Section 2: Differentiating choosing from other things we do

Since both what is voluntary and what is involuntary have been determined, we must next discuss deliberate choice. For choice is considered closely bound up _[5] with virtue and to better enable us to discern people’s characters than actions do.

Deliberate choice, then, seems to be something voluntary. But it’s not the same thing as what is voluntary, since the voluntary the latter extends more widely. For both children and non-human animals engage in voluntary action. But they do not engage in deliberate choice. Likewise, actions done on the spur of the moment we describe as voluntary, but not as deliberately chosen.

Those who say _[10] a choice is a desire, a passion, a wish, or a kind of opinion don’t seem to be right. For choice is not something non-rational creatures engage in, but they do have desires and passions.

Further, a person who lacks self-control acts according to his desire, but not on the basis of his deliberate choice; while the self-controlled person does act on the basis of his deliberate choice, but not according to his desire. Again, desire _[15] is contrary to choice, but desire is not contrary to desire. Similarly, desires are for what is pleasurable and what is painful. But choice is not of what is pleasurable and what is painful.

Still less is choice a passion. For actions done on the basis of passion are thought least of all to be those that one deliberately chooses.

But neither is choice a wish, although it seems a close relative of wishing. But a choice _[20] cannot be of what’s impossible. And, and if anyone said he chose what was impossible he would seem silly. But it makes sense to wish even for what is impossible. For example, it makes sense to wish for immortality. Also, wish cam relate to things that could in no way be brought about by one’s own efforts. For example, we may wish that a particular actor or athlete should win in a competition, even though we have no control over that at all. But no one chooses things of this sort. Instead, we only choose what we think could be brought about _[25] by our own efforts.

Again, wish is more for a goal, whereas choice is of what leads to the goal. For instance, we wish to be healthy, but we choose to do actions that will make us healthy, and we wish to live a happy life and say we wish to live a happy life. But we can’t really say we choose to live a happy life, since choice seems to be of things that are in our own power.

For this reason, then, _[30] choice cannot be an opinion. For an opinion is thought to relate to all kinds of things, no less to eternal things and impossible things than to things in our own power. And opinions are true or false, but they aren’t good or bad, while a choice is good or bad.

Perhaps no one even says that choice and opinion are the same thing in general. But choice is not even identical with any specific kind of opinion. For _[1112a1] by choosing what is good or bad we are people of a certain character, which is not the case when it comes to holding certain opinions. And we choose to get or avoid something good or bad, but we have opinions about what a thing is or whom it is good for or how it is good for him. We can’t really be said to have an opinion to get or avoid something. Also, _[5] choice is praised for being of the right thing, or for being correct in this sense; whereas an opinion is praised for being true. And we choose what we most know to be good, but we have opinions about what we don’t really know, and it is not the same people that are thought to make the best choices and to have the best opinions, but some are thought to have fairly good opinions, but because of vice they choose what they _[10] should not. Whether opinion precedes choice or accompanies it makes no difference. For that’s not the question we’re considering. What we’re considering is whether choice is identical with some kind of opinion.

Then what is choice? Or what kind of thing is it, since it is none of the things we have mentioned? It seems to be voluntary, but not every action that is voluntary is something deliberately chosen. Is it what has been reached on the basis of previous deliberation at least? At any rate, _[15] choice involves a reason and thought. Even the name [in Greek] seems to suggest that it is what is chosen prior to other things.