164 Aristotle and his school
only closer to reason than other melancholics; they remain ‘eccentric’ (for
melancholics arefundamentallyabnormal), but to a lesser degree than other
melancholics; yet rather than implying that they are similar to ordinary
people, it means that they distinguish themselves from other people, but
this time in a positive rather than a negative sense. The sentence is construed
in such a way that each clause, so to speak, corrects a possible implication of
the previous one, and this construal may well be interpreted as an explicit
acknowledgement of Aristotle’s concept of melancholy.
As to the question about where to place the melancholicperittonin
Aristotle’s theory of virtue, little can be said with any certainty, due to a
lack of explicit statements on the subject. However, a good starting-point
for the debate would be the principle on which the discussion in the chapter
of theProblematais built, namely that of the ̄ethopoionof thephusis, the
influence which the humanphusis(in the sense of a ‘natural predisposition’
and a ‘physiological constitution’) exerts on the formation of the human
character. It is a fact that the role of nature as a condition or prerequisite
for man’s moral and cognitive behaviour in Aristotle’s ethics and psychol-
ogy is limited.^83 On the other hand, Aristotle repeatedly recognises and
refers to the importance of a physiological balance (aneukrasiabetween
heat and cold in the body) for the proper functioning of sensory percep-
tion, practical deliberation and intellectual thought; the typical notion of
mesotes ̄(which is derived from physiology) plays an important part here.^84
The effect of physical conditions on the psychological and moral state is
usually only mentioned in a negative context, namely that of disorders
resulting from a lack of physiological balance: the fact that melancholics
are repeatedly mentioned in theEthicsand theParva naturaliacan be ex-
plained by the fact that they are particularly suitable for illustrating these
negative effects of the physiological constitution, as they lack this balance
by nature(see Tracy ( 1969 ) 226 – 7 , 256 ). However, this example implies
that what disturbs melancholics on a permanent basis can occur to ev-
ery person occasionally and periodically (hence the analogy with wine and
drunkenness).
Yet the effect of nature in these areas can also manifest itself in a positive
way, in outstanding expressions of a special predisposition, which cannot
be achieved in what Aristotle considers the usual way, namely by force of
habit (ethismosorask ̄esis) and teaching (didache ̄ormathesis ̄ ). To describe this
special predisposition and its expression in ‘particularly mental shrewdness’,
(^83) See the general statements on this theme inEth. Nic. 10. 9 ,Eth. Nic. 2. 1 andEud. Eth. 1. 1 , as well as
Gigon ( 1971 ) 100 ff.; Gigon ( 1985 ) 135 – 8 ; Verbeke ( 1985 ) 247 – 58.
(^84) Of fundamental importance on this theme is the work by Tracy ( 1969 ) in particular 197 – 282.