Continuing from yesterday, we are talking about the vices of the soul. Unlike Socrates' argument that no one does themselves harm voluntarily and knowingly, Aristotle has argued that people do form characters that are given over to vice. Thus, they did voluntarily assume these vices even if they find they are no longer in control of them.
But not only are the vices of the soul voluntary, but those of the body also for some men, whom we accordingly blame; while no one blames those who are ugly by nature, we blame those who are so owing to want of exercise and care. So it is, too, with respect to weakness and infirmity; no one would reproach a man blind from birth or by disease or from a blow, but rather pity him, while every one would blame a man who was blind from drunkenness or some other form of self-indulgence. Of vices of the body, then, those in our own power are blamed, those not in our power are not. And if this be so, in the other cases also the vices that are blamed must be in our own power.
It is possible that we could be unfair, which Aristotle does not seem to consider here. Perhaps we blame someone for things sometimes that we would like to think are in his control, but which are not in fact. A lot of recent history has been caught up in the West with trying to identify things like that so that they can be removed from moral consideration; homosexuality, for example, is now said not to be a voluntary vice but that people are 'born that way.' This may or may not be strictly true, but the effect of convincing people that it is plausible or even likely has been to remove what was long considered a serious moral failing from the realm of moral condemnation.
Now some one may say that all men desire the apparent good, but have no control over the appearance, but the end appears to each man in a form answering to his character. We reply that if each man is somehow responsible for his state of mind, he will also be himself somehow responsible for the appearance; but if not, no one is responsible for his own evildoing, but every one does evil acts through ignorance of the end, thinking that by these he will get what is best, and the aiming at the end is not self-chosen but one must be born with an eye, as it were, by which to judge rightly and choose what is truly good, and he is well endowed by nature who is well endowed with this. For it is what is greatest and most noble, and what we cannot get or learn from another, but must have just such as it was when given us at birth, and to be well and nobly endowed with this will be perfect and true excellence of natural endowment. If this is true, then, how will virtue be more voluntary than vice? To both men alike, the good and the bad, the end appears and is fixed by nature or however it may be, and it is by referring everything else to this that men do whatever they do.
This is initially presented as a material conditional dilemma that needs to be evaluated. However, at least one scholar I know of argues that we have generally underappreciated the role of "natural virtue" in Aristotle, meaning non-habituated virtue that some people just have more of by nature. I will leave that as an exercise for the reader to consider.
Whether, then, it is not by nature that the end appears to each man such as it does appear, but something also depends on him, or the end is natural but because the good man adopts the means voluntarily virtue is voluntary, vice also will be none the less voluntary; for in the case of the bad man there is equally present that which depends on himself in his actions even if not in his end. If, then, as is asserted, the virtues are voluntary (for we are ourselves somehow partly responsible for our states of character, and it is by being persons of a certain kind that we assume the end to be so and so), the vices also will be voluntary; for the same is true of them.
Aristotle is resolving the dilemma by showing that virtue and vice end up as voluntary on either horn of that dilemma. That solves the problem of whether or not vice is voluntary; but it doesn't resolve the question of which of those horns is true.
With regard to the virtues in general we have stated their genus in outline, viz. that they are means and that they are states of character, and that they tend, and by their own nature, to the doing of the acts by which they are produced, and that they are in our power and voluntary, and act as the right rule prescribes. But actions and states of character are not voluntary in the same way; for we are masters of our actions from the beginning right to the end, if we know the particular facts, but though we control the beginning of our states of character the gradual progress is not obvious any more than it is in illnesses; because it was in our power, however, to act in this way or not in this way, therefore the states are voluntary.
Let us take up the several virtues, however, and say which they are and what sort of things they are concerned with and how they are concerned with them; at the same time it will become plain how many they are. And first let us speak of courage.
So, after two and a half chapters of groundwork, we are finally ready to start speaking of the individual virtues.
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