Ethically Yours

More quotes…

"Since virtue is concerned with passions and actions, and on voluntary passions and actions praise and blame are bestowed, on those that are involuntary pardon, and sometimes also pity, to distinguish the voluntary and the involuntary is presumable necessary for those who are studying the nature of virtue, and useful also for legislators with a view to the assigning both of honours and of punishments." (110)

"Both the terms, then, ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary,’ must be used with reference to the moment of action. Now the man acts voluntarily; for the principle that moves the instrumental parts of the body in such actions is in him, and the things of which the moving principle is in a man himself are in his power to do or not to do. Such actions, therefore, are voluntary, but in the abstract perhaps involuntary; for no one would choose any such act in itself." (111)

"What sort of act, then, should be called compulsory?" (111)

"Acting by reason of ignorance seems also to be different from acting in ignorance; for the man who is drunk or in a rage is thought to act as a result not of ignorance but of one of the causes mentioned, yet not knowingly but in ignorance." (112)

"That which is done under compulsion or by reason of ignorance is involuntary.’ (112)

"Choice, then, seems to be voluntary, but not the same thing as the voluntary; the latter extends more widely. For both children and the lower animals share voluntary action, but not in choice, and acts done on the spur of the moment we describe as voluntary, but not as chosen." (113)

"Do we deliberate about everything, and is everything a possible subject of deliberation, or is deliberation impossible about some things?" (114)

"We deliberate not about ends but about means. For a doctor does not deliberate whether he shall heal, nor an orator whether he shall persuade, nor a statesman whether he shall produce law and order, not does any one else deliberate about his end." (114)

"We therefore choose the pleasant as a good, and avoid pain as an evil." (116)

"In all the states of character we have mentioned, as in all other matters, there is a mark to which the man who has the rule looks, and heightens or relaxes his activity accordingly, and there is a standard which determines the mean states which we say are intermediate between excess and defect, being in accordance with the right rule…but if a man had only this knowledge he would be none the wiser." (118)

"The virtue of a thing is relative to its proper work." (119)

"Let it be assumed that the states by virtue of which the soul possesses truth by way of affirmation or denial are five in number, i.e., art, scientific knowledge, practical wisdom, philosophic wisdom, intuitive reason; we do not include judgment and opinion because in these we may be mistaken." (119)

"The object of scientific knowledge is of necessity." (119)

"All art is concerned with coming into being…a state concerned with making." (120)

"Practical wisdom…is a true and reasoned state of capacity to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for man." (120-121)

"Philosophic wisdom…is intuitive reason that grasps the first principles." (121)

"Wisdom must be intuitive reason combined with scientific knowledge." (122)

"Man is not the best thing in the world." (122)

"Practical wisdom is concerned with action." (122)

"When young men become geometricians and mathematicians and wise in matters like these, it is thought that a young man of practical wisdom cannot be found. The cause is that such wisdom is concerned not only with universals but with particulars, which become familiar from experience, but a young man has no experience, for it is length of time that gives experience; indeed one might ask this question too, why a boy may become a mathematician, but not a philosopher or a physicist. It is because the objects of mathematics exist by abstraction, while the first principles of these other subjects come from experience, and because young men have no conviction about the latter but merely use the proper language, while the essence of mathematical objects is plain enough to them?" (123)

"Practical wisdom issues commands, since its end is what ought to be done or not to be done; but understanding only judges." (125)