Aristotle on choice and responsibility in Nicomachean Ethics, Book III
I was eight years old when my life as a miscreant began.
My family had stopped at a gas station on the way home, and I had run inside to use the bathroom. As I was walking out of the store, my gaze was stolen by grape-flavoured Bubblicious gum. I picked up the pack, coveted the imagined taste, and then decided I would try to convince my mom to buy this treasure for me.
With no ill intent (which shows you how deviant I was from the beginning), I jogged out to the car with the gum to show my mom what I craved and how she could fulfill my every desire by buying it for me. As I stood at the car window showing her the gum, I noticed a slightly panicked look on her face. Being the emotionally intelligent boy I was, I tried even harder to get her attention, but to no avail. Her eyes were fixed on the rather intimidating owner of the convenience store, who was standing on the steps, hands on his hips, glowering down at me.
Needless to say, I did not get my gum that day.
But was the thievery my fault? Was I actively showing the beginning signs of a life of depravity and vice?
Believe it or not, this is exactly (and by exactly, I mean thinly related to) what Aristotle was writing about in Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics.
When does an action deserve praise or blame?
Book II explains how habits form our character. Book III asks a question that has to come next: Which actions actually belong to us? Praise and blame make sense only when a person has some responsibility for what happened. We usually pity or pardon someone who acted under force or through ignorance.
Some cases are easy. If a strong wind literally carries a person somewhere, the source of the movement is outside that person. Human life offers messier examples. Aristotle imagines sailors throwing cargo overboard during a storm. Nobody boards a ship hoping to dump valuable cargo into the sea. In that moment, however, they choose to do it because saving the people on board matters more. The action is unwanted in itself and still chosen under the circumstances. Aristotle calls actions like this “mixed.”
Circumstances matter, though they do not make every decision innocent, because pressure can narrow our options without erasing them.
Ignorance complicates things in another way. Aristotle is especially interested in ignorance of the particular circumstances, including whom an action affects and what it might cause. My gum incident fits here fairly well. I knew the gum belonged to the store. I knew that things in stores cost money. I also knew that I wasn’t supposed to steal. Somehow, in the midst of my fixation, the small but important fact that I was still holding unpaid gum did not enter my eight-year-old reasoning. I intended to ask my mom to buy it. I did not intend to steal it.
Aristotle even distinguishes an action done through ignorance from one done while ignorant. A drunk person may fail to understand, yet his drunkenness may itself have resulted from earlier choices. Ignorance is not a magic eraser. The question is how the ignorance arose and whether the person would regret the action after learning what really happened.
I was still the boy standing beside the car with unpaid gum in his hand. The store owner could see this action clearly.
Choice
Aristotle next turns from voluntary action to choice. Children and animals can act voluntarily, he says, because their actions can arise from within them, but choice requires deliberation. This is uncomfortable for my defense, since Aristotle specifically mentions children as people whose voluntary actions do not yet have the same kind of considered choice found in a mature person.
He separates choice from appetite. I wanted the gum. That desire did not decide how I should get it. I could ask my mom or put it back. Paying for it myself was also an option, assuming I had any money (which I did not). Appetite presents something as attractive, yet choice begins when I consider a course of action and settle on it.
A single action can be misleading. Someone might do the decent thing by accident, from fear, or because another person is watching. It shows what I have considered worth doing.
I had no plan to steal gum, which certainly changes how blameworthy the act was. Still, good intent did not move the gum back onto the shelf. Moral responsibility then has to deal with what happened in its circumstances.
The road toward the destination
Aristotle says that we wish for ends and think about what helps bring them about. A doctor aims at health and thinks about treatment. A speaker aims to persuade and considers how to make the case. Deliberation starts with a desired end, then works backwards until we reach something we can actually do.
This can sound mechanical, especially when the end is as large as happiness. Very few people sit down in the morning to decide whether they would like their lives to go well. We already want that. The practical question concerns what we will do today, with this person, under these conditions.
Suppose I receive an irritating email from a parent at school. I want to defend myself, but I also want to preserve the relationship. I cannot choose the other person’s response, and I cannot undo the message already sent. I can choose whether to answer immediately, or I can reread my draft after the emotion has faded. Those choices are the part of the situation that belongs to me.
The same thing happens in parenting. I want my own children to become honest people (not thieving liars like I was), but when one of them admits to doing something wrong, my response becomes one of the means by which that end is pursued. If I make confession unbearable, if I give a swift consequence in order to “curb” the negative behaviour, I may work against the very honesty I say I want.
There is a complication here because our ends do not arrive untouched by character. We pursue what appears good to us, and our habits shape what we are able to see as good. The more often I protect my pride, the more reasonable self-protection begins to seem. The more often I practise patience, the more available patience becomes when I need it. Choice shapes character, and character then influences our later choices.
Aristotle thinks virtue and vice are in our power because the actions that form them are in our power. He knows we cannot remake a settled character in a single afternoon. The slow formation of that character came through actions that were ours. This is one reason small choices receive so much attention in the Ethics.
Courage and temperance
The second half of Book III moves into particular virtues, beginning with courage and temperance. The placement makes sense. Fear and pleasure exert enormous pressure on choice.
Courage deals with fear and confidence. A reckless person may rush forward because of the danger or enjoys the feeling of appearing bold. The courageous person acts for the sake of what is noble, even while afraid.
Temperance concerns bodily pleasures. Pleasure is not treated as inherently suspicious, but the trouble begins when appetite takes charge and practical judgment goes M.I.A. Anyone who has opened a snack after deciding not to, then discovered the empty bag a few minutes later, has at least a minor sense of what Aristotle means.
Courage and temperance reveal why virtue involves more than knowing a definition. Fear arrives before the lecture notes, and desire is usually not interested in a careful discussion. In those moments, our previous habits and present choices meet each other.
I do not remember what my mother said after I returned the gum to the store owner. What stayed with me was his face. I hadn’t meant to steal anything, but I had walked out holding something unpaid, and that part was on me. Wanting the gum gave me no permission to take it, and returning it to the store was a decision that potentially steered me away from a life of crime.
Today, I still like grape gum. I just pay first.
Edition used: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated by David Ross and revised by Lesley Brown, Oxford World’s Classics.
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