Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics

[1221b] [1] but it is the man that goes too far in not being annoyed even at the prosperity of the undeserving, and is easy going, as gluttons are in regard to food, whereas his opposite is difficult-tempered in respect of jealousy.— It is superfluous to state in the definition that the specified relation to each thing must not be accidental; no science whether theoretical or productive makes this addition to the definition either in discourse or in practice, but this addition is aimed against the logical quibbling of the sciences. Let us then accept these simple definitions, and let us make them more precise when we are speaking about the opposite dispositions.¹ But these modes of emotion themselves are divided into species designated according to their difference in respect of time or intensity or in regard to one of the objects that cause the emotions. I mean for instance that a man is called quick-tempered from feeling the emotion of anger sooner than he ought, harsh and passionate from feeling it more than he ought, bitter from having a tendency to cherish his anger, violent and abusive owing to the acts of retaliation to which his anger gives rise. Men are called gourmands or gluttons and drunkards from having an irrational liability to indulgence in one or the other sort of nutriment.

But it must not be ignored that some of the vices mentioned cannot be classed under the heading of manner, if manner is taken to be feeling the emotion to excess. [20] For example, a man is not an adulterer because he exceeds in intercourse with married women, for 'excess' does not apply here, but adultery merely in itself is a vice, since the term denoting the passion implicitly denotes that the man is vicious²; and similarly with outrage. Hence men dispute the charge, and admit intercourse but deny adultery on the ground of having acted in ignorance or under compulsion, or admit striking a blow but deny committing an outrage; and similarly in meeting the other charges of the same kind.

These points having been taken, we must next say that since the spirit has two parts, and the virtues are divided between them, one set being those of the rational part, intellectual virtues, whose work is truth, whether about the nature of a thing or about its mode of production, while the other set belongs to the part that is irrational but possesses appetition (for if the spirit is divided into parts, not any and every part possesses appetition), it therefore follows that the moral character is vicious or virtuous by reason of pursuing or avoiding certain pleasures and pains. This is clear from the classification³ of the emotions, faculties and states of character. For the faculties and the states are concerned with the modes of emotion, and the emotions are distinguished by pain and pleasure; so that it follows from these considerations as well as from the positions already laid down that all moral goodness is concerned with pleasures and pains. For our state of character is related to and concerned with such things as have the property of making every person's spirit worse and better.