Abstract

Aristotle wrote his Nicomachean Ethics as a rational guide to virtuous activity for those people who have been well brought up and are interested in improving themselves.1 For the rest of us, Aristotle suggests that beating is the only solution. In this essay, I shall first use Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, supplemented by Plato's Gorgias, to provide a defense of beating as a way to intrude concerns of character conversion upon the attention of people impervious to argument. Closer analysis, though, shows that beating is not enough. The person beaten makes no choices in the beating and is presented with no alternative options for future actions. We...