “The man of Practical Wisdom aims at escaping Pain rather than at attaining Pleasure.” “Children and brutes pursue Pleasures.” One answer will do for all. We have already said in what sense all Pleasures are good _per se_ and in what sense not all are good: it is the latter class that brutes and children pursue, such as are accompanied by desire and pain, that is the bodily Pleasures (which answer to this description) and the excesses of them: in short, those in respect of which the man utterly destitute of Self-Control is thus utterly destitute. And it is the absence of the pain arising from these Pleasures that the man of Practical Wisdom aims at. It follows that these Pleasures are what the man of Perfected Self-Mastery avoids: for obviously he has Pleasures peculiarly his own. Then again, it is allowed that Pain is an evil and a thing to be avoided partly as bad _per se_, partly as being a hindrance in some particular way. Now the contrary of that which is to be avoided, _quâ_ it is to be avoided, _i.e._ evil, is good. Pleasure then must be _a_ good. The attempted answer of Speusippus, “that Pleasure may be opposed and yet not contrary to Pain, just as the greater portion of any magnitude is contrary to the less but only opposed to the exact half,” will not hold: for he cannot say that Pleasure is identical with evil of any kind. Again. Granting that some Pleasures are low, there is no reason why some particular Pleasure may not be very good, just as some particular Science may be although there are some which are low. Perhaps it even follows, since each state may have active working unimpeded, whether the active workings of all be Happiness or that of some one of them, that this active working, if it be unimpeded, must be choice-worthy: now Pleasure is exactly this. So that the Chief Good may be Pleasure of some kind, though most Pleasures be (let us assume) low _per se_. And for this reason all men think the happy life is pleasant, and interweave Pleasure with Happiness. Reasonably enough: because Happiness is perfect, but no impeded active working is perfect; and therefore the happy man needs as an addition the goods of the body and the goods external and fortune that in these points he may not be fettered. As for those who say that he who is being tortured on the wheel, or falls into great misfortunes is happy provided only he be good, they talk nonsense, whether they mean to do so or not. On the other hand, because fortune is needed as an addition, some hold good fortune to be identical with Happiness: which it is not, for even this in excess is a hindrance, and perhaps then has no right to be called good fortune since it is good only in so far as it contributes to Happiness. The fact that all animals, brute and human alike, pursue Pleasure, is some presumption of its being in a sense the Chief Good; (“There must be something in what most folks say,”) only as one and the same nature or state neither is nor is thought to be the best, so neither do all pursue the same Pleasure, Pleasure nevertheless all do. Nay further, what they pursue is, perhaps, not what they think nor what they would say they pursue, but really one and the same: for in all there is some instinct above themselves. But the bodily Pleasures have received the name exclusively, because theirs is the most frequent form and that which is universally partaken of; and so, because to many these alone are known they believe them to be the only ones which exist. It is plain too that, unless Pleasure and its active working be good, it will not be true that the happy man’s life embodies Pleasure: for why will he want it on the supposition that it is not good and that he can live even with Pain? because, assuming that Pleasure is not good, then Pain is neither evil nor good, and so why should he avoid it? Besides, the life of the good man is not more pleasurable than any other unless it be granted that his active workings are so too. Some enquiry into the bodily Pleasures is also necessary for those who say that some Pleasures, to be sure, are highly choice-worthy (the good ones to wit), but not the bodily Pleasures; that is, those which are the object-matter of the man utterly destitute of Self-Control. If so, we ask, why are the contrary Pains bad? they cannot be (on their assumption) because the contrary of bad is good. May we not say that the necessary bodily Pleasures are good in the sense in which that which is not-bad is good? or that they are good only up to a certain point? because such states or movements as cannot have too much of the better cannot have too much of Pleasure, but those which can of the former can also of the latter. Now the bodily Pleasures do admit of excess: in fact the low bad man is such because he pursues the excess of them instead of those which are necessary (meat, drink, and the objects of other animal appetites do give pleasure to all, but not in right manner or degree to all). But his relation to Pain is exactly the contrary: it is not excessive Pain, but Pain at all, that he avoids [which makes him to be in this way too a bad low man], because only in the case of him who pursues excessive Pleasure is Pain contrary to excessive Pleasure. It is not enough however merely to state the truth, we should also show how the false view arises; because this strengthens conviction.