Aristotle's Nichomachean Point Of View

Those who commit wicked acts moldiness be doing so from constraint or ignorance. Socrates refuses to believe that anyone give the sack accept evil, for to do so is to go against the basic slice yearning for the unassailable and for the positive. Aristotle makes a number of distinctions regarding actions that are voluntary and those that are forced which might seem to be precept the same thing, but Aristotle is non simply stating that those who do good are making choices and those who do wrong are not, for that would rationalize world beings of all responsibility for their actions. He makes this stool when he states:

. . . it is absurd to blame external constituent rather than oneself for go an easy prey to such attractions, and to hold oneself responsible for master deeds, darn pleasure is held responsible for one's base deeds (54).

At the same time, Aristotle says that every wicked person is in a state of ignorance and acting out of error. However, an act is not involuntary simply out of ignorance:

Ignorance in clean choice does not make an act involuntary--it makes it wicked; nor does ignorance of the universal, for that invites reproach; rather, it is ignorance of the grammatical constituenticulars which constitute the circumstances and the issues involved in the action. It is on this that pity and pardon depend, for a person who acts in ignorance of a particular circumstance acts involuntarily (55).

oluntary and the involuntary is not evermore clear, and it is not always feasible to make a clear distinction between acts that are voluntary and those that are involuntary. Indeed, it is possible for an action to be a mixture of both. Acts committed in ignorance are considered involuntary.

For these reasons, Aristotle would likely support capital punishment, holding that those master to it have chosen their path in life while knowing the consequences.

In Chapter 5 of Book III, Aristotle addresses the issue of man as responsible agent. Aristotle here indicates his conception of personal moral responsibility. The law rewards moral acts and punishes immoral acts. However, the law should make a distinction between those who do evil because they have chosen to and those who acted involuntarily because of compulsion or ignorance. Aristotle holds out for the view that human beings are responsible for their actions, even many involuntary actions. He notes an argument that is raised against this, that carelessness may be part of a man's character so that his actions are shaped by that character, something over which he presumably has no control. Aristotle counters this by stating that the psyche is responsible for his becoming careless in the first place, presumptuous that he lives in a lose an
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