Enkratēs Phronimos

3a Why the Akratēs lacks Phronēsis

Aristotle does not raise the question of whether the enkratēs can have phronēsis, but he does, in NE VII, discuss the question of why it is that the akratēs cannot. The purist might suppose that those same arguments will cover the enkratēs as well. For he understands both characters to be disqualified from phronēsis by the excessive desires that, on a puristic reading of VI.12, violate the requirement of right affect. However, as we will see in this section, Aristotle’s argumentation in NE VII indicates that he does not think that we can read an explanation of why the akratēs lacks phronēsis off VI.12–13. Moreover, the explanation he does give of why we must deny phronēsis to the akratēs is very different from what the purist would lead us to expect, and it fails to generalize to the case of the enkratēs.

The first thing to point out is that, unlike his modern commentators, Aristotle did not take it for granted that the akratēs lacks phronēsis. In his presentation of endoxa in NE VII.1, he points out that people are divided over that question (1145b17–19), and he does not settle the dispute himself until the end of his discussion of akrasia, in chapter 10 (1152a6–7).^[21] The theory of akrasia and enkrateia that Aristotle develops in response to the puzzles of VII.1–2 has, as one of its aims, rebutting the thesis of akratēs phronimos.

Book VII suggests, then, that Aristotle did not take the right affect requirement as he stated it in VI.12 to settle the question of whether the akratēs (let alone the enkratēs) could have phronēsis.^[22] Indeed, we can say something stronger than this. In VII.8, Aristotle presents the akratēs as satisfying the right affect requirement. For he says there that the akratēs has the grasp of the archē (starting point) of practical reason, and this is the very item that VI.12 presents right affect as securing. Recall that in VI.12, Aristotle expresses the right affect requirement in terms of the need for “the end” (τὸ τέλος, 1144a32), which “is not evident except to the good person (τῷ ἀγαθῷ), since badness (ἡ μοχθηρία) distorts a person and causes him to be deceived about the starting points of action (περὶ τὰς πρακτικὰς ἀρχάς). So it is evident that it is impossible to be wise without being good (μὴ ὄντα ἀγαθόν)” (VI.12,1144a34–b1). Aristotle grounds the right affect requirement in the observation that badness prevents one from having the starting point of practical reasoning. But he is very clear in VII.8 that the akratēs meets this condition: he picks out the akratēs as one with a grasp of that starting point (τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα ἀρχή 1151a16), one who is “not bad without qualification, since the best in him, the fundamental starting point (ἡ ἀρχή), remains healthy” (1151a25–26).^[23] This observation is of great importance as regards the thesis of enkratēs phronimos, since it suggests, by itself, that the puristic conception of the right affect requirement needs to be revised. If one can only grasp the end with right affect, and the akratēs grasps the end, then “right affect” cannot amount to perfection of affective response. I will suggest a new understanding of the right affect requirement in IV below; for now I return to the question of why the akratēs must lack phronēsis. Once we observe that the akratēs does not violate the right affect requirement, it is easier to see why Aristotle would take the question of whether he can have phronēsis to be a pressing matter for discussion in NE VII.

Aristotle does not draw the conclusion that the akratēs cannot have phronēsis until VII.10, the final chapter of his discussion of akrasia and enkrateia. A detailed examination of his argument in that chapter will reveal that his characterization of the akratēs is not what the puristic reading of VI.12 f. would predict. I have divided the passage into four sections for easier reference:

(a) Nor is it possible for the same person at the same time to be wise and akratic (οὐδ’ ἅμα φρόνιμον καὶ ἀκρατῆ ἐνδέχεται εἶναι τὸν αὐτόν) for (γάρ) one has been shown to be excellent in character (σπουδαῖος τὸ ἦθος) at the same time as one is wise.

(b) Again, one is not wise merely by virtue of having knowledge, but also by being the sort of person to act on one’s knowledge (οὐ τῷ εἰδέναι μόνον φρόνιμος ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ πρακτικός); and the akratēs is not of that sort. (ὁ δ’ ἀκρατὴς οὐ πρακτικός)

(c) (But there is nothing to stop the clever person from being an akratēs – and this is why some people are sometimes thought to be wise yet akratic, because cleverness differs from wisdom in the way we described in our original discussion, and while being close to it in terms of reasoning, differs from it in terms of the decisions made.)^[24]

(d) Neither, then, does the akratēs behave like someone knowing something and having regard to his knowledge (οὐδὲ δὴ ὡς ὁ εἰδὼς καὶ θεωρῶν), but like someone asleep or drunk. And he acts voluntarily (since he acts knowing in a way (τρόπον γάρ τινα εἰδώς) both what he is doing and what he is doing it for), but is not a bad person, since what he decides on is decent; so he is half-bad. (1152a6–17)

There is a reading of (a) that might seem to speak directly against the thesis of enkratēs phronimos: “Given that the akratēs and the enkratēs don’t have excellent characters (neither is moderate), they are disqualified from phronēsis on grounds already given in VI.12–13” But the context speaks against such a reading. Regarding the enkratēs, consider that Aristotle described him, a few lines above, as having an excellent character: he observed that ἡ ἐγκράτεια is σπουδαῖον, by contrast with akrasia and insensateness, which he calls ἕξεις φαύλας (VII.9 1151b29). “Character” (ἦθος/ἕξις) here doesn’t refer to the affective part of one’s soul, but rather to one’s character as a whole. Recall that in the opening of VII.1 Aristotle spoke of three good and three bad character-types (τὰ ἤθη 1145a16), referring not to parts of souls but to kinds of people. (“Character-type” might be a better translation of both ἦθος and ἕξις in this context, so as to disambiguate from the sense of “character” where it refers to a part of one’s soul.) Once again, given that the enkratēs was there classified among the good character-types, he meets the requirement spelled out here.

