G. Harvey Ralphson - "Boy Scouts in the Philippines"

A. T. Quiller Couch - "Major Vigoureux"

Sven Anders Hedin - "From Pole to Pole"

W. D. Howells - "The Lady of the Aroostook"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Ethics

A >> Aristotle >> Ethics




There is a difference also in universal propositions; a universal
proposition may relate partly to a man's self and partly to the thing in
question: take the following for instance; "dry food is good for every
man," this may have the two minor premisses, "this is a man," and "so
and so is dry food;" but whether a given substance is so and so a man
either has not the Knowledge or does not exert it. According to these
different senses there will be an immense difference, so that for a
man to _know_ in the one sense, and yet act wrongly, would be nothing
strange, but in any of the other senses it would be a matter for wonder.

Again, men may have Knowledge in a way different from any of those which
have been now stated: for we constantly see a man's state so differing
by having and not using Knowledge, that he has it in a sense and also
has not; when a man is asleep, for instance, or mad, or drunk: well, men
under the actual operation of passion are in exactly similar conditions;
for anger, lust, and some other such-like things, manifestly make
changes even in the body, and in some they even cause madness; it is
plain then that we must say the men of Imperfect Self-Control are in a
state similar to these.

And their saying what embodies Knowledge is no proof of their actually
then exercising it, because they who are under the operation of these
passions repeat demonstrations; or verses of Empedocles, just as
children, when first learning, string words together, but as yet know
nothing of their meaning, because they must grow into it, and this is a
process requiring time: so that we must suppose these men who fail in
Self-Control to say these moral sayings just as actors do. Furthermore,
a man may look at the account of the phaenomenon in the following way,
from an examination of the actual working of the mind: All action may
be analysed into a syllogism, in which the one premiss is an universal
maxim and the other concerns particulars of which Sense [moral or
physical, as the case may be] is cognisant: now when one results from
these two, it follows necessarily that, as far as theory goes the mind
must assert the conclusion, and in practical propositions the man must
act accordingly. For instance, let the universal be, "All that is
sweet should be tasted," the particular, "This is sweet;" it follows
necessarily that he who is able and is not hindered should not only
draw, but put in practice, the conclusion "This is to be tasted." When
then there is in the mind one universal proposition forbidding to taste,
and the other "All that is sweet is pleasant" with its minor "This is
sweet" (which is the one that really works), and desire happens to be in
the man, the first universal bids him avoid this but the desire leads
him on to taste; for it has the power of moving the various organs:
and so it results that he fails in Self-Control, [Sidenote:1147b] in a
certain sense under the influence of Reason and Opinion not contrary in
itself to Reason but only accidentally so; because it is the desire that
is contrary to Right Reason, but not the Opinion: and so for this reason
brutes are not accounted of Imperfect Self-Control, because they have
no power of conceiving universals but only of receiving and retaining
particular impressions.

As to the manner in which the ignorance is removed and the man of
Imperfect Self-Control recovers his Knowledge, the account is the same
as with respect to him who is drunk or asleep, and is not peculiar to
this affection, so physiologists are the right people to apply to. But
whereas the minor premiss of every practical syllogism is an opinion on
matter cognisable by Sense and determines the actions; he who is under
the influence of passion either has not this, or so has it that his
having does not amount to _knowing_ but merely saying, as a man when
drunk might repeat Empedocles' verses; and because the minor term
is neither universal, nor is thought to have the power of producing
Knowledge in like manner as the universal term: and so the result which
Socrates was seeking comes out, that is to say, the affection does not
take place in the presence of that which is thought to be specially
and properly Knowledge, nor is this dragged about by reason of the
affection, but in the presence of that Knowledge which is conveyed by
Sense.

Let this account then be accepted of the question respecting the failure
in Self-Control, whether it is with Knowledge or not; and, if with
knowledge, with what kind of knowledge such failure is possible.

IV

The next question to be discussed is whether there is a character to be
designated by the term "of Imperfect Self-Control" simply, or whether
all who are so are to be accounted such, in respect of some particular
thing; and, if there is such a character, what is his object-matter.

Now that pleasures and pains are the object-matter of men of
Self-Control and of Endurance, and also of men of Imperfect Self-Control
and Softness, is plain.

