Aristotle on melancholy 149
Aristotle distinguishes between two types of lack of self-control: on the one
hand recklessness (propeteia), and on the other hand weakness (astheneia).
According to Aristotle the difference is that the weak person thinks and
deliberates, yet does not persist with the conclusions of his deliberations,
whereas the reckless person does not think or deliberate at all. In both
cases this failure is caused by passion (pathos). As examples of the reckless
type of lack of self-control Aristotle mentions ‘the irritable’ (hoi oxeis) and
‘the melancholics’ (hoi melancholikoi) in lines 25 ff.; both ‘do not wait for
rational deliberation’. In the case of the former (hoi oxeis) this is due to their
speed (tachutes ̄), in the case of the latter (hoi melancholikoi) it is due to their
intensity (sphodrot ̄es), that is, their inclination to follow their imagination
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The argument that melancholics lack rational thought corresponds to
statements of the same nature in theParva naturalia(in particularOn
Divination in Sleep) and theEudemian Ethics. The ‘intensity’^37 that Aristotle
mentions as explanation here was mentioned inOn Divination in Sleep,
where it was called typical for their strong imagination; in the next sentence
it is specified in the sense of their inclination ‘to follow imagination’ (cf.
for thisMem. 453 a 15 ). The relationship between imagination and passion
is not made explicit in the text of theNicomachean Ethics, but it consists
in the fact thatphantasiapresents the perceived object as something to
be pursued or avoided (and therefore it can produce pleasure or pain).^38
Melancholics are inclined to act upon the objects of their imagination
without first holding them against the light of reasonK( "
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This typology of lack of self-control returns in 1151 a 1 – 5 , where the
reckless are simply calledhoi ekstatikoi, ‘those who are prone to get beside
themselves’.^39 Recklessness is said to be better than weakness, for a weak
person is susceptible to even slighter passions and, unlike the reckless per-
son, does not act without prior deliberation. Further on (in 1152 a 17 ff.) it
is argued that someone who lacks self-control is not really evil or unjust
(despite his evil and unjust actions), for he has no evil intentions: ‘for the
one does not follow his intentions, yet, by contrast, the melancholic does
not deliberate at all’. In this textho melancholikosis therefore prototypical
(^37) The translation by Dirlmeier ( 1956 ) 157 , ‘ein unheimlich brodelndes Temperament’ is entirely
unfounded.
(^38) Cf. Tracy ( 1969 ) 251 – 3 and Nussbaum ( 1978 ) 232 – 41.
(^39) Theekstatikoiare also discussed inDiv. somn. 464 a 25 , i.e. in the same context as the melancholics,
yet without being identified with them (see n. 34 above; on the relation between ecstatics and
melancholics see Croissant ( 1932 ) 38 – 41 );ekstasis, however, is mentioned inPr. 30. 1 ( 953 b 14 – 15 )as
an expression of the heating of black bile. For this tendency in the chapter from theProblematasee
n. 18 above.