Nicomachean Ethics · Chapter
Characters Other Than Virtue and Vice explained
This chapter examines moral character types beyond virtue and vice, including continence, incontinence, softness, hardiness, and brutality.
What happens
This chapter examines moral character types beyond virtue and vice, including continence, incontinence, softness, hardiness, and brutality. It distinguishes the continent man (who holds to reason despite bad desires) from the incontinent man (who knows the right but is swayed by passion), and contrasts both with the profligate and the temperate. The discussion addresses Socratic objections to incontinence, the role of knowledge and ignorance, and the relation of these states to prudence and moral character.
Themes in this chapter
Virtue and Character
Explores moral character types beyond virtue and vice, including continence and incontinence as intermediate states.
Practical Wisdom and Reason
Examines the role of reason and knowledge in continence and incontinence, and the impossibility of prudence coexisting with incontinence.
Characters to notice
- Aristotle
Primary author; defines and distinguishes continence, incontinence, and related character types.
- Socrates
Referenced for his view that incontinence does not exist, as knowledge cannot be mastered by passion.
- Neoptolemus
Example from Sophocles' Philoctetes: abandons his resolution for a noble pleasure (truth).
- Ulysses
Persuaded Neoptolemus to lie in the Philoctetes.
- Homer
Quoted regarding Hector's godlike excellence as opposite of brutality.
Key passages
“For it is the nature both of the continent and of the temperate man never to do anything contrary to reason for the sake of bodily pleasures; but whereas the former has, the latter has not bad desires, and whereas the latter is of such a nature as to take no delight in what is contrary to reason, the former is of such a nature as to take delight in, but not to be swayed by such things.”
Both the continent and the temperate person avoid acting against reason for bodily pleasures, but the continent person still has bad desires while the temperate person does not; the temperate person naturally finds no pleasure in what is contrary to reason, whereas the continent person does find pleasure but is not led by it.
Key distinction between continence and temperance.
“An incontinent man, then, may be compared to a state which always makes excellent decrees and has good laws, but never carries them out; as Anaxandrides jestingly says— 'So willed the state that takes no heed of laws.' The bad man, on the contrary, may be compared to a state that carries out its laws, but has bad laws.”
The incontinent person is like a city with good laws that are never enforced, while the bad person is like a city that enforces bad laws.
Analogy illustrating the difference between incontinence and vice.