[1227b]
[1]
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 quality1(for a person is not said to have a particular
moral character merely for being fond of sweets or
savories).These things having been
settled, let us say whether goodness makes the purposive choice
correct and the End right in the sense of making the agent choose for
the sake of the proper End, or whether (as some hold) it makes the
rational principle right. But what does this is
self-control—for that saves the rational principle from
being corrupted; and goodness and self-control are different.
But we must speak
about this later, since all who do hold that goodness makes the
rational principle right think so on the ground that that is the
nature of self-control and self-control is a praiseworthy thing.
Having raised this
preliminary question let us continue.
[20]
It is possible to have one's aim right but
to be entirely wrong in one's means to the end aimed at; and it is
possible for the aim to have been wrongly chosen but the means
conducing to it to be right; and for neither to be right. But does goodness decide the
aim2 or the means to it? Well, our
position is that it decides the aim, because this is not a matter of
logical inference or rational principle, but in fact this must be
assumed as a starting-point. For a doctor does not consider whether
his patient ought to be healthy or not, but whether he ought to take
walking exercise or not, and the gymnastic trainer does not consider
whether his pupil ought to be in good condition or not, but whether he
ought to go in for wrestling or not; and similarly no other science either
deliberates about its End. For as in the theoretic sciences the
assumptions are first principles, so in the productive sciences the
End is a starting-point and assumption: since it is required that
so-and-so is to be in good health, if that is to be secured it is
necessary for such-and-such a thing to be provided—just as
in mathematics, if the angles of a triangle are together equal to two
right angles, such and such a consequence necessarily follows.
Therefore the End
is the starting-point of the process of thought, but the conclusion of
the process of thought is the starting-point of action. If, then, of
all rightness either rational principle or goodness is the cause, if
rational principle is not the cause of the rightness of the End, then
the End (though not the means to the End) will be right owing to
goodness. But the End is
the object for which one acts; for every purposive choice is a choice
of something and for some object. The End is therefore the object for
which the thing chosen is the mean, of which End goodness is the
cause3 by its act of choice—though the choice is
not of the End but of the means adopted for the sake of the End.
Therefore though
it belongs to another faculty to hit on the things that must be done
for the sake of the End,
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.