NICOMACHEANETHICS(BOOKVII) 207
drunk. But this is precisely the condition of people who are in the grip of the emotions.
Fits of passion, sexual appetites, and some other such passions actually cause palpable
changes in the body, and in some cases even produce madness. Now it is clear that we
must attribute to the morally weak a condition similar to that of men who are asleep,
mad, or drunk. That the words they utter spring from knowledge [as to what is good] is
no evidence to the contrary. People can repeat geometrical demonstrations and verses of
Empedocles even when affected by sleep, madness, and drink; and beginning students
can reel off the words they have heard, but they do not yet know the subject. The subject
must grow to be part of them, and that takes time. We must, therefore, assume that a
man who displays moral weakness repeats the formulae [of moral knowledge] in the
same way as an actor speaks his lines.
Further,(d)we may also look at the cause [of moral weakness] from the view-
point of the science of human nature, in the following way. [In the practical syllogism,]
one of the premises, the universal, is a current belief, while the other involves particular
facts which fall within the domain of sense perception. When two premises are com-
bined into one, [i.e., when the universal rule is realized in a particular case,] the soul is
thereupon bound to affirm the conclusion, and if the premises involve action, the soul is
bound to perform this act at once. For example, if [the premises are]: “Everything sweet
ought to be tasted” and “This thing before me is sweet” (“this thing” perceived as an
individual particular object), a man who is able [to taste] and is not prevented is bound
to act accordingly at once.
Now, suppose that there is within us one universal opinion forbidding us to taste
[things of this kind], and another [universal] opinion which tells us that everything
sweet is pleasant, and also [a concrete perception], determining our activity, that the
particular thing before us is sweet; and suppose further that the appetite [for pleasure]
happens to be present. [The result is that] one opinion tells us to avoid that thing, while
appetite, capable as it is of setting in motion each part of our body, drives us to it. [This
is the case we have been looking for, the defeat of reason in moral weakness.] Thus it
turns out that a morally weak man acts under the influence of some kind of reasoning
and opinion, an opinion which is not intrinsically but only incidentally opposed to right
reason; for it is not opinion but appetite that is opposed to right reason.* And this
explains why animals cannot be morally weak: they do not have conceptions of univer-
sals, but have only the power to form mental images and memory of particulars.
How is the [temporary] ignorance of a morally weak person dispelled and how
does he regain his [active] knowledge [of what is good]? The explanation is the same as
it is for drunkenness and sleep, and it is not peculiar to the affect of moral weakness. To
get it we have to go to the students of natural science.
The final premise, consisting as it does in an opinion about an object perceived by
the senses, determines our action. When in the grip of emotion, a morally weak man
either does not have this premise, or he has it not in the sense of knowing it, but in the
sense of uttering it as a drunken man may utter verses of Empedocles. [Because he is
not in active possession of this premise,] and because the final [concrete] term of his
15202530351147 b5*The point is this: there is a kind of reasoning involved in the actions of a morally weak person: such
a person starts out with the opinion that everything sweet is pleasant, finds a particular sweet thing, and knows
that the thing is pleasant. But this person also has right reason, which warns not to taste everything sweet.
However, the appetite for pleasure, taking hold of the opinion that everything sweet is pleasant, transforms
this opinion into the action of tasting. What is contrary to right reason (i.e., contrary to the knowledge that not
everything sweet should be tasted) is not the person’s opinion (that sweet things are pleasant) but rather the
person’s appetite for pleasure.
10