Eudemian Ethics

We must next attempt to decide about Temperance and Profligacy. The term profligate (unchaste) has a variety of meanings. It means the man who has not been (as it were) chastised or cured, just as undivided means one that has not been divided; and these terms include both one capable of the process and one not capable of it: undivided means both that which cannot be divided and that which though it can be has not been;

and similarly with unchaste —it denotes both that which is by nature incapable of chastening and that which, though capable, has not actually been chastened in respect of the errors as regards which the temperate man acts rightly, as is the case with children; for of them it is in this sense that the term unchaste is used,

whereas another use of it again refers to persons hard to cure or entirely incurable by chastisement. But though profligacy has more than one sense, it is clear that the profligate are concerned with certain pleasures and pains and that they differ from one another and from the other vicious characters in being disposed in a certain manner towards these; and we described previously the way in which we apply the term profligacy by analogy.

Persons on the other hand who owing to insensitiveness are uninfluenced by these pleasures are called by some people insensitive and by others are designated by other names of the same sort;

but the state is not a very familiar one nor of common occurrence, because all men err more in the other direction, and susceptibility and sensitiveness to pleasures of this sort are natural to everybody. It specially attaches to persons like the boors who are a stock character in comedy—people who steer clear of pleasures even in moderate and necessary indulgences.

And since the temperate character is shown in connection with pleasures, it follows that it is also related to certain desires. We must, therefore, ascertain what these are. For the temperate man is not temperate about all pleasures nor about everything pleasant, but apparently about the objects of two of the senses, taste and touch, and in reality about the objects of touch.

For the temperate man is not concerned with the pleasure of beautiful things (apart from sexual desire) or pain caused by ugly things, the medium of which is sight, nor with the pleasure of harmonious sounds or pain of discords conveyed through the medium of hearing, nor yet with the pleasures and pains of smell, derived from good and bad scents; for neither is anyone termed profligate because of being sensitive or not sensitive to sensations of that sort—

for example, a man would not be considered profligate if when looking at a beautiful statue or horse or person, or listening to someone singing, he did not wish for food or drink or sexual indulgence but only wished to look at the beautiful objects or listen to the music,—any more than the persons held spell-bound in the abode of the Sirens.

Temperance and profligacy have to do with those two sorts of sensory objects in relation to which alone the lower animals also happen to be sensitive and to feel pleasure and pain—the objects of taste and of touch,

whereas about virtually all the pleasures of the other senses alike animals are clearly so constituted as to be insensitive— e.g. harmonious sound, or beauty; for clearly they are not affected in any degree worth speaking of by the mere sight of beautiful objects or by listening to musical sounds, except possibly in the case of some miraculous occurrences. Nor yet are they sensitive to good or bad smells, although it is true that all their senses are keener than man’s;

but even the smells they enjoy are those that have agreeable associations, and are not intrinsically agreeable. By smells not intrinsically agreeable I mean those that we enjoy because of either anticipation or recollection, for example the smell of things to eat or drink, for we enjoy these scents on account of a different pleasure, that of eating or drinking; by intrinsically agreeable I mean scents such as those of flowers (this is the reason of Stratonicus’s neat remark that the scent of flowers is beautiful but that of things to eat and drink sweet).

For even the pleasures of taste are not all attractive to animals, nor are those perceived with the tip of the tongue, but those perceived by the throat, the sensation of which seems more like touch than taste; so that gourmands do not pray that they may have a long tongue but a crane’s gullet, like Philoxenus son of Eryxis.

It follows that broadly speaking profligacy must be considered to be related to the objects of touch, and likewise it is with pleasures of that sort that the profligate is concerned;for tippling and gluttony and lechery and gormandizing and the like all have to do with the sensations specified, and these are the departments into which profligacy is divided.

But nobody is called profligate if he exceeds in regard to the pleasures of sight or hearing or smell; those errors we criticize without severe rebuke, and generally all the things included under the term lack of self-control: the uncontrolled are not profligate, yet they are not temperate.

Therefore the person of such a character as to be deficient in all the enjoyments which practically everybody must share and must enjoy, is insensitive (or whatever the proper term is), and he that exceeds in them is profligate.

For all people by nature enjoy these things, and conceive desires for them, without being or being called profligate, for they do not exceed by feeling more joy than they ought when they get them nor more pain than they ought when they do not get them; nor yet are they unfeeling, for they do not fall short in feeling joy or pain, but rather exceed.

And since there are excess and deficiency in regard to these things, it is clear that there is also a middle state, and that this state of character is the best one, and is the opposite of both the others. Hence if temperance is the best state of character in relation to the things with which the profligate is concerned, the middle state in regard to the pleasant objects of sense mentioned will be Temperance, being a middle state between profligacy and insensitiveness: the excess will be Profligacy, and the deficiency will either be nameless or will be denoted by the terms mentioned.

We shall have to define the class of pleasures concerned more exactly in our discussion of Self-control and Lack of Control later on.