Regarding the akratēs, if (a) refers specifically to the right affect requirement on phronēsis from VI.12, we have seen that he meets that requirement. The fact that the akratēs turns out to be not bad but only half bad (ὥσθ’ ἡμιπόνηρος 1152a17) complicates his status with respect to phronēsis. Aristotle is called upon to add some conceptual refinement to his VI.12 dichotomy between good men who can have phronēsis and evil men who cannot (1144a34–b1). (a) is introductory; rather than sealing off the discussion, it presents the thesis to be established. In (b) and (d), Aristotle goes on to supply the additional argumentation needed to make up the gap between the position argued for in book VI and the one he still takes himself to need to establish.

Drawing on what he has established in VII.3, Aristotle is in a position to claim, in (b)–(d), that the akratēs is bad enough to be excluded from phronēsis, on the grounds that

1. He voluntarily does something he takes to be bad, which, in turn, means he does “have knowledge” (εἰδώς) in some sense (τρόπον τινά) of the badness of his action.

2. He does not activate or make use of this knowledge (θεωρῶν/πρακτικός); he is not “practical” and does not act on his knowledge.

3. His status, as regards this knowledge, is akin to a drunken person or a sleeping person.

Notice that none of these conditions directly invokes the types or strengths of desires to which he is subject. The bad overall character condition of the akratēs is traced to facts about his intellectual condition; facts established in the course of discussing the akratēs’ ignorance in VII.3. It is there that Aristotle (1) shows that akratic action is voluntary because there is a kind of reasoning backing it (1147a25–28); (2) says that the akratēs does not fully have knowledge – he “has and doesn’t have” it (1147b10–12); (3) describes the akratēs as not fully activating his knowledge in the manner of someone who is asleep or drunk (1147a10–14, b12). Moreover, it is in VII.3 that Aristotle describes the akratēs as being in a condition of ignorance (agnoia 1147b6), where this charge plausibly picks out the absence of the kind of knowledge at stake in akrasia, namely practical knowledge or phronēsis.

The shared feature of the enkratēs and the akratēs, as Aristotle repeatedly insists (VII.2 1146a9–15, VII.4 1148a4–10, VII.9 1151b34–1152a3), is being subject to strong, bad appetitive desires. If such desires were enough to preclude someone from phronēsis, we’d expect Aristotle not to identify the phronēsis-excluding features as ones specific to the akratēs. Instead, Aristotle articulates the akratēs’ lack of wisdom in terms of his failure to act on his choice: the phronimos is “πρακτικός” (1146a8, 1152a9), whereas the akratēs is not (ὁ δ’ ἀκρατὴς οὐ πρακτικός, 1152a9). But the enkratēs is, of course, one to act on his reasoned choice. Like the phronimos, he is practical.

3b Alleged Defects of the Enkratēs

Even if Aristotle’s own explanation of why the akratēs lacks phronēsis cannot be generalized to show that the enkratēs lacks it as well, he might have other reasons for denying phronēsis to the enkratēs. A number of philosophers have claimed that the enkratēs’ bad affective condition gives rise to some kind of intellectual defect. Halper says that the enkratēs has “inappropriate emotions that impede his judgment. He achieves the right end not by choosing it with practical wisdom but by avoiding what he knows to be improper (cf. 2.9, 1109b1–7, b18–23). And in the process he misses the pleasure that is proper to virtue” (1999, 132). Woods says that since alternatives to virtuous action “hold some attraction,” “the continent person acts as he does only because what is virtuous appears to him as, on balance, the best alternative in the circumstances,” not “as an unqualified good” (1986, 151 f.). Coope, making a similar point, accuses the enkratēs of “a failure to take a specifically rational kind of pleasure in fine action” (2012, 142).

Perhaps the most influential treatment of this point is McDowell’s, who says that

An incontinent or continent person has a flawed approximation to practical wisdom. He has, in a way, a correct conception of doing well, and applies that conception to particular predicaments; but he reveals that his resemblance to a possessor of full-fledged practical wisdom is only partial, by the fact that he is swayed by the attractions of alternatives to what he (in a way) knows to be doing well. It helps to make this idea of a flawed approximation to practical wisdom intelligible if we take continence and incontinence to characterize people who are on their way to acquiring virtue (1998, 48 f.).

Woods and McDowell offer no textual support for their claims, and Halper refers us only to II.9, a chapter that is not about akrasia or enkrateia, but describes the struggles of one aiming to acquire virtue. Halper may be thinking, as McDowell does, that enkrateia is not a stable condition of character but the transitional condition of the learner.^[25] But this characterization of enkrateia is not supported by the text. As Coope presses,^[26] “Aristotle himself never suggests that self-control is radically unstable […]. To be self-controlled is to be someone who is such as to have bad desires and such as not to be led by them (1152a1 ff). The self-controlled character is prone to bad appetites, and yet reliably makes, and acts upon, the right decision” (2012, 151 f., italics original).^[27]

Coope herself proposes that the enkratēs’ problem is a failure to take a specifically rational pleasure in right action. To indicate the sort of pleasure she finds lacking in the enkratēs, she points us to Aristotle’s discussion of friendship NE IX.8. Coope quotes only excerpts from the passage, but I want to look at the passage as a whole. For one sentence that she doesn’t quote (italicized below) contains a reference to enkrateia that supports quite the opposite conclusion about the enkratēs:^[28]