Further, things which produce pleasure are either necessary, or objects
of choice in themselves but yet admitting of excess. All bodily things
which produce pleasure are necessary; and I call such those which relate
to food and other grosser appetities, in short such bodily things as
we assumed were the Object-matter of absence of Self-Control and of
Perfected Self-Mastery.

The other class of objects are not necessary, but objects of choice in
themselves: I mean, for instance, victory, honour, wealth, and such-like
good or pleasant things. And those who are excessive in their liking for
such things contrary to the principle of Right Reason which is in their
own breasts we do not designate men of Imperfect Self-Control simply,
but with the addition of the thing wherein, as in respect of money, or
gain, or honour, or anger, and not simply; because we consider them as
different characters and only having that title in right of a kind of
resemblance (as when we add to a man's name "conqueror in the Olympic
games" the account of him as Man differs but little from the account
of him as the Man who conquered in the Olympic games, but still it is
different). And a proof of the real [Sidenote: 1148a] difference between
these so designated with an addition and those simply so called is this,
that Imperfect Self-Control is blamed, not as an error merely but also
as being a vice, either wholly or partially; but none of these other
cases is so blamed.

But of those who have for their object-matter the bodily enjoyments,
which we say are also the object-matter of the man of Perfected
Self-Mastery and the man who has lost all Self-Control, he that pursues
excessive pleasures and too much avoids things which are painful (as
hunger and thirst, heat and cold, and everything connected with touch
and taste), not from moral choice but in spite of his moral choice and
intellectual conviction, is termed "a man of Imperfect Self-Control,"
not with the addition of any particular object-matter as we do in
respect of want of control of anger but simply.

And a proof that the term is thus applied is that the kindred term
"Soft" is used in respect of these enjoyments but not in respect of any
of those others. And for this reason we put into the same rank the man
of Imperfect Self-Control, the man who has lost it entirely, the man
who has it, and the man of Perfected Self-Mastery; but not any of those
other characters, because the former have for their object-matter the
same pleasures and pains: but though they have the same object-matter,
they are not related to it in the same way, but two of them act upon
moral choice, two without it. And so we should say that man is more
entirely given up to his passions who pursues excessive pleasures, and
avoids moderate pains, being either not at all, or at least but little,
urged by desire, than the man who does so because his desire is very
strong: because we think what would the former be likely to do if he had
the additional stimulus of youthful lust and violent pain consequent on
the want of those pleasures which we have denominated necessary?

Well then, since of desires and pleasures there are some which are in
kind honourable and good (because things pleasant are divisible, as we
said before, into such as are naturally objects of choice, such as
are naturally objects of avoidance, and such as are in themselves
indifferent, money, gain, honour, victory, for instance); in respect of
all such and those that are indifferent, men are blamed not merely for
being affected by or desiring or liking them, but for exceeding in any
way in these feelings.

And so they are blamed, whosoever in spite of Reason are mastered by,
that is pursue, any object, though in its nature noble and good; they,
for instance, who are more earnest than they should be respecting
honour, or their children or parents; not but what these are good
objects and men are praised for being earnest about them: but still they
admit of excess; for instance, if any one, as Niobe did, should fight
even against the gods, or feel towards his father as Satyrus, who got
therefrom the nickname of [Greek: philophator], [Sidenote: 1148b]
because he was thought to be very foolish.

Now depravity there is none in regard of these things, for the reason
assigned above, that each of them in itself is a thing naturally
choiceworthy, yet the excesses in respect of them are wrong and matter
for blame: and similarly there is no Imperfect Self-Control in respect
of these things; that being not merely a thing that should be avoided
but blameworthy.

But because of the resemblance of the affection to the Imperfection of
Self-Control the term is used with the addition in each case of the
particular object-matter, just as men call a man a bad physician, or bad
actor, whom they would not think of calling simply bad. As then in these
cases we do not apply the term simply because each of the states is not
a vice, but only like a vice in the way of analogy, so it is plain that
in respect of Imperfect Self-Control and Self-Control we must limit the
names to those states which have the same object-matter as Perfected
Self-Mastery and utter loss of Self-Control, and that we do apply it to
the case of anger only in the way of resemblance: for which reason, with
an addition, we designate a man of Imperfect Self-Control in respect of
anger, as of honour or of gain.

