Eudemian Ethics

But wisdom is not the only thing which acting in accordance with goodness causes welfare, but we also speak of the fortunate as faring well, which implies that good fortune also engenders welfare in the same way as knowledge does; we must therefore consider whether one man is fortunate and another unfortunate by nature or not, and how it stands with these matters.

For that some men are fortunate we see, since many though foolish succeed in things in which luck is paramount, and some even in things which involve skill although also containing a large element of luck—for example strategy and navigation.

Are, then, these men fortunate as a result of a certain state of character, or are they enabled to achieve fortunate results not by reason of a certain quality in themselves? As it is, people think the latter, holding that some men are successful by natural causes; but nature makes men of a certain quality, and the fortunate and unfortunate are different even from birth, in the same way as some men are blue-eyed and others black-eyed because a particular part of them is of a particular quality.

For it is clear that they do not succeed by means of wisdom, because wisdom is not irrational but can give reason why it acts as it does, whereas they could not say why they succeed—for that would be science;

and moreover it is manifest that they succeed in spite of being unwise—not unwise about other matters (for that would not be anything strange, for example Hippocrates was skilled in geometry but was thought to be stupid and unwise in other matters, and it is said that on a voyage owing to foolishness he lost a great deal of money,taken from him by the collectors of the two-per-cent duty at Byzantium), but even though they are unwise about the matters in which they are fortunate.

For in navigation it is not the cleverest who are fortunate, but (just as in throwing dice one man throws a blank and another a six) a man is fortunate according as things were arranged by nature. Or is it because he is loved by God, as the phrase goes, and because success is something from outside? as for instance a badly built ship often gets through a voyage better, though not owing to itself, but because it has a good man at the helm.

But on this showing the fortunate man has the deity as steersman. But it is strange that a god or deity should love a man of this sort, and not the best and most prudent. If, then, the success of the lucky must necessarily be due to either nature or intellect or some guardianship, and of these three causes two are ruled out, those who are fortunate will be so by nature.

But again, nature of course is the cause of a thing that happens either always or generally in the same way, whereas fortune is the opposite. If, then, unexpected achievement seems a matter of fortune, but, if a man is fortunate owing to fortune, it would seem that the cause is not of such a sort as to produce the same result always or generally—

further, if a man’s succeeding or not succeeding is due to his being of a certain sort, as a man does not see clearly because he has blue eyes, not fortune but nature is the cause; therefore he is not a man who has good fortune but one who has as it were a good nature. Hence we should have to say that the people we call fortunate are so not by reason of fortune; therefore they are not fortunate, for the fortunate are those for whom good fortune is a cause of good things.

But if so, shall we say that there is no such thing as fortune at all, or that it does exist but is not a cause? No, it must both exist and be a cause.

Consequently it will furthermore be a cause of goods or evils to certain persons; whereas if fortune is to be eliminated altogether, then nothing must be said to come about from fortune, in spite of the fact that, although there is another cause, because we do not see it we say that fortune is a cause—owing to which people give it as a definition of fortune that it is a cause incalculable to human reasoning, implying that it is a real natural principle. This, then, would be a matter for another inquiry. But since we see that some people have good fortune on one occasion, why should they not succeed a second time too owing to the same cause? and a third time? and a fourth? for the same cause produces the same effect.

Therefore this will not be a matter of fortune; but when the same result follows from indeterminate and in definite antecedents, it will be good or bad for somebody, but there will not be the knowledge of it that comes by experience, since, if there were, some fortunate persons would learn it, or indeed all branches of knowledge would, as Socrates said, be forms of good fortune.

What, then, prevents such things from happening to somebody a number of times running not because he has a certain character, but in the way in which for instance it would be possible to make the highest throw at dice every time? And what then? are there not some impulses in the spirit that arise from reasoning and others from irrational appetition? and are not the latter prior?because if the impulse caused by desire for what is pleasant exists by nature, appetition also would merely by nature proceed towards what is good in every case.

