by Aristotle
It is plain, then, what the equitable is, and that it is just and is better than one kind of justice. It is evident also from this who the equitable man is; the man who chooses and does such acts, and is no stickler for justice in a bad sense but tends to [1138a1] take less than his share though he has the law on his side, is equitable, and this state is equity, which is a sort of justice, and not a different state.
11 · Whether a man can treat himself unjustly or not, is evident from what [5] has been said. For one class of just acts are those acts in accordance with any excellence which are prescribed by the law; e.g. the law does not command a man to kill himself, and what it does not command it forbids. Again, when a man in violation of the law harms another (otherwise than in retaliation) voluntarily, he acts unjustly, and a voluntary agent is one who knows both the person he is affecting and the instrument; and he who through anger voluntarily stabs himself does this [10] contrary to right reason, and this the law does not allow; therefore he is acting unjustly. But towards whom? Surely towards the state, not towards himself. For he suffers voluntarily, but no one is voluntarily treated unjustly. This is also the reason why the state punishes; a certain loss of civil rights attaches to the man who destroys himself, on the ground that he is treating the state unjustly.
Further, in the sense in which the man who acts unjustly is unjust only and not [15] bad all round, it is not possible to treat oneself unjustly (this is different from the former sense; the unjust man in one sense of the term is wicked in a particularized way just as the coward is, not in the sense of being wicked all round, so that his unjust act does not manifest wickedness in general). For that would imply the possibility of the same thing’s having been subtracted from and added to the same [20] thing at the same time; but this is impossible—the just and the unjust always involve more than one person. Further, unjust action is voluntary and done by choice, and is prior (for the man who because he has suffered does the same in return is not thought to act unjustly); but if a man harms himself he suffers and does the same things at the same time. Further, a man could be voluntarily treated unjustly. Besides, no one acts unjustly without committing particular acts of injustice; but no one can commit adultery with his own wife or housebreaking on his [25] own house or theft on his own property.
In general, the question ‘can a man treat himself unjustly?’ is solved also by the distinction we applied to the question ‘can a man be voluntarily treated unjustly?’
(It is evident too that both are bad, being unjustly treated and acting unjustly; for the one means having less and the other having more than the intermediate [30] amount, which plays the part here that the healthy does in the medical art, and that good condition does in the art of bodily training. But still acting unjustly is the worse, for it involves vice and is blameworthy—involves vice which is either of the complete and unqualified kind or almost so (for not all voluntary unjust action implies injustice), while being unjustly treated does not involve vice and injustice. In itself, then, being unjustly treated is less bad, but there is nothing to prevent its being incidentally a greater evil. But theory cares nothing for this; it calls pleurisy a [1138b1] more serious mischief than a stumble; yet the latter may become incidentally the more serious, if the fall due to it leads to your being taken prisoner or put to death by [5] the enemy.)
Metaphorically and in virtue of a certain resemblance there is a justice, not indeed between a man and himself, but between certain parts of him; yet not every kind of justice but that of master and servant or that of husband and wife. For these are the ratios in which the part of the soul that has reason stands to the irrational part; and it is with a view to these parts that people also think a man can be unjust to [10] himself, viz. because these parts are liable to suffer something contrary to their desires; there is therefore thought to be a mutual justice between them as between ruler and ruled.
Let this be taken as our account of justice and the other, i.e. the moral, excellences.
BOOK VI
1 · Since we have previously said that one ought to choose that which is intermediate, not the excess nor the defect, and that the intermediate is determined by the dictates of reason, let us discuss this. In all the states we have mentioned, as [20] in all other matters, there is a mark to which the man who possesses reason looks, and heightens or relaxes his activity accordingly, and there is a standard which determines the mean states which we say are intermediate between excess and defect, being in accordance with right reason. But such a statement, though true, is [25] by no means illuminating; for in all other pursuits which are objects of knowledge it is indeed true to say that we must not exert ourselves nor relax our efforts too much nor too little, but to an intermediate extent and as right reason dictates; but if a man [30] had only this knowledge he would be none the wiser—e.g. we should not know what sort of medicines to apply to our body if some one were to say ‘all those which the medical art prescribes, and which agree with the practice of one who possesses the art’. Hence it is necessary with regard to the states of the soul also not only that this true statement should be made, but also that it should be determined what right reason is and what is the standard that fixes it.
