The Practical Syllogism and Incontinence 1

Abstract

Philosophers do not agree whether a man can voluntarily do what he believes to be wrong. This disagreement has coloured their opinions of Aristotle's treatment of incontinence the seventh book of the Nicomachean Ethics. Some, believing that one cannot unless prevented fail to do what one believes to be the best thing to do at the moment of action, have praised for sharing the same belief. Others, holding a different opinion, have regretted that this passage misrepresents the moral struggle. They have consoled themselves by alleging other texts a contrary sense. Thus, Sir David Ross: Aristotle elsewhere shows himself alive to the existence of a moral struggle, a conflict between rational wish and appetite, which the agent has actual knowledge of the wrongness of the particular act that he We must suppose that interest his favourite distinctions of potential and actual, of major and minor premise, has betrayed him into a formal theory which is inadequate to his own real view of the problem. What is missing his formal theory is the recognition that incontinence is due not to failure of knowledge, but to weakness of will. (Aristotle, 224). I wish to argue that both the praise and the blame thus accorded to are unwarranted. I shall try to show that the central passage of Chapter Three (1147a24ff.), expressly provides for the case in which the agent has actual knowledge of the wrongness of the particular act that he does. Failure to recognise this, I shall contend, is due to misunderstanding of the structure of the practical syllogism. Aristotle's starting-point is the popular notion of incontinence set out the first two chapters. The incontinent man (x yet he acts, it seems, willingly: for it is argued that a man cannot be