Section 2: Discussion of puzzles concerning self-control

Now we may ask how someone who judges rightly can lack self-control.

Some people say that it is impossible for someone to lack self-control when he has knowledge. For Socrates thought it would be strange if when knowledge was in a person something else could master it and drag it around like a slave. For Socrates was entirely opposed to the view in question, holding that _[25] there is no such thing as the lack of self-control. No one, he said, when he judges acts against what he judges best–people only act against what is best because of ignorance.

Now this view plainly contradicts the observed facts, and we must inquire about what happens to such people–if they act because of ignorance, in what sense are they ignorant? For it is evident that someone who lacks self-control does not, before he gets into this condition, think he should act in this way. _[30]

But there are some people who concede some of Socrates’ views on this issue but not others. Some admit that there is nothing stronger than knowledge. But they don’t admit that no one acts contrary to what has seemed to him the better course of action. Therefore, they say that the person who lacks self-control has opinion, rather than knowledge, at the time when pleasures get control of his actions. _[35]

But if it is opinion and not knowledge–if it is not a strong conviction that resists but a weak one, as in the case of people _[1146a1] who hesitate–we sympathize with their failure to stand by such convictions against strong desires. But we do not sympathize with wickedness, nor with any of the other blameworthy states.

Is it then prudence whose resistance is mastered? For prudence is the strongest of all dispositions. But that would be strange, since the same person will be _[5] at once prudent and lacking in self-control. But no one would say that it is characteristic of a prudent person to do willingly the most shameful actions. Besides, it has been shown before that the person of prudence is one who will act (since he is concerned with the concrete details of action) and who has the other virtues.

Further, if self-control involves having strong bad desires, _[10] someone who is temperate will not be self-controlled, nor will someone who is self-controlled be temperate. For a temperate person will have neither excessive nor bad desires. But the self-controlled person must. For if one’s desires are good, the state of character that restrains us from following them is bad, so that not all self-control will be good. Whereas _[15] if one’s desires are weak and not bad, there is nothing admirable in resisting them, just as if they are weak and bad, there is nothing great in resisting them.

Further, if self-control makes someone ready to stand by any and every opinion, it is bad; for example, if it makes him stand even by a false opinion. And if the lack of self-control makes someone prone to abandon any and every opinion, there will be a good lack of self-control, of which Neoptolemus in Sophocles’ Philoctetes will be an instance. For he is to be praised for not standing by _[20] what Odysseus persuaded him to do, because he was pained at telling a lie.

Further, a certain sophistic argument presents a puzzle. (For because of some people’s wish to expose paradoxical results arising from an opponent’s view, in order that they may be admired when they succeed, the resulting demonstration turns into a puzzle. For thought is bound tight when it will not rest because the conclusion _[25] does not satisfy it, and cannot advance because it cannot refute the argument.) There is an argument from which it follows that foolishness together with the lack of self-control is virtue. For a person does the opposite of what he judges he should do owing to his lack of self-control, but what he judges to be evil and something he shouldn’t do is actually what is good, and consequently he ends up doing what is actually good instead of _[30] what is actually evil.

Further, a person who on the basis of his convictions does, pursues, and chooses what is pleasant would seem to be better than someone who does so as a result not of reasoning but of a lack of self-control. For the person who does it on the basis of his convictions is easier to cure, since he can be persuaded to change his mind. But to the person who lacks self-control may be applied the proverb “when water chokes, what can one wash it down with?” If _[35] he had been persuaded of the rightness of what he does, he would have desisted when he was persuaded to change his mind. _[1146b1] But now he has already been persuaded and nevertheless does something different from what he thinks is right.

Further, if the lack of self-control and self-control are concerned with any and every kind of object, who is it that lacks self-control in the unqualified sense? No one has all the forms of the lack of self-control, but we say some people lack self-control without qualification. _[5] 

These are some of the puzzles that arise. Some of these points must be refuted and the others left standing, since the solution of the difficulty is the discovery of the truth.