We divided the excellences of the soul and said that some are excellences of [1139a1] character and others of intellect. Now we have discussed the moral excellences; with regard to the others let us express our view as follows, beginning with some remarks about the soul. We said before that there are two parts of the soul—that which possesses reason and that which is irrational; let us now draw a similar [5] distinction within the part which possesses reason. And let it be assumed that there are two parts which possess reason—one by which we contemplate the kind of things whose principles cannot be otherwise, and one by which we contemplate variable things; for where objects differ in kind the part of the soul answering to [10] each of the two is different in kind, since it is in virtue of a certain likeness and kinship with their objects that they have the knowledge they have. Let one of these parts be called the scientific and the other the calculative; for to deliberate and to calculate are the same thing, but no one deliberates about what cannot be [15] otherwise. Therefore the calculative is one part of the faculty which possesses reason. We must, then, learn what is the best state of each of these two parts; for this is the excellence of each.
2 · The excellence of a thing is relative to its proper function. Now there are three things in the soul which control action and truth—sensation, thought, desire.
Of these sensation originates no action; this is plain from the fact that beasts [20] have sensation but no share in action.
What affirmation and negation are in thinking, pursuit and avoidance are in desire; so that since moral excellence is a state concerned with choice, and choice is deliberate desire, therefore both the reasoning must be true and the desire right, if [25] the choice is to be good, and the latter must pursue just what the former asserts. Now this kind of intellect and of truth is practical; of the intellect which is contemplative, not practical nor productive, the good and the bad state are truth and falsity (for this is the function of everything intellectual); while of the part [30] which is practical and intellectual the good state is truth in agreement with right desire.
The origin of action—its efficient, not its final cause—is choice, and that of choice is desire and reasoning with a view to an end. This is why choice cannot exist either without thought and intellect or without a moral state; for good action and its [35] opposite cannot exist without a combination of intellect and character. Intellect itself, however, moves nothing, but only the intellect which aims at an end and is [1139b1] practical; for this rules the productive intellect as well, since every one who makes makes for an end, and that which is made is not an end in the unqualified sense (but only relative to something, i.e. of something)—only that which is done is that; for good action is an end, and desire aims at this. Hence choice is either desiderative thought or intellectual desire, an
d such an origin of action is a man. (Nothing that is [5] past is an object of choice, e.g. no one chooses to have sacked Troy; for no one deliberates about the past, but about what is future and contingent, while what is past is not capable of not having taken place; hence Agathon is right in saying
For this alone is lacking even to God, [10]
To make undone things that have once been done.)
The function of both the intellectual parts, then, is truth. Therefore the states that are most strictly those in respect of which each of these parts will reach truth are the excellences of the two parts.
3 · Let us begin, then, from the beginning, and discuss these states once more. Let it be assumed that the states by virtue of which the soul possesses truth by [15] way of affirmation or denial are five in number, i.e. art, knowledge, practical wisdom, philosophic wisdom, comprehension; for belief and opinion may be mistaken.
Now what knowledge is, if we are to speak exactly and not follow mere similarities, is plain from what follows. We all suppose that what we know is not [20] capable of being otherwise; of things capable of being otherwise we do not know, when they have passed outside our observation, whether they exist or not. Therefore the object of knowledge is of necessity. Therefore it is eternal; for things that are of necessity in the unqualified sense are all eternal; and things that are eternal are ungenerated and imperishable. Again, every science is thought to be capable of [25] being taught, and its object of being learned. And all teaching starts from what is already known, as we maintain in the Analytics50 also; for it proceeds sometimes through induction and sometimes by deduction. Now induction is of first principles51 and of the universal and deduction proceeds from universals. There are therefore principles from which deduction proceeds, which are not reached by [30] deduction; it is therefore by induction that they are acquired. Knowledge, then, is a state of capacity to demonstrate, and has the other limiting characteristics which we specify in the Analytics; for it is when a man believes in a certain way and the principles are known to him that he has knowledge, since if they are not better known to him than the conclusion, he will have his knowledge only incidentally. [35]
Let this, then, be taken as our account of knowledge.
4 · Among things that can be otherwise are included both things made and [1140a1] things done; making and acting are different (for their nature we treat even the discussions outside our school as reliable); so that the reasoned state of capacity to act is different from the reasoned state of capacity to make. Nor52 are they included [5] one in the other; for neither is acting making nor is making acting. Now since building is an art and is essentially a reasoned state of capacity to make, and there is neither any art that is not such a state nor any such state that is not an art, art is [10] identical with a state of capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning. All art is concerned with coming into being, i.e. with contriving and considering how something may come into being which is capable of either being or not being, and whose origin is in the maker and not in the thing made; for art is concerned neither with things that are, or come into being, by necessity, nor with things that do so in [15] accordance with nature (since these have their origin in themselves). Making and acting being different, art must be a matter of making, not of acting. And in a sense chance and art are concerned with the same objects; as Agathon says, ‘art loves [20] chance and chance loves art’. Art, then, as has been said, is a state concerned with making, involving a true course of reasoning, and lack of art on the contrary is a state concerned with making, involving a false course of reasoning; both are concerned with what can be otherwise.
