Section 3: Virtue is concerned with pleasure and pain

We must take the pleasure or pain that supervene upon a person’s actions to be a sign of that person’s states of character. For the person who not only abstains from bodily pleasures but actually enjoys abstaining is a temperate person, _[5] while the person who is annoyed at having to abstain from bodily pleasures is intemperate. Likewise, the person who stands his ground against things that are frightening and delights in doing this, or at least is not pained, is a courageous person, while the person who is pained at having to stand his ground is a coward. For moral virtue is concerned with pleasures and pains.

It is because of the pleasure that we do bad things, and because of the pain _[10] that we abstain from noble ones. Hence we ought to have been brought up in a certain way from the time we are young, as Plato says, so as both to enjoy and be pained by the things that we ought, for this is the right sort of moral education.

Again, if the virtues are concerned with actions and emotions, and every emotion and every action is accompanied by pleasure and pain, for this reason also virtue will be concerned _[15] with pleasures and pains. This is indicated also by the fact that punishment is inflicted by means of pleasure and pain. For punishment is a kind of cure, and cures are naturally brought about by means of contraries.

Again, as we just said, every state of soul has a nature relative to and concerned with the kind of things by which it tends to be made worse or better. _[20] But it is because of pleasures and pains that people become bad–by pursuing and avoiding pleasures and pains, either pursuing or avoiding pleasures and pains they shouldn’t, or when they shouldn’t, or in a manner they shouldn’t, or by going wrong in other similar ways that could be distinguished. Hence some people define the virtues as a sort of being unaffected or being at rest. But this isn’t a good way to define the virtues if these people speak too absolutely, _[25] and don’t add “as we should,” “as we should not,” “when we should or should not,” and the other things that could be added.

We assume, then, that virtue is the sort of state of character that tends to do what is best with regard to pleasures and pains, and vice does the contrary.

The following facts also may show us that virtue and vice are concerned with these same things. There are three objects of choice and three _[30] of avoidance: what is noble, what is advantageous, and what is pleasant, and their contraries, what is shameful, what is harmful, the painful. Concerning all of these the good person tends to go right and the bad person to go wrong, and especially about pleasure. For pleasure is common to animals, and it also accompanies all objects of choice. _[35] For even the noble and the advantageous also appear pleasant.

Again, _[1105a1] pleasure has grown up with us all from our infancy. That is why it is difficult to rub out this feeling, engrained as it is in our life. And we measure even our actions, some of us more and others less, by the standard of pleasure and pain. For this reason, then, our whole inquiry must _[5] be concerned with these, since to feel pleasure and pain rightly or wrongly has no small effect on our actions.

Again, it is harder to fight with pleasure than with anger, to use Heraclitus’ phrase, but both skill and virtue are always concerned with what is harder. For even what is good is better when it is harder. This is also why _[10] the whole concern of both virtue and political theory is with pleasures and pains. For the person who uses pleasures and pains well will be good, he who uses them badly will be bad.

Let us say, then, that virtue is concerned with pleasures and pains. And that by the actions from which virtue arises are also those from which it is both increased and, if they are done differently, destroyed. And further let us say that the actions from which _[15] virtue arose are also those in which it actualizes itself.