Section 8: Lack of self-control compared with virtue and vice

The intemperate person, as was said, is not prone to repent. For he stands by his deliberate choice. But person who lacks self-control is likely _[30] to repent or have regrets. This is why the position is not as it was expressed in the formulation of the problem, but the intemperate person is incurable and the person lacking self-control curable. For wickedness is like a disease such as dropsy or consumption, while lack of self-control is like epilepsy. The former is a continuous wickedness, while the latter intermittent. And generally lack of self-control and vice are different in kind. _[35] Vice is unconscious of itself, the lack of self-control is not.

Among those who lack self-control, those who become temporarily beside themselves are better than those who have _[1151a1] the reason but do not stand by it. For the latter are defeated by a weaker passion, and do not act without previous deliberation like the others. For someone who lacks self-control is like those who get drunk quickly with only a little wine (that is, on less than most people).

Evidently, then, _[5] the lack of self-control is not a vice (although perhaps it is in a qualified sense). For the lack of self-control is contrary to one’s deliberate choice while vice is in accordance with one’s deliberate choice. Nonetheless, lack of self-control and vice are similar in respect of the actions they lead to. As the saying of Demodocus about the Milesians goes, “the Milesians are not stupid, but they do the things that stupid people do.” So too people who lack self-control are not unjust people, but they will do unjust actions. _[10]

Now, since someone who lacks self-control is prone to pursue (although not on the basis of his conviction) bodily pleasures that are excessive and contrary to reason, while the intemperate person is convinced because he is the sort of person to pursue them, it is on the contrary the former that is easily persuaded to change his mind, while the latter is not. For virtue and vice respectively preserve and destroy the principle of action, _[15] and in actions the final cause is the principle, as the hypotheses are in mathematics. Neither in the case of mathematics nor in the case of action is it argument that teaches the principles. Instead, in the case of action at least, virtue, either natural or produced by habituation, is what teaches right opinion about the principle. Such a person as this, then, is temperate. His contrary is intemperate.

But there is also a sort of person who is carried away as a result of emotions _[20] and contrary to right reason–a person controlled by his feelings so that he does not act according to right reason, but not controlled to the extent of making him ready to believe that he ought to pursue such pleasures without reserve: this is the person who lacks self-control. This is also a person who is better than the intemperate person, and who is not bad without qualification. For the best thing in him, the principle, _[25] is preserved.

And contrary to the person who lacks self-control is another kind of person, the one who holds to his convictions and is not carried away, at least as a result of emotions. It is evident from these considerations that the latter is a good state and the former a bad one.