structural:scholar_edition, information:extraction, linguistic:voice_change
Self-control and hedonism

According to Aristotle, self-control and akrasia (incontinence) are not "identical with Virtue and Vice, nor yet as different in kind from them". Temperance is distinct from self-control, both because self-control could be used to restrain good desires as much as bad ones, and because a temperate person would not have bad desires that need restraining.

Another way of stating the difference between lack of self control and intemperance is that intemperance is a choice and a habit of character — an exercise of the will — while incontinence is contrary to choice — a failure of will. By analogy, the incontinent person is like a city that has good laws on the books but that doesn't enforce them; the intemperate person is like a city with bad laws.

Aristotle reviews notions about self-control, including one he associates with Socrates. According to Aristotle, Socrates argued that incontinent behavior must be a result of ignorance, as people only choose what they think to be good: it's not that the unrestrained person does things that they know to be bad, disregarding their knowledge under the influence of passion, but that they are ignorant about what is good and bad. Aristotle says at first that "this view plainly contradicts the observed facts", but comes to conclude that "the position that Socrates sought to establish actually seems to result".

His way of accommodating Socrates relies on syllogistic reasoning. Aristotle suggests that an incontinent person has competing universal premises, for example "χ would be unjust" and "χ would satisfy my sensual desire." When they then encounter a particular "α is an example of χ" the universal premise that has a sensual payoff associated with it crowds out the one that does not when it comes time for the incontinent person to choose a course of action ("α would satisfy my sensual desire" ∴ "I shall α!"). The incontinent person therefore remains in ignorance about what they should be able to know ("α would be unjust").

Aristotle says that someone who lacks self-control is typically influenced either by "necessary" pleasures or pains, like those associated with food and sex, or by more supererogatory pleasures and pains like those associated with victory, honor, or wealth. Lack of self-control in the first case is simple lack of self-control, and is a sort of vice (in a similar domain to intemperance). Lack of self-control in the second case is somewhat different: pursuing good things, but in an excessive, unrestrained way.

Some have unusual desires or aversions after they were victimized as children or experience some sort of psychopathology or other malady. Aristotle says that "every sort of senselessness or cowardice or dissipation or harshness that goes to excess is either animal-like or disease-like".

For Aristotle, akrasia ("incontinence"), is distinct from animal-like behavior because it is specific to humans and involves rational thinking, even though the conclusions are not put into practice. Someone who behaves in a purely animal-like way is not acting based upon conscious choice.

Returning to the question of anger (thumos), Aristotle distinguishes it from desires because he says it listens to reason, but often hears incorrectly. He contrasts this with desire, which does not listen to reason. Someone overcome by anger is conquered by flawed, crude reason, but at least by an argument; someone overcome by desire is conquered by desire alone. He also says that anger is more natural and less blameworthy than desire for excessive unnecessary pleasure. Acts from anger are more likely to be sudden and unpremeditated, while those motivated by desire are more likely to be plotted. Furthermore, acts of hubris never result from anger, but always have a connection to pleasure-seeking, whereas angry people act from often-regretted pain.

The two ways that people lose mastery of their own actions and do not act according to their own deliberations include excitability, where a person does follows their imagination, and that of a weak person who has thought things through, but is carried away by passion. Nevertheless, it is better to have akrasia than the vice of akolasia, in which intemperate acts are chosen for their own sake. People with such a vice do not even know they are wrong, and feel no regrets. These are less curable.

Aristotle compares self-control (resisting the temptation of the pleasant) with endurance (resisting the temptation of the unpleasant), and he describes the nebbish (who wilts in the face of moderate displeasure) as a sort of counterpart to the person without self control.

Finally Aristotle addresses questions raised earlier: