(2) We must next discuss whether there is any one who is incontinent without qualification, or all men who are incontinent are so in a particular sense, and if there is, with what sort of objects he is concerned. That both continent persons and persons of endurance, and incontinent and soft persons, are concerned with pleasures and pains, is evident.Now of the things that produce pleasure some are necessary, while others are worthy of choice in themselves but admit of excess, the bodily causes of pleasure being necessary (by such I mean both those concerned with food and those concerned with sexual intercourse, i.e. the bodily matters with which we defined self-indulgence and temperance as being concerned), while the others are not necessary but worthy of choice in themselves (e.g. victory, honour, wealth, and good and pleasant things of this sort).
We often say that wealth can be pursued excessively. This is usually put in a Christian context, but the pagan Greeks understood the idea as well. The character of a man for whom wealth is unreasonably important admits of many bad things, even though there's nothing per se wrong with wealth. Simply not valuing the several goods of life in the right order is damaging to one's character.
Yet it is much harder to see how one can go to excess in pursuing victory. Perhaps in unimportant matters, as when it might be praiseworthy to let someone else have a turn rather than having to win all the time; but in the ancient world especially, a great deal hung on victory. Even today it can. Remembering the Charmides' introduction, the failures of Athenian virtues that led to their defeat in the Peloponnesian War led to their loss of power, their subjugation by Sparta, and a period of rule by the Thirty Tyrants over them. For Troy it led to the destruction of their city, the death of almost all of their men and boys, and the enslavement of their women. Victory in that sense surely has to be pursued with a whole heart.
And honor, we have said repeatedly in this commentary, defines how one identifies the best and most worthy of actions and lives. How can one go wrong with that?
This being so, (a) those who go to excess with reference to the latter, contrary to the right rule which is in themselves, are not called incontinent simply, but incontinent with the qualification 'in respect of money, gain, honour, or anger',-not simply incontinent, on the ground that they are different from incontinent people and are called incontinent by reason of a resemblance. (Compare the case of Anthropos (Man), who won a contest at the Olympic games; in his case the general definition of man differed little from the definition peculiar to him, but yet it was different.) This is shown by the fact that incontinence either without qualification or in respect of some particular bodily pleasure is blamed not only as a fault but as a kind of vice, while none of the people who are incontinent in these other respects is so blamed.
So they're not incontinent because they are pursuing a vice, but because they are pursuing something choice-worthy out of bounds. That still doesn't answer the question of what the bounds are.
There are two ways to go wrong with honor, in my reading. The first one Aristotle identifies in Book I.5: to be too concerned with 'receiving honors' instead of 'what is worthy of honor. Now you are concerned with being honored by others, rather than with doing the very best thing. This places your ethical power outside of yourself, so that you are dependent upon others for whether or not you receive what you really desire. Those possessed of magnanimity, the capstone virtue, do not even care if they receive honors -- they do not even care if they receive dishonors, because they know those dishonors do not rightly attach to them.
The second way, which Aristotle identifies in IV.4, is to commit one of the errors associated with magnanimity. For example, someone who is not in fact capable of pursuing great deeds might attempt them, when they should recognize their limits and pursue modest deeds that are worthy of them. A vain man might think too much of himself and act as if he rightly despised others, when in fact he was not good enough to deserve the honors he felt he deserved in his heart. For people pursuing honor in error, seeking too much honor is out of order. It is only when it is done virtuously that it correctly identifies the best course.
It is a harder case with victory, still. The cases are related: indeed, in war nothing is more honorable than victory.
But (b) of the people who are incontinent with respect to bodily enjoyments, with which we say the temperate and the self-indulgent man are concerned, he who pursues the excesses of things pleasant-and shuns those of things painful, of hunger and thirst and heat and cold and all the objects of touch and taste-not by choice but contrary to his choice and his judgement, is called incontinent, not with the qualification 'in respect of this or that', e.g. of anger, but just simply. This is confirmed by the fact that men are called 'soft' with regard to these pleasures, but not with regard to any of the others. And for this reason we group together the incontinent and the self-indulgent, the continent and the temperate man-but not any of these other types-because they are concerned somehow with the same pleasures and pains; but though these are concerned with the same objects, they are not similarly related to them, but some of them make a deliberate choice while the others do not.
So when we're talking about pursuing physical pleasures, and not when we are speaking of pursuit of honors or victories, then we speak of someone as being 'soft.' It's interesting that Aristotle breaks wealth out of this group and places it with the others, but wealth in and of itself is not pleasant; it can be used to furnish warships as well as to buy wine.
This is why we should describe as self-indulgent rather the man who without appetite or with but a slight appetite pursues the excesses of pleasure and avoids moderate pains, than the man who does so because of his strong appetites; for what would the former do, if he had in addition a vigorous appetite, and a violent pain at the lack of the 'necessary' objects?
Kant makes a similar point, in which he identifies even health as being less than a complete good: for, he says, what would you have done if you had so much health that you could pursue pleasures out of order? The fact that you suffer from hangovers may tame your drinking, and perhaps it did even Charmides'; a stronger constitution can enable greater vice.
Likewise, Kant says in the Metaphysics of Morals that many a man may have avoided a vicious life only because he didn't happen to encounter the right temptation. What if he'd found something for which he had a great appetite? We can imagine the good fortune of the man born before cocaine, for example, who might have been an addict if he'd only been born a little later; but because he was not, he led a virtuous life.
Now of appetites and pleasures some belong to the class of things generically noble and good-for some pleasant things are by nature worthy of choice, while others are contrary to these, and others are intermediate, to adopt our previous distinction-e.g. wealth, gain, victory, honour. And with reference to all objects whether of this or of the intermediate kind men are not blamed for being affected by them, for desiring and loving them, but for doing so in a certain way, i.e. for going to excess. (This is why all those who contrary to the rule either are mastered by or pursue one of the objects which are naturally noble and good, e.g. those who busy themselves more than they ought about honour or about children and parents, (are not wicked); for these too are good, and those who busy themselves about them are praised; but yet there is an excess even in them-if like Niobe one were to fight even against the gods, or were to be as much devoted to one's father as Satyrus nicknamed 'the filial', who was thought to be very silly on this point.) There is no wickedness, then, with regard to these objects, for the reason named, viz. because each of them is by nature a thing worthy of choice for its own sake; yet excesses in respect of them are bad and to be avoided. Similarly there is no incontinence with regard to them; for incontinence is not only to be avoided but is also a thing worthy of blame; but owing to a similarity in the state of feeling people apply the name incontinence, adding in each case what it is in respect of, as we may describe as a bad doctor or a bad actor one whom we should not call bad, simply. As, then, in this case we do not apply the term without qualification because each of these conditions is no shadiness but only analogous to it, so it is clear that in the other case also that alone must be taken to be incontinence and continence which is concerned with the same objects as temperance and self-indulgence, but we apply the term to anger by virtue of a resemblance; and this is why we say with a qualification 'incontinent in respect of anger' as we say 'incontinent in respect of honour, or of gain'.
So even when you go wrong in pursuit of honor, it is not shameful; and it is not properly speaking incontinence, which is softness about pursuing pleasures properly speaking. There is an analogy to incontinence that is to be avoided.
Aristotle said something similar about vanity in IV.4, as well as about those who go wrong by being unduly humble: "[E]ven these are not thought to be bad (for they are not malicious), but only mistaken." The error can make you look silly. You're still pursuing something worthy of choice, just foolishly.
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