But such a man would seem more than the other a lover of self; at all events he assigns to himself the things that are noblest and best, and gratifies the most authoritative element in himself and in all things obeys this; and just as a city or any other systematic whole is most properly identified with the most authoritative element in it, so is a man; and therefore the man who loves this and gratifies it is most of all a lover of self. Besides, a man is said to have or not to have self-control (ἐγκρατής) according as his intellect has or has not the control (τῷ κρατεῖν τὸν νοῦν ἢ μή), on the assumption that this is the man himself; and the things men have done from reason are thought most properly their own acts and voluntary acts. That this is the man himself, then, or is so more than anything else, is plain, and also that the good man loves most this part of him. Whence it follows that he is most truly a lover of self, of another type than that which is a matter of reproach, and as different from that as living according to reason is from living as passion dictates, and desiring what is noble from desiring what seems advantageous. Those, then, who busy themselves in an exceptional degree with noble actions all men approve and praise. (IX.8, 1168b28–1169a8)

Coope takes this passage as evidence for the claim that taking pleasure can be a rational activity:

Aristotle argues that the self-lover, properly speaking, is the person who ‘indulges’ and ‘gratifies’ the ‘most authoritative element of himself,’ namely intellect (nous) (1168b33–34). And it is by acting finely that one cherishes this part of oneself: ‘in doing fine things, he [the good man] will himself be benefited and will benefit others’ (1169a11–13). The excellent person (who appreciates the pleasure of fine action) will be happy to forgo money and honours, ‘and all the goods people fight over, while keeping the fine for himself’ (1169a20–22) […] In sum, Aristotle says here that the excellent person takes a certain special pleasure in acting finely (and in the prospect of so acting), and that this gratifies the rational part of him. This confirms that this kind of pleasure is a pleasure of the rational part. (2012, 156 f.)

If Coope’s passage in IX.8 is evidence for the claim that there is rational pleasure, it must also be evidence for the claim that the enkratēs takes such pleasure. For he is Aristotle’s example, here, of what it is to have one’s mind in charge. The moral we may draw from the passage is that “living according to reason” rather than “living as passion dictates,” the enkratēs “gratifies the most authoritative element in himself and in all things obeys this”.^[29]

It is remarkable that in discussing a topic – friendship – far afield from enkrateia, Aristotle feels called upon to invoke the enkratēs to illustrate the very possibility of the kind of love, gratification, and pleasure that is of a distinctively rational kind. The natural explanation of this fact would be that the enkratēs’ defects with respect to passion and appetite make it clear that any pleasure he does take in self-restraint is a rational pleasure. IX.8 seems incompatible with Halper’s claim that the enkratēs “misses the pleasure that is proper to virtue”. (1999, 132)

I conclude that the textual evidence does not support the conclusion that the enkratēs lacks phronēsis in virtue of failing to take intellectual pleasure in right action. More generally, it seems that if Aristotle had an independent argument disqualifying the enkratēs from phronēsis, he would have presented it. Given the work he puts into arguing against akratēs phronimos, it is hard to see why Aristotle would omit the more general argument from which both the impossibility of enkratēs phronimos and the impossibility of akratēs phronimos would follow.

4a The Intellectual Strengths of the Enkratēs

In the opening of book VII, Aristotle lists three conditions (ἤθη) to be avoided – bestial vice, self-indulgence, and akrasia – and the three conditions opposed to them – divine virtue, moderation, and enkrateia (1145a16–20). The akratēs lands, then, among the bad conditions, and the enkratēs among the good ones. What is the source of the ethical gulf between akratics and enkratics? They both have excessive appetitive desires. Does the difference perhaps lie in the fact that the enkratēs’ desires are weaker? Aristotle denies this:

As for pleasures and pains through touch and taste, and appetite and avoidance in relation to these (all of which we have marked off before as the sphere of self-indulgence and moderation), one can be in a condition such as to give in to those that most people are able to overcome; and one can also overcome even those that most people are too weak not to give in to. Of these types, the ones relating to pleasures are the akratēs and the enkratēs respectively, while those relating to pains are soft and resistant; the disposition belonging to most people is in between these, even if most people do incline towards the worse ones (1150a9–16).

 

For it is not surprising if someone gives in to strong or excessive pleasures or pains, but rather something one tends to feel sympathy for, if he is overcome despite struggling against them, like Theodectes’ Philoctetes, stricken by snake-bite, or Cercyon in Carcinus’ Alope, or like people trying to hold back their laughter but letting it all out in a splutter, as happened to Xenophantus; but it is surprising if someone is overcome by pleasures or pains that most people can withstand, and is unable to struggle against these […] (1150b6–13).

The enkratēs will be such as to triumph even over strong appetitive desires; and the akratēs such as to yield even to weak ones.^[30] The explanation for why the akratēs yields to what the enkratēs masters is not, therefore, that the latter had a weaker desire.^[31] These passages suggest that, strictly speaking, it is a requirement on enkrateia but not on akrasia that one be subject to strong, bad desires. Aristotle’s point is not, of course, that akratics are typically unafflicted by strong appetites; his point is that the akratēs and enkratēs are not to be distinguished with reference to the kinds or strengths of desires to which they are subject. Since they do indeed differ, the natural conclusion is that they differ in respect of the intellectual part of their souls. The enkratēs’ goodness in his intellectual part must be strong enough to overcome his affective badness.