V

As there are some things naturally pleasant, and of these two kinds;
those, namely, which are pleasant generally, and those which are so
relatively to particular kinds of animals and men; so there are others
which are not naturally pleasant but which come to be so in consequence
either of maimings, or custom, or depraved natural tastes: and one may
observe moral states similar to those we have been speaking of, having
respectively these classes of things for their object-matter.

I mean the Brutish, as in the case of the female who, they say, would
rip up women with child and eat the foetus; or the tastes which are
found among the savage tribes bordering on the Pontus, some liking raw
flesh, and some being cannibals, and some lending one another their
children to make feasts of; or what is said of Phalaris. These are
instances of Brutish states, caused in some by disease or madness; take,
for instance, the man who sacrificed and ate his mother, or him who
devoured the liver of his fellow-servant. Instances again of those
caused by disease or by custom, would be, plucking out of hair, or
eating one's nails, or eating coals and earth. ... Now wherever nature
is really the cause no one would think of calling men of Imperfect
Self-Control, ... nor, in like manner, such as are in a diseased state
through custom.

[Sidenote:1149a] Obviously the having any of these inclinations is
something foreign to what is denominated Vice, just as Brutishness is:
and when a man has them his mastering them is not properly Self-Control,
nor his being mastered by them Imperfection of Self-Control in the
proper sense, but only in the way of resemblance; just as we may say a
man of ungovernable wrath fails of Self-Control in respect of anger but
not simply fails of Self-Control. For all excessive folly, cowardice,
absence of Self-Control, or irritability, are either Brutish or morbid.
The man, for instance, who is naturally afraid of all things, even if
a mouse should stir, is cowardly after a Brutish sort; there was a man
again who, by reason of disease, was afraid of a cat: and of the fools,
they who are naturally destitute of Reason and live only by Sense are
Brutish, as are some tribes of the far-off barbarians, while others
who are so by reason of diseases, epileptic or frantic, are in morbid
states.

So then, of these inclinations, a man may sometimes merely have one
without yielding to it: I mean, suppose that Phalaris had restrained his
unnatural desire to eat a child: or he may both have and yield to it. As
then Vice when such as belongs to human nature is called Vice simply,
while the other is so called with the addition of "brutish" or "morbid,"
but not simply Vice, so manifestly there is Brutish and Morbid
Imperfection of Self-Control, but that alone is entitled to the name
without any qualification which is of the nature of utter absence of
Self-Control, as it is found in Man.

VI

It is plain then that the object-matter of Imperfect Self-Control and
Self-Control is restricted to the same as that of utter absence of
Self-Control and that of Perfected Self-Mastery, and that the rest is
the object-matter of a different species so named metaphorically and not
simply: we will now examine the position, "that Imperfect Self-Control
in respect of Anger is less disgraceful than that in respect of Lusts."

In the first place, it seems that Anger does in a way listen to Reason
but mishears it; as quick servants who run out before they have heard
the whole of what is said and then mistake the order; dogs, again, bark
at the slightest stir, before they have seen whether it be friend
or foe; just so Anger, by reason of its natural heat and quickness,
listening to Reason, but without having heard the command of Reason,
rushes to its revenge. That is to say, Reason or some impression on the
mind shows there is insolence or contempt in the offender, and then
Anger, reasoning as it were that one ought to fight against what is
such, fires up immediately: whereas Lust, if Reason or Sense, as the
case may be, merely says a thing is sweet, rushes to the enjoyment of
it: and so Anger follows Reason in a manner, but Lust does not and is
therefore more disgraceful: because he that cannot control his anger
yields in a manner to Reason, but the other to his Lust and not to
Reason at all. [Sidenote:1149b]

Again, a man is more excusable for following such desires as are
natural, just as he is for following such Lusts as are common to all and
to that degree in which they are common. Now Anger and irritability are
more natural than Lusts when in excess and for objects not necessary.
(This was the ground of the defence the man made who beat his father,
"My father," he said, "used to beat his, and his father his again, and
this little fellow here," pointing to his child, "will beat me when he
is grown a man: it runs in the family." And the father, as he was being
dragged along, bid his son leave off beating him at the door, because he
had himself been used to drag his father so far and no farther.)

