# Characters Other Than Virtue and Vice explained — Nicomachean Ethics

> Chapter companion for Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle.

## 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.

## Character check-ins

### 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 lines

> 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._

## Links

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