Given that the enkratēs is the akratēs’ proper opposite, and that the akratēs is characterized by ignorance, it would stand to reason that the enkratēs should be distinguished by having his intellectual part in an especially good condition. And this is indeed how Aristotle characterizes the enkratēs. He specifies in VII.9 that enkrateia is not merely the capacity to overcome one’s affective dispositions, but rather, the capacity to overcome them in the service of what one knows to be the right course of action; which is to say, it presupposes at least some measure of rectitude in the intellectual part of the soul. Aristotle points out that not only does the enkratēs have the right reason (orthos logos VII.9 1151a29–35), but he is characterized by rational susceptibility more generally: he is, for instance, easily persuadable (1151b10, εὔπειστος) by good arguments.

It is not an accident that when Aristotle wishes to attest to the fact that the soul is indeed divided into an intellectual part and an affective one, he refers us to the phenomena of enkrateia and akrasia (I.13, 1102b14). And when he wants to illustrate the possibility of cooperation in spite of that division, he invokes enkrateia again (1102b26–27).^[32] Aristotle makes clear in that passage that his interest in enkrateia and akrasia is at least in part an interest in the ways these phenomena reveal the otherwise invisible articulation of the soul, its parts and joints (1102b21–3). Aristotle could have argued for the soul’s division by reference to the akratēs alone; what the enkratēs adds to that story is an account of the efficacy of the intellectual part. Because he must struggle against his appetitive imperfections, the enkratēs’ right actions make visible the work that phronēsis can do.

At this point the reader might be inclined to object that the enkratēs cannot have phronēsis, given his bad appetitive desires. I postpone discussion of this objection until section 5, once again urging the reader, on methodological grounds, to resist viewing the issue through the lens of a puristic interpretation of VI.12–13. Instead, I want to direct the reader’s attention to some texts that directly attribute phronēsis to the enkratēs.

4b The Enkratēs as Phronimos in the EE

The first passage is part of a dense and rarely discussed argument at EE VIII.1.5–6 (1246b12–36). The passage suffers from a number of textual difficulties, and it is difficult to integrate all of what Aristotle says into a single line of argument, but this much seems clear: (1) Aristotle is (among other things) engaged in refuting an opponent who claims that the akratēs has phronēsis. (2) He argues by reducing to absurdity the claim that the affective part of the soul can “twist” or “pervert” virtue in the intellectual part.

Aristotle is imagining an interlocutor who invokes the phenomenon of akrasia as counterexample to the claim that phronēsis is a ruler in the soul. The objector claims that in the akratēs, phronēsis shows itself to be weak, since it can be “turned” by the affective part of the soul in the direction of wrong action. The argument as a whole makes heavy use of this concept of “turning” (στρέφειν/στροφή). “Turning” picks out a species of the more general concept of “use” (χρῆσθαι), namely the species in which the user directs the used away from the end to which the used would otherwise tend (see the opening of VIII.1, 1246a28–30). στρέφειν connotes misdirection, perversion or twisting, though such “twisting” can be a good thing overall when what is “twisted” is something bad. This is what happens in the case of enkrateia, which Aristotle goes on to describe as a familiar phenomenon in which the intellectual part turns a bad condition in the affective part of the soul away from intemperate actions towards temperate ones:

And conversely, wisdom in the rational element (ἡ φρόνησις ἡ ἐν τῷ λογιστικῷ) will use the indiscipline in the irrational element to act temperately – that is what enkrateia seems to be (ὅπερ δοκεῖ ἡ ἐγκράτεια) (1246b23–24).

Aristotle concludes the chapter by agreeing with Socrates that nothing is stronger than wisdom, suggesting here that it is part of the “strength” of phronēsis that it can redirect a bad appetitive condition towards good ends. Given the difficulty of the passage overall, however, there may be some question as to the dialectical status of this comment on enkrateia. For the reader is apt to wonder whether the view described in the comment should be ascribed to Aristotle, or only to his interlocutor.

Aristotle’s language (ὅπερ δοκεῖ ἡ ἐγκράτεια) suggests that he is expressing agreement with the picture of self-control that he here presents. Moreover, we would expect that if Aristotle were expressing dissent from some commonly held picture of enkrateia, that picture would have appeared elsewhere – for instance, among the set of endoxa at NE VII.1–2. For there we do find the thesis about akrasia that Aristotle is here engaged in refuting. The best way to settle the issue would be to integrate the comment on enkrateia within a reading of the passage as a whole; but, though there are no textual problems in the remark itself, the argument as a whole is riddled with them.^[33] I despair of arguing decisively enough for any given reading of this difficult passage to convince the reader that she must take the comment on its face. I propose, instead, to look elsewhere for confirmation of the straightforward reading.

Consider the following introductory discussion from EE II.11:

Now that we have made these determinations, we may say whether virtue (ἡ ἀρετή) makes decision error-free, and the end correct, such that one decides for the sake of what one ought; or whether, as some believe, it makes one’s reasoning correct. The latter, however, is what enkrateia does, since on its own it keeps reasoning uncorrupted (οὐ διαφθείρει τὸν λόγον). But virtue is different from enkrateia. We must discuss these issues later, since the explanation given by those who believe that virtue provides correct reasoning (τὸν λόγον ὀρθόν) is that enkrateia is that sort of thing, and is in the realm of what is praiseworthy (1227b12–19).

