204 ARISTOTLE
- Problems in the Current Beliefs About Moral Strength and Moral Weakness:
The problems we might raise are these. [As to (3):] how can a man be morally weak in
his actions, when his basic assumption is correct [as to what he should do]? Some peo-
ple claim that it is impossible for him to be morally weak if he has knowledge [of what
he ought to do]. Socrates, for example, believed that it would be strange if, when a man
possesses knowledge, something else should overpower it and drag it about like a slave.
In fact, Socrates was completely opposed to the view [that a man may know what is
right but do what is wrong], and did not believe that moral weakness exists. He claimed
that no one acts contrary to what is best in the conviction [that what he is doing is bad],
but through [ignorance of the fact that it is bad].
Now this theory is plainly at variance with the observed facts, and one ought to
investigate the emotion [involved in the acts of a morally weak man]: if it comes about
through ignorance, what manner of ignorance is it? For evidently a man who is morally
weak in his actions does not think [that he ought to act the way he does] before he is in
the grip of emotion.
There are some people* who accept only certain points of Socrates’ theory, but
reject others. They agree that nothing is better or more powerful than knowledge,but
they do not agree that no one acts contrary to what he thoughtwas the better thing to do.
Therefore, they say, a [morally weak person] does not have knowledge but opinion
when he is overpowered by pleasures.
However, if it really is opinion and not knowledge, if, in other words, the basic
conviction which resists [the emotion] is not strong but weak, as it is when people are in
doubt, we can forgive a man for not sticking to his opinions in the face of strong
appetites. But we do not forgive wickedness or anything else that deserves blame [as
moral weakness does. Hence it must be something stronger than opinion which is over-
powered]. But does that mean that it is practical wisdom** which resists [the appetite]?
This, after all, is the strongest [kind of conviction]. But that would be absurd: for it
would mean that the same man will have practical wisdom and be morally weak at the
same time, and there is no one who would assert that it is the mark of a man of practical
wisdom to perform voluntarily the basest actions. In addition, it has been shown before
that a man of practical wisdom is a man of action he is concerned with ultimate partic-
ulars that he possesses the other virtues.
Furthermore, [as regards (4)]: if being a morally strong person involves having
strong and base appetites, a self-controlled man will not be morally strong nor a morally
strong man self-controlled. It is out of character for a self-controlled person to have
excessive or base appetites. Yet a morally strong man certainly must have such
appetites: for if the appetites are good, the characteristic which prevents him from fol-
lowing them is bad, and that would mean that moral strength is not always morally
good. If, on the other hand, our appetites are weak and not base, there is nothing extra-
ordinary in resisting them, nor is it a great achievement if they are base and weak.
Again, [to take (1) and (2),] if moral strength makes a person abide by any and
every opinion, it is a bad thing; for example, if it makes him persist in a false opinion.
And if moral weakness makes a man abandon any and every opinion, moral weakness
will occasionally be morally good, as, for example, in the case of Neoptolemus in
Sophocles’Philoctetes.Neoptolemus deserves praise when he does not abide by the
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5*I.e., Plato’s followers in the Academy.
**The point is this: if the kind of conviction a morally weak man has is neither knowledge nor a weak
conviction, it must be a strong conviction, and practical wisdom is such a conviction.101520