Chapter III

Aristotle

Now since all involuntary action is either upon compulsion or by reason of ignorance, Voluntary Action would seem to be “that whose origination is in the agent, he being aware of the particular details in which the action consists.”

For, it may be, men are not justified by calling those actions involuntary, which are done by reason of Anger or Lust. Because, in the first place, if this be so no other animal but man, and not even children, can be said to act voluntarily. Next, is it meant that we never act voluntarily when we act from Lust or Anger, or that we act voluntarily in doing what is right and involuntarily in doing what is discreditable? The latter supposition is absurd, since the cause is one and the same. Then as to the former, it is a strange thing to maintain actions to be involuntary which we are bound to grasp at: now there are occasions on which anger is a duty,^[1] and there are things which we are bound to lust after,^[2] health, for instance, and learning.

Again, whereas actions strictly involuntary are thought to be attended with pain, those which are done to gratify lust are thought to be pleasant. Again: how does the involuntariness make any difference^[3] between wrong actions done from deliberate calculation, and those done by reason of anger? for both ought to be avoided, and the irrational feelings are thought to be just as natural to man as reason, and so of course must be such actions of the individual as are done from Anger and Lust. It is absurd then to class these actions among the involuntary.

Notes

Bishop Butler would agree to this: he says of settled deliberate anger, “It seems in us plainly connected with a sense of virtue and vice, of moral good and evil.” See the whole Sermon on Resentment.
Aristotle has, I venture to think, rather quibbled here, by using [Greek: epithumia] and its verb, equivocally as there is no following his argument without condescending to the same device, I have used our word lust in its ancient signification Ps. xxiv. 12, “What man is he that lusteth to live?”
The meaning is, that the _onus probandi_ is thrown upon the person who maintains the distinction, Aristotle has a _prima facie_ case. The whole passage is one of difficulty. Card wells text gives the passage from [Greek: dokei de] as a separate argument Bekker’s seems to intend al 81 ir/jd£eis as a separate argument but if so, the argument would be a mere _petitio principii_. I have adopted Cardwell’s reading in part, but retain the comma at [Greek: dmpho] and have translated the last four words as applying to the whole discussion, whereas Cardwell’s reading seems to restrict them to the last argument.