Compare this passage with the better known “division of labor” discussion from NE VI.12. There, Aristotle assigns ethical virtue the job of making the end correct (which he refers to variously as τὸν σκοπόν (1144a8), τὸ τέλος (1144a32), and τὰς πρακτικὰς ἀρχάς 1144a35–36), and gives phronēsis responsibility for ensuring the presence of the right reason (ὀρθὸς λόγος 1144b28–29). The argument begun in VI.12 and completed in VI.13 seeks to establish the choiceworthiness of intellectual virtue, both theoretical and practical. In NE VI.12–13, then, as in EE.II.11, Aristotle wants to limit the role of virtue so as to leave room for a distinctively intellectual contribution to right action. In both places he distinguishes an affective component from an intellectual component, and asserts that the affective component is responsible for the end and the intellectual component for right reason (ὁ ὀρθὸς λόγος). The difference between the NE VI passages and the EE II.11 passage is, then, just this: in the first, the intellectual work is done by phronēsis, in the second, by enkrateia. Thus when Aristotle says, in the EE passage, that “virtue is different from enkrateia” he is not drawing a distinction between enkrateia and the virtue of moderation (σωφροσύνη) but a distinction between enkrateia and ethical virtue, parallel to the one he makes between phronēsis and ethical virtue (ἀρετῆς 1145a5) in VI.12.

It is, of course, important to acknowledge that EE II.11 presents a picture of enkrateia and akrasia that is merely provisional.^[34] Aristotle has not yet made the distinction between akrasia and vice, or between enkrateia and moderation, that he anticipates here. But notice that he does not seem to be anticipating a clarification that will disabuse one from ascribing phronēsis to the enkratēs. For no such clarification ever appears.^[35] I submit that the clarification he is anticipating is the argument that enkrateia is not identical to phronēsis, but represents the condition in which phronēsis induces good behavior in the presence of bad appetitive desires. It is noteworthy that, while the existence and goodness of enkrateia seems to go without saying for Aristotle, he takes himself to need to argue that there is such a thing as a distinct virtue of moderation.^[36] Aristotle’s settled view will be that the fight against bad desire is merely one way in which phronēsis may be manifest, but not the only one. EE II.11 does, then, despite its provisionality, suggest what the resolute reading of EE VIII.1 says: that imperfection in respect of appetitive desire is not incompatible with wisdom, since one especially clear manifestation of wisdom occurs in the restraint of excessive appetites.

4c The Link Between Phronēsis and Enkrateia

I have argued, first, that as we cannot explain the enkratēs’ success by reference to his affective condition, it makes sense to chalk it up to intellectual excellence; and second, that there is textual support for doing so in the EE. Now I want to show that taking the enkratēs to manifest phronēsis fits well with an element of Aristotle’s conception of phronēsis, albeit an element that does not usually receive much attention.

Consider the following observation: “each kind of creature asserts that what is wise is what successfully contemplates (θεωροῦν) the things relating to itself, and will hand over decisions to that. Hence the fact that people say some kinds of animal are wise, i. e. those that clearly have a capacity for forethought about their own lives.” (1141a25–28). An animal who prepares a nest for its young or spins a web or stores away nuts for winter seems to reveal an understanding of itself, a capacity for a form of agency that is not a mere response to anything happening now. Such an animal seems to^[37] have a kind of contemplative (θεωροῦν) access to features of itself that are not currently manifest to its sensibility: the fact that it will need a home for its young, or can use a web to catch a bug, or is bound to have trouble finding food in winter.

Likewise, the enkratēs acts in accordance with a general – and future oriented –understanding of the kind of thing he is. Hence at EE II.8, 1224b15–21 Aristotle describes the distinctive pleasures and pains of the akratēs and enkratēs as temporally indexed: the enkratēs has pain now, but the pleasure of hope (τὴν ἀπ’ ἐλπίδος ἡδονήν) that he will be benefitted, and the akratēs has pleasure now but the pain of expectation (τὴν ἀπ’ ἐλπίδος λύπην). Choosing the present pleasure is reacting – in just the way that an animal who leaps out of dangers, or falls upon its prey, is reacting; whereas enduring pain for the sake of a future good is “phronetic”, in that it requires an understanding of the kind of thing one is.^[38]

The claim that attention to non-immediate circumstances characterizes phronēsis, and links it to enkrateia, has textual support outside the NE. In the Rhetoric, phronimoi and enkratics are jointly described as future-oriented: “You may get your pleasure on the spot and the pain later, or the gain on the spot and the loss later. That is what appeals to incontinent persons – and incontinence may be shown with regard to all the objects of desire. Conversely – what appeals to self controlled and sensible people (οἱ γὰρ ἐγκρατεῖς καὶ φρονιμώτεροι) – the pain and loss may be immediate, while the pleasure and profit come later and last longer.” (I.12,1372b14–16). In Politics I.2 (1252a31–34), Aristotle says that the naturally ruling element is the one that has foresight; if we put this together with the description of the naturally ruling element as identical to phronēsis from III.4 (see esp. 1277a5–a16, 28, b25–29), we can conclude that Aristotle understands phronēsis as intimately connected to a power of foresight. Likewise, in De Anima 433b8–10, Aristotle describes thought (nous) as connecting us with the future, and desire (epithumia) as seeking what is present. Phronēsis is, then, the kind of entity to invoke in explaining how someone might resist seizing what appears immediately good in favor of pursuing his overall good. The enkratēs’ capacity to resist temptation can, therefore, intelligibly be seen as the work of his phronēsis. Aristotle’s overall conceptions of phronēsis, enkrateia and akrasia support contrasting the akratēs and the enkratēs on the basis of the presence or absence of phronēsis: the akratēs acts badly because he is ignorant (agnoia 1147b6), whereas the enkratēs acts well because he is phronimos.

5a The Requirement of Right Affect

The purist views the requirement of right affect in a perfectionist light, as demanding that the phronimos’ affective condition be unsullied by even a single wrong type of affective response. I think we should take seriously the possibility that Aristotle is insisting on the presence of some, specific good affect, rather than the absence of every kind of bad affect^[40].

Let us recall that we have already found reason to doubt the puristic reading of the requirement of right affect. In VI.12, Aristotle says that phronēsis requires a grasp of the end; a grasp that phronēsis cannot itself supply but which is instead vouchsafed by the good condition of the affective part of the soul. But as noted in section 3a above, Aristotle is quite clear in allowing that someone whose affective part is as badly disposed as the akratēs’ nonetheless possesses the end. For he says explicitly that the akratēs has a grasp of that starting point (τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα ἀρχή 1151a16), and therefore is “not bad without qualification, since the best in him, the fundamental starting point (ἡ ἀρχή), remains healthy” (1151a24–25).

The akratēs’ grasp of the starting point is integral to Aristotle’s analysis of akrasia, for it manifests in his possession of the relevant universal: unlike the self-indulgent person, who thinks that every pleasure is to be pursued, the akratēs grasps the principle against which he acts (VII.8, 1151a22–24). This is why his reason is to be praised (I.13, 1102b15),^[41] and why he is only half-bad. The problem is that the part of his reason which is to be praised is precisely the part that Aristotle has said depends on the good condition of his affective part – for Aristotle says that the akratēs grasps the end or the starting point. In this way, Aristotle’s analysis of the akratēs is in as much tension with the puristic reading of the requirement of right affect as (my reading of) his analysis of the enkratēs. For though Aristotle denies phronēsis to the akratēs, he does so for what must – on the standard view – seem like the wrong reason. He does not cite the akratēs’ bad affective condition but rather the ignorance that belongs properly to the intellectual part of his soul. This suggests that the affective part of the akratēs’ soul is good enough to afford him a grasp of the end.

We have reason, then, to seek an alternative conception of the requirement of right affect. I propose that the affect mandated by phronēsis is love of the noble (kalon). Since the noble is the goal of virtuous action, it makes sense that love of the noble is the affect that would enable one to grasp the goal in the service of which one reasons.^[42] Possession of the end or target of reasoning is what Aristotle picks out as a requirement on phronēsis in VI.12; and he specifies there that the property that such an end must have is precisely that of being noble (kalos, 1144a26). There is also textual evidence outside VI.12 for understanding the requirement in this way. There are a number of passages that complement the argument of VI.12 by articulating the nature of the dependence of the intellectual part of the soul on the affective part. The view that argument – reasoning – cannot substitute for having well-ordered passions finds expression in Aristotle’s insistence on well-brought up students in book I, his description of virtue acquisition in II.4, and his extended discussion of the role of politics in habituation in X.9. In all these passages, we find confirmation of the idea that one cannot grasp the end of action without an affective orientation towards the kalon.

In I.3, 1095a2–13, Aristotle famously insists that his listeners should have life-experience for which reason cannot substitute. Only those whose desires have been cultivated so as to accord with a rational principle are in the position to benefit from rational discourse. At I.4, 1095b4, he once again requires that his audience have been nobly raised (διὸ δεῖ τοῖς ἔθεσιν ἦχθαι καλῶς), for it is one’s upbringing that gives one the starting point (ἀρχὴ, 1095b6). In II.4 Aristotle accuses people of “taking refuge in talk”, because they think that there is an intellectual route to virtue. Such people fail to acknowledge that one becomes virtuous through a process of habituation in which one repeatedly performs virtuous actions (1105b9–18).

These passages imply that habituation shapes the affective part of the soul – one’s loves and passions – in the direction of the noble.^[43] The point comes through quite explicitly in X.9:

[…] talk and teaching may well not have force under all circumstances, and the soul of the hearer has to have been prepared beforehand through its habits in order to delight in and loath the right things (kalōs), just as one has to prepare soil if it is going to nourish the seed. For the person who lives according to emotion (pathos) will not listen to talk that tries to turn him away from it, nor again will he comprehend such talk; how will it be possible to persuade someone like this to change? And in general it is not talk (logōi) that makes emotion yield but force. Before he acquires excellence, then, a person must in a way already possess a character akin to it, one that is attracted by the noble (to kalon) and repulsed by the shameful (to aischron) (1179b23–31).^[44]

Aristotle here describes the habituated condition as being “attracted by the noble and repulsed by the shameful”. He contrasts those who have developed this condition with those who love only appetitive pleasure, and can therefore only be redirected from what they are attracted to by force and fear. Aristotle’s point here is not that these people’s passions are in disarray; he is not saying that they are overly fearful, or even overly pleasure-loving, though that may well be the case. His point is that there is a passion they are missing. They lack “a conception of what is noble and truly pleasant”, and they also lack a love of what is noble and truly pleasant. For Aristotle wants to insist that in this case the conception is predicated on the love; reason, argument, philosophy, etc. cannot, if the corresponding affective response is missing, produce in someone a conception of the noble.

I propose, then, that we distinguish two different ways in which the affective part of someone’s soul might be in a good condition. The first is a matter of whether the person feels the right amount of fear, boldness, pleasure, pain, anger, etc. The “right amount” is the amount that would produce a right response, were he to respond on the basis of that feeling. If someone has insufficient boldness, excessive anger, or takes too much appetitive pleasure in food or sex, he is likely to be moved towards the wrong actions by the relevant kinds of external stimuli. The akratēs for instance, is affectively disposed to overreact to the promise of appetitive pleasure. In circumstances in which appetitive pleasure is at stake, he displays affective badness.

