214 ARISTOTLE
A man who loves amusement is also commonly regarded as being self-indulgent,
but he is actually soft. For amusement is relaxation, inasmuch as it is respite from work,
and a lover of amusement is a person who goes in for relaxation to excess.
One kind of moral weakness is impetuosity and another is a lack of strength.
People of the latter kind deliberate but do not abide by the results of their delib-
eration, because they are overcome by emotion, while the impetuous are driven on
by emotion, because they do not deliberate. [If they deliberated, they would not be
driven on so easily,] for as those who have just been tickled are immune to being
tickled again, so some people are not overcome by emotion, whether pleasant or
painful, when they feel and see it coming and have roused themselves and their
power of reasoning in good time. Keen and excitable persons are the most prone to
the impetuous kind of moral weakness. Swiftness prevents the keen and vehemence
the excitable from waiting for reason to guide them, since they tend to be led by their
imagination.- Moral Weakness and Self-Indulgence:A self-indulgent man, as we stated, is
one who feels no regret, since he abides by the choice he has made. A morally weak
person, on the other hand, always feels regret. Therefore, the formulation of the prob-
lem, as we posed it above, does not correspond to the facts: it is a self-indulgent man
who cannot be cured, but a morally weak man is curable. For wickedness is like a
disease such as dropsy or consumption, while moral weakness resembles epilepsy: the
former is chronic, the latter intermittent. All in all, moral weakness and vice are gener-
ically different from each other. A vicious man is not aware of his vice, but a morally
weak man knows his weakness.
Among the morally weak, those who lose themselves in [emotion, i.e., the
impetuous,] are better than those who have a rational principle but do not abide by it,
[i.e., those who lack strength]. For they are overcome by a lesser emotion and do not
yield without previous deliberation, as the impetuous do. A man who has this kind of
moral weakness resembles those who get drunk quickly and on little wine, or on less
wine than most people do.
That moral weakness is not a vice [in the strict sense] is now evident, though in a
certain sense it is perhaps one. For moral weakness violates choice, whereas vice is in
accordance with choice. Nevertheless, they are similar in the actions to which they lead,
just as Demodocus said of the Milesians:
The Milesians are no stupid crew, except that they do what the stupid do.*Similarly, the morally weak are not unjust, but they will act like unjust men.
A morally weak man is the kind of person who pursues bodily pleasures to excess
and contrary to right reason, though he is not persuaded [that he ought to do so]; the
self-indulgent, on the other hand, is persuaded to pursue them because he is the kind of
man who does so. This means that it is the former who is easily persuaded to change his
mind, but the latter is not. For virtue or excellence preserves and wickedness destroys
the initiating motive or first cause [of action], and in actions the initiating motive or first
cause is the end at which we aim, as the hypotheses are in mathematics. For neither in
mathematics nor in moral matters does reasoning teach us the principles or starting
points; it is virtue, whether natural or habitual, that inculcates right opinion about the202530351151 a
51015*Demodocus wrote lampooning epigrams in the sixth century B.C.