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NE 9.10: all prudent are temperate
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Thomas
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Jan 14, 2007 09:36 PST
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So we have the following categories:
1) temperate = prudent, right reasons, right actions naturally on the mark
2) continent: right reasons, right actions, but require self-control of
their passions to reach the mean
3) incontinent: right reasons, wrong actions, lack of control
4) intemperate: wrong reasons, wrong actions
A prudent person would have to be more than simply continent, because (see
1140b15) he never loses sight of the moral principles, does not waver, and
that would require a mastery without distracting desires, even if these were
not acted on, I think.
Thomas
1152a6-1152a36:
X. Again, the same person cannot be at once unrestrained and prudent, for it
has been shown that Prudence is inseparable from Moral Virtue.
[2] Also, Prudence does not consist only in knowing what is right, but also
in doing it; but the unrestrained man does not do the right. (Cleverness
[praktikos] on the other hand is not incompatible with Unrestraint--which is
why it is sometimes thought that some people are prudent and yet
unrestrained--because Cleverness differs from Prudence in the manner
explained in our first discourse : as being intellectual faculties they are
closely akin, but they differ in that Prudence involves deliberate choice.)
[3] Nor indeed does the unrestrained man even know the right in the sense of
one who consciously exercises his knowledge, but only as a man asleep or
drunk can be said to know something. Also, although he errs willingly (for
he knows in a sense both what he is doing and what end he is aiming at) ,
yet he is not wicked, for his moral choice is sound, so that he is only
half-wicked. And he is not unjust, for he does not deliberately design to do
harm, since the one type of unrestrained person does not keep to the resolve
he has formed after deliberation, and the other, the excitable type, does
not deliberate at all.In fact the unrestrained man resembles a state which
passes all the proper enactments, and has good laws, but which never keeps
its laws: the condition of things satirized by Anaxandrides--
The state, that recks not of the laws, would fain . .
[4] whereas the bad man is like a state which keeps its laws but whose laws
are bad.
Both Self-restraint and Unrestraint are a matter of extremes as compared
with the character of the mass of mankind; the restrained man shows more and
the unrestrained man less steadfastness than most men are capable of.
Reformation is more possible with that type of Unrestraint which is
displayed by persons of an excitable temperament than it is with those who
deliberate as to what they ought to do, but do not keep to the resolution
they form. And those who have become unrestrained through habit are more
easily cured than those who are unrestrained by nature, since habit is
easier to change than nature; for even habit is hard to change, precisely
because it is a sort of nature, as Evenus says:
Mark me, my friend, 'tis long-continued training,
And training in the end becomes men's nature.
[5] We have now discussed the nature of Self-restraint and Unrestraint, and
of Endurance and Softness, and have shown how these dispositions are related
to one another.
[cf. 1151a: "Among the unrestrained themselves, the impulsive sort are
better than those who know the right principle but do not keep to it; for
these succumb to smaller temptations, and they do not yield without
deliberation, as do the impulsive.]
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