Again, characters are less unjust in proportion as they involve less
insidiousness. Now the Angry man is not insidious, nor is Anger, but
quite open: but Lust is: as they say of Venus,

"Cyprus-born Goddess, _weaver of deceits_"

Or Homer of the girdle called the Cestus,

"Persuasiveness _cheating_ e'en the subtlest mind."

And so since this kind of Imperfect Self-Control is more unjust, it
is also more disgraceful than that in respect of Anger, and is simply
Imperfect Self-Control, and Vice in a certain sense. Again, no man feels
pain in being insolent, but every one who acts through Anger does act
with pain; and he who acts insolently does it with pleasure. If then
those things are most unjust with which we have most right to be angry,
then Imperfect Self-Control, arising from Lust, is more so than that
arising from Anger: because in Anger there is no insolence.

Well then, it is clear that Imperfect Self-Control in respect of
Lusts is more disgraceful than that in respect of Anger, and that the
object-matter of Self-Control, and the Imperfection of it, are bodily
Lusts and pleasures; but of these last we must take into account the
differences; for, as was said at the commencement, some are proper to
the human race and natural both in kind and degree, others Brutish, and
others caused by maimings and diseases.

Now the first of these only are the object-matter of Perfected
Self-Mastery and utter absence of Self-Control; and therefore we never
attribute either of these states to Brutes (except metaphorically,
and whenever any one kind of animal differs entirely from another in
insolence, mischievousness, or voracity), because they have not moral
choice or process of deliberation, but are quite different from that
kind of creature just as are madmen from other men.

[Sidenote: 1150a] Brutishness is not so low in the scale as Vice, yet
it is to be regarded with more fear: because it is not that the highest
principle has been corrupted, as in the human creature, but the subject
has it not at all.

It is much the same, therefore, as if one should compare an inanimate
with an animate being, which were the worse: for the badness of that
which has no principle of origination is always less harmful; now
Intellect is a principle of origination. A similar case would be the
comparing injustice and an unjust man together: for in different ways
each is the worst: a bad man would produce ten thousand times as much
harm as a bad brute.

VII

Now with respect to the pleasures and pains which come to a man through
Touch and Taste, and the desiring or avoiding such (which we determined
before to constitute the object-matter of the states of utter absence of
Self-Control and Perfected Self-Mastery), one may be so disposed as
to yield to temptations to which most men would be superior, or to
be superior to those to which most men would yield: in respect of
pleasures, these characters will be respectively the man of Imperfect
Self-Control, and the man of Self-Control; and, in respect of pains, the
man of Softness and the man of Endurance: but the moral state of most
men is something between the two, even though they lean somewhat to the
worse characters.

Again, since of the pleasures indicated some are necessary and some are
not, others are so to a certain degree but not the excess or defect of
them, and similarly also of Lusts and pains, the man who pursues the
excess of pleasant things, or such as are in themselves excess, or from
moral choice, for their own sake, and not for anything else which is to
result from them, is a man utterly void of Self-Control: for he must be
incapable of remorse, and so incurable, because he that has not remorse
is incurable. (He that has too little love of pleasure is the opposite
character, and the man of Perfected Self-Mastery the mean character.) He
is of a similar character who avoids the bodily pains, not because he
_cannot_, but because he _chooses not to_, withstand them.

But of the characters who go wrong without _choosing_ so to do, the one
is led on by reason of pleasure, the other because he avoids the pain it
would cost him to deny his lust; and so they are different the one from
the other. Now every one would pronounce a man worse for doing something
base without any impulse of desire, or with a very slight one, than for
doing the same from the impulse of a very strong desire; for striking
a man when not angry than if he did so in wrath: because one naturally
says, "What would he have done had he been under the influence of
passion?" (and on this ground, by the bye, the man utterly void of
Self-Control is worse than he who has it imperfectly). However, of the
two characters which have been mentioned [as included in that of utter
absence of Self-Control], the one is rather Softness, the other properly
the man of no Self-Control.

Furthermore, to the character of Imperfect Self-Control is opposed that
of Self-Control, and to that of Softness that of Endurance: because
Endurance consists in continued resistance but Self-Control in actual
mastery, and continued resistance and actual mastery are as different
as not being conquered is from conquering; and so Self-Control is more
choiceworthy than Endurance.

