VIRTUE AND GOALS OF ACTIONS IN ARISTOTLE’S ETHICAL TREATISES

The present paper focuses on Aristotle’s claim in the Eudemian Ethics that the virtues of character are ‘states to do with decision’, by which he means that they are somehow responsible for decisions. In the paper’s first two sections, I explicate the way in which he thinks the character-virtues contribute to the correctness of the virtuous person’s decisions. In two subsequent sections, I articulate two philosophical objections to the picture that will have emerged. I defend Aristotle against the first objection. In articulating the second objection, I rely on texts from the Nicomachean Ethics and the De motu animalium that John Cooper’s work on Aristotle’s moral psychology has greatly illuminated. I argue that the second objection cannot be answered in a satisfactory way, and that it identifies a philosophical weakness in the moral psychology of the Eudemian Ethics, namely that it operates with an overly restrictive conception of practical reason.