CHAPTER THREE

The pleasure or pain that accompanies someone's deeds ought to be taken 5

as a sign of his characteristics: he who abstains from bodily pleasures and
enjoys this very abstention is moderate, but he who is vexed in doing so is
licentious; he who endures terrifying things and enjoys doing so, or at any
rate is not pained by it, is courageous, but he who is pained thereby is a
coward. For moral virtue is concerned with pleasures and pains: it is on account of the pleasure involved that we do base things, and it is on account 10
of the pain that we abstain from noble ones. Thus one must be brought
up in a certain way straight from childhood, as Plato asserts, so as to enjoy as well as to be pained by what one ought, for this is correct education.
Further, if the virtues are concerned with actions and passions, and
pleasure and pain accompany every passion and every action, then on this 15
account too virtue would be concerned with pleasures and pains. Punishments are indicative of this as well, since they arise through these [pains]:
they are a sort of curative treatment, and curative treatments naturally
take place through contraries.
Further, as we said just recently too, every characteristic of soul shows
its nature in relation to and in its concern for the sorts of things by which 2
0
8 The first appearance of this famous term (he mesotes) in Aristotle's account
of the
moral phenomena. 30] BOOK 2, CHAPTER 3
it naturally becomes worse or better: it is through pleasures and pains that
people become base, by pursuing and avoiding these, either the pleasures
and pains that one ought not to pursue or avoid, or when one ought not,
or as one ought not, or in as many other such conditions as are defined by
reason.
9
Thus people even define the virtues as certain dispassionate and
25 calm states, though such a definition is not good; for they say simply this
much but not "as one ought;' "as one ought not;' "when;' and any other
things posited in addition. Virtue, therefore, has been posited as being
such as to produce the best [actions] in relation to pleasures and pains,
and vice as being the contrary.
But that [virtue and vice] are concerned with the same things might be30 come manifest to us also from these considerations: there being three objects of choice and three of avoidance-the noble, the advantageous, and
the pleasant together with their three contraries, the shameful, the harmful, and the painful-in all these the good person is apt to be correct, the
bad person to err, but especially as regards pleasure. For pleasure is com35 mon to the animals and attendant upon all things done through choice,
uosa since both what is noble and what is advantageous appear pleasant.
Further, pleasure has been a part of the upbringing of us all from infancy; it is difficult to remove this experience, since our life has been so ingrained with it. We also take pleasure and pain as the rule of our actions,
some of us to a greater degree, some to a lesser. It is on account of this,
then, that one's entire concern necessarily pertains to pleasure and pain,
for taking delight and feeling pain make no small contribution to our actions' being well or badly done.
Further, it is more difficult to battle against pleasure than against spiritedness, as Heraclitus
10
asserts, and art and virtue always arise in connec10 tion with that which is more difficult: the doing of something well is better when it is more difficult. As a result, and on account of this, the whole
9 Or, "the argument" (ho logos). The phrase may well refer to "[correct] reas
on"; see
also n. 4 above.
10 Heraclitus of Ephesus lived in the late sixth century and is numbered among

the
most famous of the pre-Socratic philosophers. It is uncertain what remark Arist
otle
here refers to, and the fragment most frequently cited by commentators ("with th
umos
it is difficult to do battle I for whatever it craves is purchased at the price
of soul") appears to use thumos (translated in the text above by "spiritedness;' its usual m
eaning in
later Attic Greek) as an equivalent of, rather than in contrast to, craving or d
esire (see
Gauthier and Jolif). Aristotle cites this line also in the Politics (13I5a30-31)
and Eudemian Ethics (1223b23). BOOK 2, CHAPTER 4
matter of concern in both virtue and the political art is bound up with
pleasures and pains. For he who deals with these well will be good, but he
who does so badly will be bad.
Let it be said, then, that virtue concerns pleasures and pains; that it
both increases as a result of those actions from which it comes into be- 15
ing and is destroyed when these are performed in a different manner; and
that it becomes active in just those activities as a result of which it also
came into being.
CHAPTER FOUR
But someone might be perplexed as to what we mean when we say that
to become just, people must do just things or, to become moderate, do
moderate things. For if they do just and moderate things, they already are 20
just and moderate, just as if they do what concerns letters and music, they
are by that fact skilled [or artful] in letters and in music. Or is this not so
even in the case of the arts? For it is possible to do something skillful in
letters by chance or on the instructions of another. A person will actually
be skilled in letters, then, when he both does something skillful and does
it in a skillful way, and this is what accords with the art ofletters that re- 2
5
sides within the person himsel
Further, what pertains in the arts is not at all similar to what pertains
in the virtues. For the excellence in whatever comes into being through
the arts resides in the artifacts themselves. It is enough, then, for these
artifacts to be in a certain state. But whatever deeds arise in accord with
the virtues are not done justly or moderately if they are merely in a cer- 30
tain state, but only if he who does those deeds is in a certain state as well:
first, if he acts knowingly; second, if he acts by choosing and by choosing the actions in question for their own sake; and, third, if he acts while
being in a steady and unwavering state. But these criteria are irrelevant
when it comes to possessing the arts-except for the knowledge itself 110sb
involved. But when it comes to the virtues, knowledge has no, or little,
force, whereas the other two criteria amount to not a small part of but
rather the whole affair-criteria
11
that are in fact met as a result of our
doing just and moderate things many times. Matters of action are said to
11 The reading of the MSS (haper). Perhaps better is Bywater's slight emendati
on of
the text (eiper), adopted also by Burnet and Gauthier and Jolif, which might be
rendered as follows: "the whole affair, if in fact [the virtues] are gained as a re
sult of doing
just and moderate things many times:' 32] BOOK 2, CHAPTER 5
be just and moderate, then, when they are comparable in kind to what the
just or moderate person would do. And yet he who performs these actions
is not by that fact alone just and moderate, but only if he also acts as those

who are just and moderate act.

10 It is well said, then, that as a result of doing just things, the just perso
n
comes into being and as a result of doing moderate things, the moderate
person; without performing these actions, nobody would become good.
Yet most people [or the many] do not do them; and, seeking refuge in argument, they suppose that they are philosophizing and that they will in
15 this way be serious, thereby doing something similar to the sick who listen attentively to their physicians but do nothing prescribed. Just as these
latter, then, will not have a body in good condition by caring for it in this
way, so too the former will not have a soul in good condition by philosophizing in this way.