If, therefore, some men have good natures—just as musical people though they have not learnt to sing have a natural aptitude for it—and without the aid of reason have an impulse in the direction of the natural order of things and desire the right thing in the right way at the right time, these men will succeed even although they are in fact foolish and irrational, just as the others will sing well although unable to teach singing. And men of this sort obviously are fortunate—men who without the aid of reason are usually successful. Hence it will follow that the fortunate are so by nature.

Or has the term good fortune more than one meaning? For some things are done from impulse and as a result of the agents’ purposive choice, other things not so but on the contrary; and if in the former cases when the agents succeed they seem to have reasoned badly, we say that in fact they have had good fortune; and again in the latter cases, if they wished for a different good or less good than they have got.

The former persons then may possibly owe their good fortune to nature, for their impulse and appetition, being for the right object, succeeded, but their reasoning was foolish; and in their case, when it happens that their reasoning seems to be incorrect but that impulse is the cause of it, this impulse being right has saved them; although sometimes on the contrary owing to appetite they have reasoned in this way and come to misfortune.

But in the case of the others, then, how will good fortune be due to natural goodness of appetition and desire? The fact is that the good fortune here and that in the other case are the same. Or is good fortune of more than one kind, and is fortune twofold?

But since we see some people being fortunate contrary to all the teachings of science and correct calculation, it is clear that the cause of good fortune must be something different. But is it or is it not good fortune whereby a man formed a desire for the right thing and at the right time when in his case human reasoning could not make this calculation? For a thing the desire for which is natural is not altogether uncalculated, but the reasoning is perverted by something.

So no doubt he seems fortunate, because fortune is the cause of things contrary to reason, and this is contrary to reason, for it is contrary to knowledge and to general principle.

But probably it does not really come from fortune, but seems to do so from the above cause. So that this argument does not prove that good fortune comes by nature, but that not all those who seem fortunate succeed because of fortune, but because of nature; nor does it prove that there is no such thing as fortune, nor that fortune is not the cause of anything, but that it is not the cause of all the things of which it seems to be the cause.

Yet someone may raise the question whether fortune is the cause of precisely this—forming a desire for the right thing at the right time. Or, on that showing, will not fortune be the cause of everything—even of thought and deliberation? since it is not the case, that one only deliberates when one has deliberated even previously to that deliberation,nor does one only think when one has previously thought before thinking, and so on to infinity, but there is some starting-point; therefore thought is not the starting-point of thinking, nor deliberation of deliberating. Then what else is, save fortune? It will follow that everything originates from fortune. Or shall we say that there is a certain starting-point outside which there is no other, and that this, merely owing to its being of such and such a nature, can produce a result of such and such a nature?

But this is what we are investigating—what is the starting-point of motion in the spirit? The answer then is clear: as in the universe, so there, everything is moved by God; for in a manner the divine element in us is the cause of all our motions.

And the starting-point of reason is not reason but something superior to reason. What, then, could be superior even to knowledge and to intellect, except God? Not goodness, for goodness is an instrument of the mind; and owing to this, as I was saying some time ago, those are called fortunate who although irrational succeed in whatever they start on. And it does not pay them to deliberate, for they have within them a principle of a kind that is better than mind and deliberation

(whereas the others have reason but have not this): they have inspiration, but they cannot deliberate. For although irrational they attain even what belongs to the prudent and wise—swiftness of divination: only the divination that is based on reason we must not specify, but some of them attain it by experience and others by practice in the use of observation; and these men use the divine. For this quality discerns aright the future as well as the present, and these are the men whose reason is disengaged. This is why the melancholic even have dreams that are true; for it seems that when the reason is disengaged principle has more strength— just as the blind remember better, being released from having their faculty of memory engaged with objects of sight.

It is clear, then, that there are two kinds of good fortune—one divine, owing to which the fortunate man’s success is thought to be due to the aid of God, and this is the man who is successful in accordance with his impulse, while the other is he who succeeds against his impulse. Both persons are irrational. The former kind is more continuous good fortune, the latter is not continuous.