Eudemian Ethics

Next let us speak about purposive choice, first raising various difficulties about it.For one might doubt to which class it naturally belongs and in what class it ought to be put, and whether the voluntary and the purposely chosen are different things or the same thing.

And a view specially put forward from some quarters, which on inquiry may seem correct, is that purposive choice is one of two things, either opinion or appetition; for both are seen to accompany it.

Now it is evident that it is not appetition; for in that case it would be either wish or desire or passion, since nobody wants to get a thing without having experienced one of those feelings. Now even animals possess passion and desire, but they do not have purposive choice. And again, beings that possess both of these often make choices even without passion and desire; and while they are experiencing these feelings do not make a choice but hold out. Again, desire and passion are always accompanied by pain, but we often make a choice even without pain.

But moreover purposive choice is not the same as wish either; for men wish for some things that they know to be impossible, for instance to be king of all mankind and to be immortal, but nobody purposively chooses a thing knowing it to be impossible, nor in general a thing that, though possible, he does not think in his own power to do or not to do. So that this much is clear—a thing purposively chosen must necessarily be something that rests with oneself.

And similarly it is manifest that purposive choice is not opinion either, nor something that one simply thinks; for we saw that a thing chosen is something in one’s own power, but we have opinions as to many things that do not depend on us, for instance that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with the side;

and again, choice is not true or false. Nor yet is purposive choice an opinion about practicable things within one’s own power that makes us think that we ought to do or not to do something; but this characteristic is common to opinion and to wish.

For no one purposively chooses any End, but the means to his End—I mean for instance no one chooses to be healthy, but to take a walk or sit down for the sake of being healthy, no one chooses to be well off, but to go into business or to speculate for the sake of being well off; and generally, one who makes a choice always makes it clear both what his choice is and what its object is, object meaning that for the sake of which he chooses something else and choice meaning that which he chooses for the sake of something else.

Whereas clearly it is specially an End that a man wishes, and the feeling that he ought to be healthy and prosperous is an opinion. So these considerations make it clear that purposive choice is different from both opinion and wish. Forming wishes and forming opinions apply specially to one’s End; purposive choice is not of Ends.

It is clear, then, that purposive choice is not either wish or opinion or judgement simply; but in what does it differ from them? and how is it related to the voluntary?To answer these questions will make it clear what purposive choice is.

Now of things that can both be and not be, some are such that it is possible to deliberate about them, but about others it is not possible. Some things can either be or not be but their coming into being does not rest with us, but in some cases is due to the operation of nature and in others to other causes; and about these things nobody would deliberate unless in ignorance of the facts.

But with some things not only their existence or non-existence is possible, but also for human beings to deliberate about them; and these are all the things that it rests with us to do or not to do. Hence we do not deliberate about affairs in India, or about how to square the circle; for affairs in India do not rest with us, whereas the objects of choice and things practicable are among things resting with us, and squaring the circle is entirely impracticable (and thus it is clear that purposive choice is not simply opinion either).

But purposive choice does not deal with all the practicable things resting with us either.

Hence one might also raise the question, why is it exactly that, whereas doctors deliberate about things in their field of science, scholars do not? The reason is that since error occurs in two ways (for we err either in reasoning, or in perception when actually doing the thing), in medicine it is possible to err in both ways, but in grammar error only occurs in our perception and action, to investigate which would be an endless undertaking.

Since then purposive choice is not either opinion nor wish separately, nor yet both (for no one makes a deliberate choice suddenly, but men do suddenly think they ought to act and wish to act), therefore it arises as from both, for both of them are present with a person choosing.

But how purposive choice arises out of opinion and wish must be considered. And indeed in a manner the actual term choice makes this clear. Choice is taking, but not taking simply—it is taking one thing in preference to another; but this cannot be done without consideration and deliberation; hence purposive choice arises out of deliberative opinion.

Now nobody deliberates about his End—this everybody has fixed; but men deliberate about the means leading to their End—does this contribute to it, or does this ? or when a means has been decided on, how will that be procured? and this deliberation as to means we all pursue until we have carried the starting-point in the process of producing the End back to ourselves.