The second way in which the affective part of someone’s soul might be in a good condition is by way of their grasping the kalon. This is the respect in which the akratēs continuously displays a form of affective goodness. He has ‘the end’ or ‘the first principle,’ as evidenced in his grasp, even at the moment of akratic action, of the universal premise that urges him to act otherwise.^[45] Consider Aristotle’s contrast between akrasia and self-indulgence:

The self-indulgent type, as has been said, is not the sort to have regrets, since he sticks to his decision; the akratēs, on the other hand, always has regrets. Hence it is not as we suggested when we listed the problems: it is the former that is incurable, and the latter that is curable; for badness of character resembles diseases like dropsy or consumption, while akrasia resembles the sort involving seizures; for the one is a continuous, the other a non-continuous, way of being as one shouldn’t be (VII.8, 1150b29–35).

Aristotle presents the akratēs’ regret as the source of his (relative) goodness, in comparison with the self-indulgent person. Regret is an affective condition, which indicates that one cares about doing what is right. Since the akratēs regrets his appetitive indulgence, he must care about whether or not he yields to appetite. His feeling of regret is keyed in to virtue; and it is this form of caring that I take Aristotle to be describing, in VI.12, as essential to phronēsis. The akratēs loves the nobility of eating moderately, and recoils from indulgence in appetitive pleasure as slavish^[46] and shameful. The self-indulgent person, by contrast, is (fully) bad because he is persuaded to pursue such pleasures. His failure to see the importance of acting moderately is not a matter of having the wrong amount of some passions of which a good person has the right amount. The bad person is simply missing something, which is why he is bad all the time, continuously, irrespective of environmental conditions.

Someone might, however, object that one’s affective condition in respect of fear, boldness, anger, appetite, etc. cannot be separated from one’s affective condition in relation to the noble. The objector would point out, for instance, that Aristotle takes habituation to be the mode of improvement in either domain. One comes to fear, desire, be angered, etc. in the right way by acting virtuously (II.1, 1103b14–22, II.2, 1104a33–b3), and one develops a conception of the noble in the same way (X.9, 1179b34–80a5).^[47] The courageous actions of the trainee engender both an appreciation of the nobility of courageous action and the tendency to have one’s fear and boldness come into correct alignment with the performance of such actions. And it would stand to reason that as one’s passions become ordered in such a way as to facilitate courageous and moderate action, one becomes increasingly able to perform the actions in such a way that one appreciates their nobility. This is all quite correct. There is a strong and important tie between the two kinds of affective condition, and it lies outside the scope of this paper to enter into any detailed examination of the relationship between them. Nonetheless I want to offer some reasons for thinking that some amount of separation is consistent with Aristotle’s overall picture of the two forms of affective condition as in many respects intertwined.

The first lies in the very possibility of shame. In order to feel ashamed of, e. g. one’s excessive fears or insufficient boldness, a person must have a sense of the noble that outstrips the rectitude of her responses of fear or boldness. The second reason for positing a separation is that the two domains of affect differ with respect to the possibility of excess. Unlike fear, and appetitive pleasure, and love of honor, and anger, there is no such thing as a ‘right amount’ of love of the noble. Aristotle says, in the lines following the discussion of self-love and friendship I quoted in section 3b above, that “those who are exceptionally eager (διαφερόντως σπουδάζοντας) for noble actions (τὰς καλὰς πράξεις) are welcomed and praised by everyone; and if everyone vied for what is noble (τὸ καλόν), and strained to do the noblest things (τὰ κάλλιστα πράττειν), not only would everything be as it should on the communal level but as individuals too each person would be possessed of the greatest goods, given that excellence is such a thing” (IX.8, 1169a6–11). The more one loves the noble, the better. Unlike in the case of fear or anger or honors or money, no danger of excess presents itself.

My third and final reason for positing the affective separation on which my interpretation of the requirement of right affect depends is based in Aristotle’s discussion of natural virtue. Passions such as fear, anger, etc. are arranged in some way or other by nature: “everyone thinks each of the various sorts of character traits belongs to us in some sense by nature – because we are just, moderate in our appetites, courageous, and the rest from the moment we are born” (VI.13, 1144b4–6). Thus, with respect to fear or anger it is possible to find unhabituated – “natural” – virtue in children or nonhuman animals. What we will not find “naturally” is love of the kalon. He contrasts the natural courage of wild beasts who are “driven by distress and temper” (διὰ τὸ ὑπ’ ἀλγηδόνος καὶ θυμοῦ ἐξελαυνόμενα, III.8, 1116b34) with the true courage of people who “act for the sake of the noble” (διὰ τὸ καλὸν πράττουσιν, 1116b30–31):

But the ‘courage’ that comes about through temper (διὰ τὸν θυμόν) does seem to be the most natural (φυσικωτάτη) form, and to be courage once the factors of decision (προαίρεσιν) and the end for the sake of which (τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα)^[48] have been added. Human beings too, then, are distressed when angry, and take pleasure in retaliating; but people who fight from these motives are effective in fighting, not courageous, since they do not fight because of the noble (διὰ τὸ καλόν), or as the correct prescription directs (ὡς ὁ λόγος), but because of affection (διὰ πάθος). But they do have something that resembles courage (1117a4–9).

