Section 5: Virtue and vice are in our power

That virtue and vice are up to us

Since we wish for an end or goal, while we deliberate about and choose the way to achieve the goal, actions concerning how to achieve the goal we wish to attain are in accordance with deliberate choice and are voluntary. The activities _[5] of the virtues are also concerned with these things.

Virtue and vice, then, are up to us. For when it is up to us to act, it is also up to us not to act. And when it is up to us to say “no, I won’t do that,” it is also up to us to say “yes, I will do that.” Thus, if it is up to us to do an action when it is noble, not acting when it is shameful is also up to us. Likewise, if it is up to us not to act even when doing so would be noble, _[10] it is also up to us if we do an action when it is shameful. But if it is up to us to do noble or shameful actions, and likewise up to us if we don’t do them, and if this is what being good or being bad means, then whether we are virtuous or vicious is up to us.

The saying that “no one is voluntarily wicked nor involuntarily living happily” seems partly false and partly true. _[15] For no one can involuntarily live happily. But wickedness is voluntary. Otherwise, we would have to dispute what we just said and deny that a person is a starting-point or begetter of his actions as of children. But if these facts are evident and _[20] we cannot refer actions to starting-points of motion other than those in ourselves, the actions whose stating-points are in us must also be in up to us and voluntary.

Both private individuals and legislators themselves bear witness to this. For they punish and take vengeance on people who do wicked actions, unless those who do these wicked actions were forced or did them because of ignorance, and a kind of ignorance they are not themselves responsible for. Likewise, people respect and honor those who do noble actions. People thus act as if they mean _[25] to encourage noble actions and deter others from doing wicked actions. But it doesn’t make sense to encourage people to do things that are neither up to them nor voluntary. We can assume that it is pointless to try and persuade someone not to feel hot, or in pain, or hungry, and so on, since people who are feelings these things are going to feel them no matter what we say. _[30]

In fact, we punish people for ignorance, but only if we think they are responsible for the ignorance; for example, when penalties are doubled in the case of drunkenness. For the starting-point of the motion in cases like drunkenness are in the person himself, since before getting drunk he had the power not to get drunk and his getting drunk was the cause of his ignorance. And we punish those who are ignorant of anything in the laws that they ought to know and that is not difficult. And we also punish in whatever other cases _[1114a1] we think someone was only ignorant due to their own carelessness. We assume it was up to them not to be ignorant, since they had the power of taking the needed care.

But perhaps someone is the sort of person who doesn’t take the needed care. Still, people like that, because of their loose way of living, are themselves responsible for becoming careless people. Likewise, people are responsible for making themselves unjust or intemperate. _[5] In the case of unjust people, they are responsible for making themselves unjust by doing things like cheating, whereas in the case of the intemperate, they are responsible for being intemperate by doing things like spending their time in excessive drinking. For by doing activities in relation to particular things is what makes someone into a person with the corresponding character. This is clear from the case of people training for any competition or action. People train by practicing the relevant activity continually. Only a senseless person would fail to realize that it is from doing activities that dispositions and states of character are produced. _[10]

Furthermore, it is unreasonable to suppose that a person who acts unjustly does not wish to be unjust, or that a person who acts intemperately does not wish to be intemperate. But if a person does things that make him unjust without being ignorant that these make him unjust, then he is voluntarily unjust.

Yet it does not follow that someone can simply stop being unjust and be a just person if he wishes to. It doesn’t work that way with a person who is voluntarily unhealthy because he lives a life that lacks self-control and he doesn’t listen to his doctor. _[15] Such a person can’t just wish himself healthy, even though he voluntarily became unhealthy. In such a case it was open to the person not to become unhealthy. But it is no longer open to him simply to be healthy, since he has thrown away his chance. It’s just like when you have dropped stone down a hole, it is too late to recover it. Yet it was up to you to drop it, since the starting-point of motion was in you. In the same way, in the case of the unjust or the intemperate person, at the beginning it was open to them not to become unjust or intemperate. _[20] Thus, they are unjust and self-indulgent voluntarily. But now that they have become unjust or intemperate, it is not possible for them simply to stop being that way.

But the vices that belong to the soul are not only voluntary, but in some people so are bad habits and qualities that belong to their bodies. Thus, we blame these people. But we don’t blame people who naturally have bad physical qualities. Instead, we blame people who have bad physical qualities due to lack of exercise and taking care of their health. This is also the case when it comes to weakness or disability. No one would admonish _[25] a person who was blind from birth, from a disease, or from a wound. Rather they would pity him. But everyone would blame a person who was blind from drunkenness or from some other form of intemperance. When it comes to bad physical traits, then, we are blamed for those that are up to us, but not for those that are not up to us. And given this, in the other cases the vices that are blamed _[30] will be those that are up to us.

What appears good to a person depends on their character, but their character is still voluntary

Now someone may say that everyone desires what appears good to them, but people have no control over what appears good to them. Instead, the goal that appears good to each person is determined by that person’s character. _[1114b1] My reply is that if each person is somehow responsible for his character, he will also be somehow responsible for what appears good to him. And if someone doesn’t accept my reply, then no one will be responsible for their own bad actions, since everyone would do bad actions because they are ignorant of the goal of their actions, thinking that by doing these evil actions they will get what is best for themselves. _[5] If this were the case, then a person would not aim at a self-chosen end, but would have to be born with a sort of sight that would correctly judge and choose what is truly good. And such a person in whom nature operated correctly would naturally see what is truly good. This would be what is greatest and most noble, and what we could not get or learn from another, but would have to have given us at birth. _[10] To have this good and noble disposition by nature would be the perfect and true excellence of natural endowment. But if this were true, then how would virtue be more any more voluntary than vice? To both good and bad people alike, the goal would appear and be fixed by nature or whatever it is. And it is by referring everything else to their goals _[15] that people do whatever they do.

If the goal does not appear good to each person by nature, but how it appears in some way depends on the person, then virtue and vice will be voluntary. Or if the ultimate goal of life is natural, but the good person voluntarily adopts what leads to attaining the goal, then virtue and vice are voluntary. For in the case of the bad person, _[20] what depends on him in his actions is equally present, even if it is not present in his goal. Thus, if as is asserted, the virtues are voluntary–since we are ourselves somehow partly responsible for our character, and it is by being persons of a certain sort that we suppose the goal to be whatever it is–the vices will also be voluntary, since the same is true of them. _[25]

Conclusion

We have now stated in outline what the virtues are in general and have stated their genus, namely, that they are middle conditions or means, that they are dispositions, and that they naturally tend to the doing of the actions by which they are produced. Further, we have shown that they are up to us and voluntary, and have shown that they act as the right rule prescribes.

But actions and dispositions are not voluntary in the same way. _[30] For we control our actions from beginning to the end, if we know the particular facts of the situations in which we act. But when it comes to our character or dispositions, we control the beginning while the gradual process of their development is not obvious, any more than is the process by which an illness, but though we control the beginning of our states of character the gradual progress is not obvious any more _[1115a1] than it is in the case of illnesses. But because it was up to us to use our dispositions to act or not act in accordance with them, dispositions are therefore voluntary.

Let us take up particular virtues, then, and say which they are, what sort of things they are concerned with, and how they are concerned with them. At the same time, it will become clear how many virtues there are.