Still more examination of incontinence and softness. We are about halfway through this book after today.
With regard to the pleasures and pains and appetites and aversions arising through touch and taste, to which both self-indulgence and temperance were formerly narrowed down, it is possible to be in such a state as to be defeated even by those of them which most people master, or to master even those by which most people are defeated; among these possibilities, those relating to pleasures are incontinence and continence, those relating to pains softness and endurance. The state of most people is intermediate, even if they lean more towards the worse states.
Now, since some pleasures are necessary while others are not, and are necessary up to a point while the excesses of them are not, nor the deficiencies, and this is equally true of appetites and pains, the man who pursues the excesses of things pleasant, or pursues to excess necessary objects, and does so by choice, for their own sake and not at all for the sake of any result distinct from them, is self-indulgent; for such a man is of necessity unlikely to repent, and therefore incurable, since a man who cannot repent cannot be cured.
Necessary pleasures include sex for the purpose of procreating children, without which society and civilization would cease to exist; eating and drinking; and certain other necessary bodily functions. The unnecessary pleasures include fine wines and silken sheets and so forth. So you can go wrong by pursuing an excess of unnecessary pleasures, but also by pursing to an excess the necessary things.
This is the first mention of repentance as a concept, and a core concept: those who cannot repent cannot be cured. The object here is not to save them, as in their souls; it is to fix them in the present life, so they become virtuous rather than vice-ridden people.
The man who is deficient in his pursuit of [such pleasures, necessary and unnecessary] is the opposite of self-indulgent; the man who is intermediate is temperate. Similarly, there is the man who avoids bodily pains not because he is defeated by them but by choice.
Most people are probably inclined to that choice; relatively few rise early to run a few miles before breakfast and the day's work, for example. Young soldiers in the Army do, but not entirely by choice.
(Of those who do not choose such acts, one kind of man is led to them as a result of the pleasure involved, another because he avoids the pain arising from the appetite, so that these types differ from one another. Now any one would think worse of a man with no appetite or with weak appetite were he to do something disgraceful, than if he did it under the influence of powerful appetite, and worse of him if he struck a blow not in anger than if he did it in anger; for what would he have done if he had been strongly affected? This is why the self-indulgent man is worse than the incontinent.)
Irwin adds an interpretive comment to the above section, which he breaks out into a separate section rather than putting it in parenthesis. He gives it as "For [if he can do such evil when he is unaffected by feeling], what would he have done if he had been strongly affected?" (Irwin, EN, 190-1). I think adding 'evil' may be a little strong here, but Irwin is surely right to emphasize the section. Aristotle is making the first of a few remarks intended to distinguish intemperate men from those who are merely incontinent, showing that the former are worse. The incontinent has judged rightly what is proper, he just isn't capable of doing it for some reasons; the intemperate man is committed to the wrong.
Of the states named, then, the latter is rather a kind of softness; the former is self-indulgence. While to the incontinent man is opposed the continent, to the soft is opposed the man of endurance; for endurance consists in resisting, while continence consists in conquering, and resisting and conquering are different, as not being beaten is different from winning; this is why continence is also more worthy of choice than endurance.
It is usually thought better to win than merely not to lose, as a checkmate is better than a stalemate. Yet this is not universally true; many times the Scots were happy to not be conquered, without ever wishing to conquer England for themselves. Such exceptions are worth consideration in my opinion, as often defense of one's independence and freedom may be better than a victory that places one in a position of unfreedom due to the new responsibilities of rule.
Now the man who is defective in respect of resistance to the things which most men both resist and resist successfully is soft and effeminate; for effeminacy too is a kind of softness; such a man trails his cloak to avoid the pain of lifting it, and plays the invalid without thinking himself wretched, though the man he imitates is a wretched man. [On 'effeminacy,' see comments in VII.1 --Grim]
The case is similar with regard to continence and incontinence. For if a man is defeated by violent and excessive pleasures or pains, there is nothing wonderful in that; indeed we are ready to pardon him if he has resisted, as Theodectes' Philoctetes does when bitten by the snake, or Carcinus' Cercyon in the Alope, and as people who try to restrain their laughter burst out into a guffaw, as happened to Xenophantus.* But it is surprising if a man is defeated by and cannot resist pleasures or pains which most men can hold out against, when this is not due to heredity or disease, like the softness that is hereditary with the kings of the Scythians, or that which distinguishes the female sex from the male.
If the women Aristotle knew were as soft as the Scythians, they were remarkable indeed: Herodotus says the Scythians put out the eyes of all of their slaves, collected the heads of their enemies and also their scalps (which they kept and used as napkins to wipe their hands upon), and disgraced at an annual feast any of their members who hadn't killed a foeman that year and collected at least one head. Their kings were honored at death in a manner that would make Ibn Fadhlan's Norsemen blush.
The lover of amusement, too, is thought to be self-indulgent, but is really soft. For amusement is a relaxation, since it is a rest from work; and the lover of amusement is one of the people who go to excess in this.
Most likely all Americans would fall afoul of that remark in Aristotle's opinion.
Of incontinence one kind is impetuosity, another weakness. For some men after deliberating fail, owing to their emotion, to stand by the conclusions of their deliberation, others because they have not deliberated are led by their emotion; since some men (just as people who first tickle others are not tickled themselves), if they have first perceived and seen what is coming and have first roused themselves and their calculative faculty, are not defeated by their emotion, whether it be pleasant or painful. It is keen and excitable people that suffer especially from the impetuous form of incontinence; for the former by reason of their quickness and the latter by reason of the violence of their passions do not await the argument, because they are apt to follow their imagination.
*Xenophantus was a noted pre-Socratic philosopher who determined the unity and oneness of God, and there is some debate about whether he was a monotheist or a pantheist who saw the One True God as over and above the several lesser entities known as gods. Of course, there are questions even about Genesis 3:22, when "'And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever" Adam is banished from the Garden. It may be that even the early Hebrews were not true monotheists in quite the way they later became.
Later Neoplatonic philosophy will essentially derive the position that there is one God, indeed One whose unity is too perfect for 'one God' to describe (that being two concepts, and thus a duality). What flows from this ultimate unity would include all the various gods as well as the Platonic Forms; but that is another story for another day.
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