Now we may ask (1) how a man who judges rightly can behave incontinently. That he should behave so when he has knowledge, some say is impossible; for it would be strange-so Socrates thought-if when knowledge was in a man something else could master it and drag it about like a slave. For Socrates was entirely opposed to the view in question, holding that there is no such thing as incontinence; no one, he said, when he judges acts against what he judges best-people act so only by reason of ignorance.
This sort of ignorance would be a special sort, a thing where you often think you know that something is wrong, but don't really know. Is that plausible, enough that a man like Socrates could take it seriously?
It seems like it might be. We all know people who get involved with someone whom they know to be a bad person, suffering the obvious consequences eventually. Or we can think of Charmides, who must have known after a while that hangovers would follow the drunken nights. Or even ourselves: I doubt any of us is without some habit that doesn't have predictable negative consequences, yet we keep doing it.
Now this view plainly contradicts the observed facts, and we must inquire about what happens to such a man; if he acts by reason of ignorance, what is the manner of his ignorance? For that the man who behaves incontinently does not, before he gets into this state, think he ought to act so, is evident. But there are some who concede certain of Socrates' contentions but not others; that nothing is stronger than knowledge they admit, but not that on one acts contrary to what has seemed to him the better course, and therefore they say that the incontinent man has not knowledge when he is mastered by his pleasures, but opinion.
That sounds plausible at first, but it doesn't work. We talked about knowledge for Aristotle as justified true belief. So the incontinent man knows he shouldn't drink too much because he'll have a hangover the next day. Is this justified? Almost certainly so, by endless experience that proves it to be the case. Is it true? Yes, clearly. The only place where his idea could come loose from "knowledge," then, is belief. To say that it is his opinion is to say that he does believe it: that's entailed by the definition of opinion.
But if it is opinion and not knowledge, if it is not a strong conviction that resists but a weak one, as in men who hesitate, we sympathize with their failure to stand by such convictions against strong appetites; but we do not sympathize with wickedness, nor with any of the other blameworthy states. Is it then practical wisdom whose resistance is mastered? That is the strongest of all states. But this is absurd; the same man will be at once practically wise and incontinent, but no one would say that it is the part of a practically wise man to do willingly the basest acts. Besides, it has been shown before that the man of practical wisdom is one who will act (for he is a man concerned with the individual facts) and who has the other virtues.
Practical wisdom can't be overmasted, we notice. If you have it, it controls: that's what it means to be wise in this sense.
(2) Further, if continence involves having strong and bad appetites, the temperate man will not be continent nor the continent man temperate; for a temperate man will have neither excessive nor bad appetites. But the continent man must; for if the appetites are good, the state of character that restrains us from following them is bad, so that not all continence will be good; while if they are weak and not bad, there is nothing admirable in resisting them, and if they are weak and bad, there is nothing great in resisting these either.
Some people have strong appetites for exercise, for example. A continent man shouldn't resist that sort of appetite; it is good for him to get out there and ride his mountain bike, or go to the gym, etc.
(3) Further, if continence makes a man ready to stand by any and every opinion, it is bad, i.e. if it makes him stand even by a false opinion; and if incontinence makes a man apt to abandon any and every opinion, there will be a good incontinence, of which Sophocles' Neoptolemus in the Philoctetes will be an instance; for he is to be praised for not standing by what Odysseus persuaded him to do, because he is pained at telling a lie.
This is the difference between tenacity (the virtue) and stubbornness (the vice). The continent man is tenacious in holding to good opinions, or to his diet; the stubborn man holds to stupid or false opinions and accepts no evidence against them.
(4) Further, the sophistic argument presents a difficulty; the syllogism arising from men's wish to expose paradoxical results arising from an opponent's view, in order that they may be admired when they succeed, is one that puts us in a difficulty (for thought is bound fast when it will not rest because the conclusion does not satisfy it, and cannot advance because it cannot refute the argument). There is an argument from which it follows that folly coupled with incontinence is virtue; for a man does the opposite of what he judges, owing to incontinence, but judges what is good to be evil and something that he should not do, and consequence he will do what is good and not what is evil.
Exactly what argument Aristotle meant to reference by "the sophistic argument" is not clear. The Sophists made many arguments, including about knowledge and virtue. Quite likely he was talking about Protagoras, whose debate on the subject with Socrates remains famous.
(5) Further, he who on conviction does and pursues and chooses what is pleasant would be thought to be better than one who does so as a result not of calculation but of incontinence; for he is easier to cure since he may be persuaded to change his mind. But to the incontinent man may be applied the proverb 'when water chokes, what is one to wash it down with?' If he had been persuaded of the rightness of what he does, he would have desisted when he was persuaded to change his mind; but now he acts in spite of his being persuaded of something quite different.(6) Further, if incontinence and continence are concerned with any and every kind of object, who is it that is incontinent in the unqualified sense? No one has all the forms of incontinence, but we say some people are incontinent without qualification.
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