[Sidenote:1150b] Again, he who fails when exposed to those temptations
against which the common run of men hold out, and are well able to do
so, is Soft and Luxurious (Luxury being a kind of Softness): the kind of
man, I mean, to let his robe drag in the dirt to avoid the trouble
of lifting it, and who, aping the sick man, does not however suppose
himself wretched though he is like a wretched man. So it is too with
respect to Self-Control and the Imperfection of it: if a man yields to
pleasures or pains which are violent and excessive it is no matter for
wonder, but rather for allowance if he made what resistance he could
(instances are, Philoctetes in Theodectes' drama when wounded by the
viper; or Cercyon in the Alope of Carcinus, or men who in trying to
suppress laughter burst into a loud continuous fit of it, as happened,
you remember, to Xenophantus), but it is a matter for wonder when a man
yields to and cannot contend against those pleasures or pains which the
common herd are able to resist; always supposing his failure not to be
owing to natural constitution or disease, I mean, as the Scythian kings
are constitutionally Soft, or the natural difference between the sexes.

Again, the man who is a slave to amusement is commonly thought to be
destitute of Self-Control, but he really is Soft; because amusement
is an act of relaxing, being an act of resting, and the character in
question is one of those who exceed due bounds in respect of this.

Moreover of Imperfect Self-Control there are two forms, Precipitancy and
Weakness: those who have it in the latter form though they have made
resolutions do not abide by them by reason of passion; the others are
led by passion because they have never formed any resolutions at
all: while there are some who, like those who by tickling themselves
beforehand get rid of ticklishness, having felt and seen beforehand the
approach of temptation, and roused up themselves and their resolution,
yield not to passion; whether the temptation be somewhat pleasant or
somewhat painful. The Precipitate form of Imperfect Self-Control they
are most liable to who are constitutionally of a sharp or melancholy
temperament: because the one by reason of the swiftness, the other by
reason of the violence, of their passions, do not wait for Reason,
because they are disposed to follow whatever notion is impressed upon
their minds.

VIII

Again, the man utterly destitute of Self-Control, as was observed
before, is not given to remorse: for it is part of his character that
he abides by his moral choice: but the man of Imperfect Self-Control is
almost made up of remorse: and so the case is not as we determined it
before, but the former is incurable and the latter may be cured: for
depravity is like chronic diseases, dropsy and consumption for instance,
but Imperfect Self-Control is like acute disorders: the former being a
continuous evil, the latter not so. And, in fact, Imperfect Self-Control
and Confirmed Vice are different in kind: the latter being imperceptible
to its victim, the former not so.

[Sidenote: 1151a] But, of the different forms of Imperfect Self-Control,
those are better who are carried off their feet by a sudden access of
temptation than they who have Reason but do not abide by it; these
last being overcome by passion less in degree, and not wholly without
premeditation as are the others: for the man of Imperfect Self-Control
is like those who are soon intoxicated and by little wine and less than
the common run of men. Well then, that Imperfection of Self-Control is
not Confirmed Viciousness is plain: and yet perhaps it is such in a way,
because in one sense it is contrary to moral choice and in another the
result of it: at all events, in respect of the actions, the case is much
like what Demodocus said of the Miletians. "The people of Miletus are
not fools, but they do just the kind of things that fools do;" and so
they of Imperfect Self-Control are not unjust, but they do unjust acts.

But to resume. Since the man of Imperfect Self-Control is of such a
character as to follow bodily pleasures in excess and in defiance of
Right Reason, without acting on any deliberate conviction, whereas the
man utterly destitute of Self-Control does act upon a conviction which
rests on his natural inclination to follow after these pleasures; the
former may be easily persuaded to a different course, but the latter
not: for Virtue and Vice respectively preserve and corrupt the moral
principle; now the motive is the principle or starting point in moral
actions, just as axioms and postulates are in mathematics: and neither
in morals nor mathematics is it Reason which is apt to teach the
principle; but Excellence, either natural or acquired by custom, in
holding right notions with respect to the principle. He who does this in
morals is the man of Perfected Self-Mastery, and the contrary character
is the man utterly destitute of Self-Control.

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