Finally, we should expect from one who thinks that every act of simple pleasure is right, and that one act never contradicts another, a similar doctrine in respect of the act of choosing. But the reverse is here so obvious that the advocates of this view have in striking contrast always asserted in the most definite manner that different individuals have preferences opposite in character, and that one is right, the other wrong.
Glancing back from the disciples of Aristotle in the Middle Ages to the master himself, we find his teaching appears to be a different one. Aristotle recognizes a right and a wrong kind of desire (Ὄρεξις ὀρθᾐ καἰ οὐκ οὐκ ὀρθή) and that what is desired (ὀρεκτόν) is not always the good. (De Anima, iii. 10.) In the same way he affirms in respect of pleasure (ἡδονή) in the Nicomachian Ethics that not every pleasure is good; there is a pleasure in the bad, which is itself bad (Nic. Eth. x. 2). In his Metaphysics he distinguishes between a lower and a higher kind of desire (ἐπιθμία and βούλησις); whatever is desired by the higher kind for its own sake is truly good (Metaph. Δ 7, p. 1072 a. 28). A certain approach to the right view seems already to have been reached here. It is of special interest (a point I have only discovered later) that Aristotle has suggested an analogy between ethical subjectivism and the logical subjectivism of Protagoras, and equally repudiates both (Metaph. Κ 6, p. 1062 b. 16, and 1063 a. 5). On the other hand it would appear from the lines immediately following as though Aristotle had fallen into the very obvious temptation of believing that we can know the good as good, independent of the excitation of the emotions. (Metaph. 29; cf. De Anima, iii. 9 and 10.)
In close connection with this appears to be the passage (Nic. Eth. i. 4) where he denies that there is any uniform notion of the good (understanding, of course, the good in itself, cf. respecting this, note 26, p. 77), thinking rather that only by way of analogy does there exist a unity in the case of the good of rational thinking and seeing, joy, etc., and when, in another passage (Metaph. Ε 4, p. 1027 b. 25), he says that the true and the false are not in the things, where the good and the bad are, i.e. the former predicates (e.g. true God, false friend) are ascribed to the things only in respect of certain mental acts, the true and false judgments, while the latter, on the other hand, are not in a similar way ascribed to them merely in respect of a certain class of mental activities:—all of which, incorrect as it is, is still connected as a necessary result with the aforesaid error. He is more in agreement with the true doctrine of the origin of our notion and knowledge of the good, when (Nic. Ethics, x. 2) he adduces as an argument against the assumption that joy does not belong to the good, the fact that all desire it, and adds: “For if only irrational beings desired it, the opposition to this argument would still contain a certain justification; but if every rational being also does so, how can anything be said against it?” Yet even this utterance is reconcilable with his erroneous view.
Considered in this aspect, the moralist of sentiment (Gefühls-moralist), Hume, has here the advantage of him, for Hume rightly urges, how is any one to recognize that anything is to be loved without experiencing the love?
I have said that the temptation into which Aristotle has fallen appears quite conceivable. It arises from the fact that, along with the experience of an emotion qualified as right there is given at the same time the knowledge that the object itself is good. Thus it may easily happen that the relation is then perverted and the love is thought to follow as a consequence of the knowledge, and recognized as right by reason of its agreement with this its rule.
It is not without interest to compare the error here made by Aristotle in respect of emotion qualified as right with that which we have seen was committed by Descartes in respect of the similarly qualified judgment (cf. note 27, p. 78). The cases are essentially analogous; in both cases the distinguishing mark is sought in the special character of the idea which forms the basis of the act rather than in the act itself qualified as right. In fact it seems to me evident from various passages in his treatise Des Passions, that Descartes himself has treated the matter in a way quite similar to that of Aristotle, and in a manner essentially analogous to his doctrine of the self-evident judgment.
At the present time many approach very near to Descartes’ error in respect of the marks of self-evidence (if we are not rather to say that the error is really implicitly contained in their statements) when they regard the matter as though in the case of every self-evident judgment a criterion were referred to. In this case it must have been previously given somewhere, either as recognized—and this would lead to infinity—or (and this is the only alternative), it is given in the idea. It may be said that here also the temptation to such a misconception lies ready to hand and this may well have exercised a misleading influence upon Descartes. Aristotle’s error is less general, though only because the phenomenon of the emotion qualified as right has, generally speaking, come less frequently under consideration than that of the similarly qualified judgment.
If the nature of the former has been misunderstood, the latter has often been so overlooked as not even to admit of its essential nature being misinterpreted.
[29] (p. 19). When I affirmed that the language of common life offers no suitable terms for activities of feeling qualified as right, I did not mean thereby to deny that certain expressions are, in themselves, well suited, indeed they would seem to have been created for this purpose, particularly, for example, the expressions “to be well pleasing,” and “to be ill pleasing” (gut gefallen and schlecht gefallen), as distinct from the simple “to be pleasing” and “to be mis-pleasing.” Though, however, it might seem advisable to limit these terms in this way and so to make them serve as scientific terms, scarcely any trace of such a limitation is to be found in ordinary language. One does not, of course, care to say: “the good pleases him ill,” “the bad pleases him well,” though one still says that to one this tastes good, to another that, and so on, i.e. the expression “to be well pleasing” is applied unhesitatingly even in the case where pleasure is given in the lowest instinctive form. Indeed the term-“impression” (Wahrnehmung) has degenerated in an almost similar way. Only really appropriate in respect of knowledge, it came to be applied in the case of the so-called external impression (äussere Wahrnehmung), i.e. in cases of a belief, blind, and in its essential relations, erroneous, and consequently would require, in order, as a terminus technicus to have scientific application, an important reform of the usual terminology and one which would essentially narrow the range of the term.
[30] (p. 19). Metaph., Α 1, p. 980 a. 22.