If, then, nobody chooses without first preparing, and deliberating as to the comparative merits of the alternatives, and a man deliberates as to those among the means to the End capable of existing or not existing that are within our power, it is clear that purposive choice is deliberative appetition of things within one’s power. For we deliberate about everything that we choose, although of course we do not choose everything that we deliberate about. I call appetition deliberative when its origin or cause is deliberation,and when a man desires because of having deliberated.

Therefore the faculty of purposive choice is not present in the other animals, nor in man at every age nor in every condition, for no more is the act of deliberation, nor yet the concept of cause: it is quite possible that many men may possess the faculty of forming an opinion whether to do or not to do a thing without also having the power of forming this opinion by process of reasoning.

For the deliberative faculty is the spirit’s power of contemplating a kind of cause—for one sort of cause is the final cause, as although cause means anything because of which a thing comes about, it is the object of a thing’s existence or production that we specially designate as its cause: for instance, if a man walks in order to fetch things, fetching things is the cause of his walking. Consequently people who have no fixed aim are not given to deliberation.

Hence inasmuch as if a man of his own accord and not through ignorance does or refrains from doing something resting with himself either to do or not to do, he acts or refrains from acting voluntarily, but yet we do many such things without deliberation or previous thought, it necessarily follows that, although all that has been purposively chosen is voluntary, voluntary is not the same as chosen, and, although all things done by purposive choice are voluntary, not all things voluntary are done by purposive choice.

And at the same time it is clear from these considerations that the classification of offences made by legislators as in voluntary, voluntary and premeditated is a good one; for even if it is not precisely accurate, yet at all events it approximates to the truth in a way.

But we will speak about this in our examination of justice. As to purposive choice, it is clear that it is not absolutely identical with wish nor with opinion, but is opinion plus appetition when these follow as a conclusion from deliberation.

But since one who deliberates always deliberates for the sake of some object, and a man deliberating always has some aim in view with reference to which he considers what is expedient, nobody deliberates about his End, but this is a starting-point or assumption,

like the postulates in the theoretic sciences (we have spoken about this briefly at the beginning of this discourse, and in detail in Analytics); whereas with all men deliberation whether technical or untechnical is about the means that lead to their End, e.g. when they deliberate about whether to go to war or not to go to war with a given person.

And the question of means will depend rather on a prior question, that is, the question of object, for instance wealth or pleasure or something else of that kind which happens to be our object. For one who deliberates deliberates if he has considered, from the standpoint of the End, either what tends to enable him to bring the End to himself or how he can himself go to the End.

And by nature the End is always a good and a thing about which men deliberate step by step(for example a doctor may deliberate whether he shall give a drug, and a general where he shall pitch his camp) when their End is the good that is the absolute best;

but in contravention of nature and by perversion not the good but the apparent good is the End. The reason is that there are some things that cannot be employed for something other than their natural objects, for instance sight—it is not possible to see a thing that is not visible, or to hear a thing that is not audible; but a science does enable us to do a thing that is not the object of the science. For health and disease are not the objects of the same science in the same way: health is its object in accordance with nature, and disease in contravention of nature.

And similarly, by nature good is the object of wish, but evil is also its object in contravention of nature; by nature one wishes good, against nature and by perversion one even wishes evil.

But moreover with everything its corruption and perversion are not in any chance direction, but leads to the contrary and intermediate states. For it is not possible to go outside these, since even error does not lead to any chance thing, but, in the case of things that have contraries, to the contraries, and to those contraries that are contrary according to their science.

It therefore necessarily follows that both error and purposive choice take place from the middle point to the contraries (the contraries of the middle being the more and the less).—And the cause is pleasure and pain; for things are so constituted that the pleasant appears to the spirit good and the more pleasant better, the painful bad and the more painful worse.

So from these things also it is clear that goodness and badness have to do with pleasures and pains; for they occur in connection with the objects of purposive choice, and this has to do with good and bad and what appears to be good and bad, and pleasure and pain are by nature things of that kind.

It therefore follows that since moral goodness is itself a middle state and is entirely concerned with pleasures and pains, and badness consists in excess and defect and is concerned with the same things as goodness, moral goodness or virtue is a state of purposively choosing the mean in relation to ourselves in all those pleasant and painful things in regard to which according as a person feels pleasure or pain he is described as having some particular moral quality(for a person is not said to have a particular moral character merely for being fond of sweets or savories).