VIRTUE IN GENERAL
[Book Θ] ONE MIGHT RAISE THE PROBLEM WHETHER ONE CAN USE each thing both for its natural purpose and otherwise, and in the latter case either qua itself or coincidentally. For instance, one might use the eye for seeing, and also for misseeing by squinting, so that one thing appears as two. Both [30] these uses are due to the eye being an eye; but it is possible to use the eye in another way—coincidentally (for instance, if one could sell or eat it).1 Knowledge may be used similarly; it is possible to use it truly or to err: for instance, when a man voluntarily writes incorrectly, thus using knowledge as ignorance, like a person using his hand as a foot—dancing-girls [35] sometimes use the foot as a hand and the hand as a foot.
If, then, all the virtues are kinds of knowledge, one might use justice also as injustice, and so one would be unjust and do unjust actions from justice, as ignorant things may be done from knowledge. If this is impossible, it is evident that [1246b] the virtues are not kinds of knowledge. And even if ignorance cannot proceed from knowledge, but only error and the doing of the same things as proceed from ignorance, certainly from justice one will not act as from injustice.
[5] Since wisdom is knowledge and something true, it may behave like knowledge: one might act foolishly out of wisdom, and commit the errors of the foolish. But if the use of each thing as such were single, then in so acting men would be acting wisely. Over other kinds of knowledge, then, there is something authoritative that diverts them; but how can [10] there be any knowledge that diverts the most authoritative of all? There is no longer any knowledge to do this. But it will not be virtue, either, for wisdom uses that; for the virtue of the ruler uses that of the ruled. Then what will it be?
Perhaps the situation is like that of incontinence, which is said to be a vice of the irrational part of the soul, the incontinent man being a kind of self-indulgent man who retains his intelligence. But if so, supposing appetite to be strong it will [15] twist him and he will calculate in the contrary way. Or is it plain2 that if there is virtue in this part but ignorance in the reason, their roles will be reversed? So it will be possible to use justice unjustly3 and badly, and wisdom foolishly.
[20] Hence the contraries of this will also be possible. For it is absurd that depravity occurring sometimes in the irrational part should twist virtue in the calculating part and make the man ignorant, but that virtue in the irrational part, when ignorance is present in the rational,4 should not twist the latter and make the man assess things wisely and as he ought, and again, that wisdom in the calculating part should not make the self-indulgence in the irrational part act temperately. [25] (This is what continence seems to be.) And therefore it will be possible to act wisely out of ignorance,
These consequences are absurd, especially that of acting wisely out of ignorance; for we certainly do not see this in any other case—for instance, self-indulgence does not twist medical or grammatical knowledge; and virtue, if it is contrary, [30] does not5 twist ignorance; for it lacks the superiority. Rather, virtue in general has this kind of relation to vice in general. For whatever the just man can do, the unjust can do; and in general the capacity to do something includes the capacity not to do it. And so it is plain that wisdom goes together with those good states of the irrational part,6 and the Socratic notion that nothing is stronger than wisdom is correct. But when he said knowledge, that was not correct. For wisdom is a virtue and not a sort of knowledge but another kind of cognition.7
1 The text is uncertain.
2 Reading ἢ ἔστι (Jackson) for ἡ σφι (Susemihl marks two lacunae).
3 Reading τ᾽ οὐ (Jackson) for τό.
4 The text of this sentence is uncertain (Susemihl marks two lacunae).
5 Reading οὐ for οὖν ὁ and inserting ἡ ἀρετή after ἄγνοιαν (Robinson).
6 Reading τοῦ ἀλόγου (Susemihl’s suggestion) for ἄλλου.
7 Susemihl marks a lacuna here.