Monday, February 8, 2010

Incontinence Made Me Do It

Book seven (chapters 1-10) of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics discusses the characteristics of Incontinence. He first begins by determining whether an incontinent person has knowledge. Aristotle mentions that Socrates believed that an incontinent person could not have knowledge, but is driven by ignorance. However, an incontinent person pursues an action even when he knows it is wrong to pursue it. For example, an incontinent person would know that it is wrong to steal, but does so anyway in the moment that he does the deed. Aristotle asserts that the knowledge that an incontinent person has is comparable to the knowledge that a drunk or a person who is affected by strong feelings would have because they “have knowledge in a way and do not have it.”(Nicomachean Ethics 103)

Next Aristotle differentiates between two different kinds of incontinence, one is of the appetite and the other is of the spirit. Incontinence of the spirit means that a person is overcome by reason whereas a person who is incontinent about appetite is not overcome by reason but by gratification. A person who is incontinent about the spirit would be a person who pursues an action through faulty reasoning, such as a person who is overeager to help a friend, but because of his over, eagerness does not fully hear or understand the instructions given and thus becomes more a hindrance than a help.

Incontinence is therefore caused by an inability to “abide” by some force that would make a person give in to an action that is known to be wrong. A continent person is one who withstands the base desire and does not go against a belief or knowledge of what is known to be wrong. Aristotle’s main argument is to connect incontinence with intemperance, which was why it is important to first clarify that an incontinent person has knowledge. Both intemperance and incontinence, along with temperance and continence, deal with pleasure and pain. However, the incontinent person and the intemperate person will pursue a pleasure when it is wrong for different reasons. An incontinent person purses a pleasure when it is wrong, even when he is aware that the action is wrong, whereas an intemperate person does not view the action as wrong. Therefore, Aristotle views the intemperate person as worse than the incontinent person because the intemperate person has no reason to pursue the pleasure. They pursue pleasure simply for the gratification of the result. An incontinent person will have a reason caused by a base desire that they are unable to withstand. To clarify the example given earlier of stealing, an incontinent person would steal, let us say a new PS3, the person knows that stealing is wrong, but steals the item because the desire of the PS3 is greater than that of the knowledge that stealing is wrong. I believe Aristotle would say that the intemperate person would be the kleptomaniac that steals the PS3, not because of any great desire for it, but simply because the action of stealing itself is the pleasure.

The converse of this is not the same, since the temperate person is better than the continent person is because the temperate person has no base desires to overcome and sees no pleasure in the excess of things.

5 comments:

Mike Shapiro said...
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Mike Shapiro said...

You write in your entry that "Aristotle views the intemperate person as worse than the incontinent person because the intemperate person has no reason to pursue the pleasure." I know that this may not be your personal view, but I would like to challenge Aristotle's position as I feel it is incorrect. In my mind the incontinent person is worse because they are able to percieve the wrongness of their actions, yet do them anyway.

While the intemperate person has no reason behind their search for pleasure, they also do not know that the actions that they are performing are wrong or incorrect. They lack the ability to fully understand their actions and the reasons and causes behind them.


I would like to create a situation in which two people do something wrong, one person intemperate, the other incontinent, and demonstrate that in reality it is the incontinent person who is worse. Let us imagine two people in a store, as they make their way down the aisles, both take an item and put it in their pocket.


One of these people is a child, too young, naive or ignorant to understand their actions fully. They do things cumpulsively without regard to morality or social expectations. Many children take things from stores without regard to even what they are taking, and do it as a whim without thought. However, because the child might have never been told not to steal, or may be too young to even be taught at all, one could not possibly view them as wrong. The child, or intemperate person, lacks the ability to understand their action fully, and thus did not realize they were doing the wrong thing.

The other person in the store is a career criminal. They understood that taking an item from the store was wrong, but their desire to steal an item to sell it and make money outweighed their desire to act morally. This person acted with knowledge, and conciously made the choice to steal. I believe most people would view this incontinent person as worse, because they understood what they were doing was wrong, yet they did it anyway.

I think that intent is the largest factor in how an action should be judged, and thus a person who knowingly acts wrong is far worse than someone who does not even understand the choice they are making or the action they are doing.

courtenay said...

Shaps you make a good point in saying that the incontinent person is worse because they are able to perceive the wrongness of their actions. However, as Aristotle points out, "He is intemperate; for he is bound to have no regrets, and so is incurable, since someone without regrets is incurable" (Nicomachean Ethics, 109). From this statement I can tell you that the difference between the intemperate person and the incontinent person is that one is able to learn and change eventually from mistakes, where as the intemperate person has no regret and therefor is incapable of change.

I am not necessarily saying that because someone is incontinent they will eventually change there ways, but by being incontinent they have potential for change. Someone who does an evil thing from no appetite is worse than someone who does something with an appetite because they are not aware of the evil action and therefor have no way of learning from any actions.

In my own opinion I find someone who has no knowledge of their evil actions to be worse because they know no limits to their actions. Where as someone who has knowledge is aware and may have some restraint to the severity of their actions.

Jen Gen said...

Regarding the intemperate person, Aristotle warns us that we should “think of the lengths he would go to if he also acquired vigorous appetites and felt severe pains at the lack of necessities.”(Nicomachean Ethics, 105) I think what makes the intemperate person worse than the incontinent person is not just the lack of “potential for change”, as Courtney put it, but also the lack of knowledge that something is wrong . This lack of desire causes them to have the potential to commit worse things should they develop any excess desire. Since in class we kept bringing our examples of desire back to sexual desires I will give an example based on that. I would imagine that the incontinent person would be the person who knows that rape is wrong, but who has an extreme desire for a particular female. Thus, he decides to take her forcefully even though he knows that the act of rape is wrong, but because his desire was so great, he did not connect this particular instance to that knowledge. The intemperate person would be the rapist who takes women forcibly because he does not see his actions as wrong. I think Aristotle is saying that the intemperate person has the potential to commit things to an extreme for no reason. For this example, the intemperate person, because of his inability to see rape as wrong, has the potential to become a psychopath should he develop any “vigorous appetites.”

Swarna said...

I agree with your connection of incontinence with intemperance and continence with temperance. Yet, can an incontinence person also be prudent? Since prudence is having knowledge of moral action and being able to perform a moral action, I would not think so. However, Aristotle does write that “people are sometimes thought to be incontinent, although they are prudent.” According to Aristotle, prudence suggests a virtuous character. And so, if a prudent person can also be incontinent, then can an incontinent person be of a virtuous character?