Philosophic Classics From Plato to Derrida

192 ARISTOTLE

action.* What affirmation and negation are in the realm of thought, pursuit and avoid-

ance are in the realm of desire. Therefore, since moral virtue is a characteristic involv-

ing choice, and since choice is a deliberate desire, it follows that, if the choice is to be

good, the reasoning must be true and the desire correct; that is, reasoning must affirm

what desire pursues. This then is the kind of thought and the kind of truth that is prac-

tical and concerned with action. On the other hand, in the kind of thought involved in

theoretical knowledge and not in action or production, the good and the bad state are,

respectively, truth and falsehood; in fact, the attainment of truth is the function of the

intellectual faculty as a whole. But in intellectual activity concerned with action, the

good state is truth in harmony with correct desire.

Choice is the starting point of action: it is the source of motion but not the end for

the sake of which we act, i.e., the final cause. The starting point of choice, however, is

desire and reasoning directed toward some end. That is why there cannot be choice

either without intelligence and thought or without some moral characteristic; for good

and bad action in human conduct are not possible without thought and character. Now

thought alone moves nothing; only thought which is directed to some end and con-

cerned with action can do so. And it is this kind of thought also which initiates produc-

tion. For whoever produces something produces it for an end. The product he makes is

not an end in an unqualified sense, but an end only in a particular relation and of a par-

ticular operation. Only the goal of action is an end in the unqualified sense: for the good

life is an end, and desire is directed toward this. Therefore, choice is either intelligence

motivated by desire or desire operating through thought, and it is as a combination of

these two that man is a starting point of action.

(No object of choice belongs to the past: no one chooses to have sacked Troy. For

deliberation does not refer to the past but only to the future and to what is possible; and

it is not possible that what is past should not have happened. Therefore, Agathon is right

when he says:

One thing alone is denied even to god:

to make undone the deeds which have been done.**)

As we have seen, truth is the function of both intellectual parts [of the soul].

Therefore, those characteristics which permit each part to be as truthful as possible will

be the virtues of the two parts.

3. The Qualities by Which Truth Is Attained: (a) Pure Science or Knowledge:So
   let us make a fresh beginning and discuss these characteristics once again. Let us take
   for granted that the faculties by which the soul expresses truth by way of affirmation or
   denial are five in number: art, science, practical wisdom, theoretical wisdom, and intel-
   ligence. Conviction and opinion do not belong here, for they may be false.
   What pure science or scientific knowledge is—in the precise sense of the word
   and not in any of its wider uses based on mere similarity—will become clear in the
   following. We are all convinced that what we knowscientifically cannot be otherwise
   than it is; but of facts which can possibly be other than they are we do not know whether

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*Throughout the Ethics,Aristotle uses praxis(“action”) as equivalent to “moral action,” “conduct,”

and assumes animals are not capable of this.

**Agathon was a tragic poet who flourished in the last quarter of the fifth century B.C. Plato’s

Symposiumis set in his house.

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