Aristotle contrasts natural courage, which is simply a matter of having feelings such as thumos in the right amount, with genuine courage which is done with a sense of the proper end of such action (τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα), namely, the noble (διὰ τὸ καλόν). This is the same contrast at work in my proposed reading of the requirement of right affect in VI.12: phronēsis calls for the presence of the love of the noble rather than the absence of any errant response of appetite, fear, anger, etc.

5b The Unity of the Virtues

Let me end by considering whether the thesis of enkratēs phronimos conflicts with Aristotle’s claim, in T2, that the virtues are unified. Aristotle says that if wisdom is present, all the ethical virtues (pasai) will be present with it; in addition, he goes on to say that a decision (prohairesis) will not be correct without virtue (aretē) (1145a4–5).^[49] The proponent of the puristic interpretation of the requirement of right affect will point out that even if the enkratēs loves the noble, he doesn’t have all the virtues, since he lacks moderation. Moreover his condition (enkrateia) does not qualify, strictly speaking, as one of virtue (aretē), and so his decisions cannot be correct. For both reasons, he cannot have phronēsis.

If T2 represented the totality of our evidence about whether the enkratēs can have phronēsis, the interpretation sketched above would be hard to resist. However, as we have seen, that is very far from the case. Given that the remainder of the evidence speaks not only to the general conclusion that the enkratēs is a good person, but specifically in favor of his having phronēsis, we have reason to try to read Aristotle’s use of the word aretē at 1444b32 and 1145a5 (as well as 1145a1, where it is present by implication) in a looser and less technical sense. When Aristotle says that if phronēsis is present, they will all be present (πᾶσαι ὑπάρξουσιν), he might well mean that the person in question will be in a good ethical condition in each affective domain. In the case of the domain of appetitive pleasure, it turns out that there are two ways of being in a good ethical condition: that of the moderate person, and that of the enkratēs.^[50]

When we speak of “Aristotelian virtues”, we refer, quite efficiently and precisely, to the list culled from NE II–V: moderation, courage, generosity, gentleness, wit, friendliness, great-souledness, justice, etc. For us, “virtue” is a technical term. But there is reason to think it did not play this role for Aristotle. Aristotle was happy to speak of virtues of the body (EE VIII.3, 1248b28–29); of craft virtue (VI.7, 1141a12); of a natural virtue possible for animals (1144b3–9). In two places he demotes courage and moderation as being merely parts of virtue, reserving the name of virtue for justice at NE V.2 (1130a13) and to gentlemanliness (kalokagathia) at EE VIII.3, 1248b8–11. Even when Aristotle specifies that he is speaking of virtue in a haplōs or kuriōs sense, he cannot reliably be translated as speaking of what we would call “virtue proper.”^[51] Words like haplōs and kuriōs rely on context to help fill out the relevant contrast: for instance, at V.1, 1129b26–27 he distinguishes virtue haplōs from virtue in relation to another. If aretē is, as Dover (1974, 67) describes it, the “corresponding abstract noun” to agathos,^[52] it will be important to keep in mind that neither of our standard translations (“excellence” or “virtue”) can match it in terms of what Saussure (1959, 115 f.) called semantic value. For we have access to an independent noun: “goodness”.

It sounds strange to us to say that enkrateia is a virtue, but there is no reason to think that claim would have sounded so strange to Aristotle. Recall our introductory discussion of enkrateia, in which I noted the lengths to which Aristotle goes to fit enkrateia into the mold of his discussion of virtue. And he does succeed in characterizing enkrateia as an excellent (σπουδαῖον 1151b28) mean state (μέσος ὁ ἐγκρατής, 1151b25), which leads to correct choice (1151a34).^[53] Considering that Aristotle, at one point, comes out and says that enkrateia is a virtue (ἡ γὰρ ἐγκράτεια ἀρετή, EE II.7, 1223b11–12), the purist cannot himself avoid invoking a nontechnical sense of aretē. Given the variety of ways Aristotle uses aretē, it is hard to see a principled objection to the claim that some instance of the word – such as at VI.13 – is used nontechnically.

More broadly, our intuitions about the scope of the phrase “Aristotelian virtue” may not be as theoretically innocent as we take them to be. We seem to have infused the very phrase with the puristic backdrop against which the enkratēs must emerge as an unwise, and generally bad, kind of person. I do not believe that Aristotle has earned his reputation of having presented us with a picture of either virtue or wisdom that is an “unattainable ideal”. Aristotle thought virtue and wisdom were difficult, but possible to attain. If Aristotle had wanted to claim that no one, not even, e. g. Hector or Achilles, met his standards of virtue, he would have flagged this radical departure from common sense.^[54] Instead, he tends to affirm and draw on conventional morality in his characterization of virtues. For instance, in VI.5 he endorses the conventional conception of “Pericles and men like him” (1140b8) as having phronēsis. Does Aristotle thereby imply that none of these men experienced temptations to overeat, or to overindulge in sexual pleasure? He needn’t be read as doing so. Perhaps they achieved greatness because their appetites cooperated, or perhaps they succeeded in spite of appetitive recalcitrance. When Aristotle describes examples of enkrateia, he doesn’t do so in order to make the purist’s judgment that the enkratēs’ character is tainted by the very presence of appetitive excess. His attention is, rather, on such a person’s “victory” (νικᾶν, 1150a36) over appetite. The enkratēs’ affective condition – comprising both his appetitive desires and his love of the noble – is one he shares with the akratēs. The victorious combatant must, therefore, be located in the intellectual part of the enkratēs’ soul (logistikon). This is what interests Aristotle about the enkratēs: his struggles with himself make the work of phronēsis visible.^[55]