5 · Regarding practical wisdom we shall get at the truth by considering who [25] are the persons we credit with it. Now it is thought to be a mark of a man of practical wisdom to be able to deliberate well about what is good and expedient for himself, not in some particular respect, e.g. about what sorts of thing conduce to health or to strength, but about what sorts of thing conduce to the good life in general. This is shown by the fact that we credit men with practical wisdom in some particular respect when they have calculated well with a view to some good end [30] which is one of those that are not the object of any art. Thus in general the man who is capable of deliberating has practical wisdom. Now no one deliberates about things that cannot be otherwise nor about things that it is impossible for him to do. Therefore, since knowledge involves demonstration, but there is no demonstration of things whose first principles can be otherwise (for all such things might actually [1140b1] be otherwise), and since it is impossible to deliberate about things that are of necessity, practical wisdom cannot be knowledge nor art; not knowledge because that which can be done is capable of being otherwise, not art because action and making are different kinds of thing. It remains, then, that it is a true and reasoned [5] state of capacity to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for man. For while making has an end other than itself, action cannot; for good action itself is its end. It is for this reason that we think Pericles and men like him have practical wisdom, viz. because they can see what is good for themselves and what is good for [10] men in general; we consider that those can do this who are good at managing households or states. (This is why we call temperance by this name; we imply that it preserves one’s practical wisdom.53 Now what it preserves is a belief of the kind we have described. For it is not any and every belief that pleasant and painful objects destroy and pervert, e.g. the belief that the triangle has or has not its angles equal to [15] two right angles, but only beliefs about what is to be done. For the principles of the things that are done consist in that for the sake of which they are to be done; but the man who has been ruined by pleasure or pain forthwith fails to see any such principle—to see that for the sake of this or because of this he ought to choose and do whatever he chooses and does; for vice is destructive of the principle.)
Practical wisdom, then, must be a reasoned and true state of capacity to act [20] with regard to human goods. But further, while there is such a thing as excellence in art, there is no such thing as excellence in practical wisdom; and in art he who errs willingly is preferable, but in practical wisdom, as in the excellences he is the reverse. Plainly, then, practical wisdom is an excellence and not an art. There being [25] two parts of the soul that possess reason, it must be the excellence of one of the two, i.e. of that part which forms opinions; for opinion is about what can be otherwise, and so is practical wisdom. But yet it is not only a reasoned state; this is shown by the fact that a state of that sort may be forgotten but practical wisdom cannot. [30]
6 · Knowledge is belief about things that are universal and necessary, and there are principles of everything that is demonstrated and of all knowledge (for knowledge involves reasoning). This being so, the first principle of what is known cannot be an object of knowledge, of art, or of practical wisdom; for that which can be known can be demonstrated, and art and practical wisdom deal with things that [1141a1] can be otherwise. Nor are these first principles the objects of wisdom, for it is a mark of the wise man to have demonstration about some things. If, then, the states by which we have truth and are never deceived about things that cannot—or can—be otherwise are knowledge, practical wisdom, philosophic wisdom, and [5] comprehension, and it cannot be any of the three (i.e. practical wisdom, scientific knowledge, or philosophic wisdom), the remaining alternative is that it is comprehension that grasps the first principles.
7 · Wisdom in the arts we ascribe to their most finished exponents, e.g. to Phidias as a sculptor and to Polyclitus as a maker of statues, and here we mean [10] nothing by wisdom except excellence in art; but we think that some people are wise in general, not in some particular field or in any other limited respect, as Homer says in the Margites,
Him did the gods make neither a digger nor yet a ploughman [15]
Nor wise in anything else.
Therefore wisdom must plainly be the most finished of the forms of knowledge. It follows that the wise man m
ust not only know what follows from the first principles, but must also possess truth about the first principles. Therefore wisdom must be comprehension combined with knowledge—knowledge of the highest objects which has received as it were its proper completion.
For it would be strange to think that the art of politics, or practical wisdom, is [20] the best knowledge, since man is not the best thing in the world. Now if what is healthy or good is different for men and for fishes, but what is white or straight is always the same, any one would say that what is wise is the same but what is practically wise is different; for it is to that which observes well the various matters [25] concerning itself that one ascribes practical wisdom, and it is to this that one will entrust such matters. This is why we say that some even of the lower animals have practical wisdom, viz. those which are found to have a power of foresight with regard to their own life. It is evident also that wisdom and the art of politics cannot [30] be the same; for if the state of mind concerned with a man’s own interests is to be called wisdom, there will be many wisdoms; there will not be one concerned with the good of all animals (any more than there is one art of medicine for all existing things), but a different wisdom about the good of each species.