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Aristotle on Moral Responsibility

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Aristotle on Moral
Responsibility
Character and Cause

Susan Sauvé Meyer

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3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
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To Milton

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Contents

Acknowledgments x

Abbreviations of Aristotle’s Works xi

Tables xii

Introduction to the 2011 Edition: Voluntariness, Morality,

and Causality xiii

Introduction Moral Responsibility and Aristotle’s Concerns 1

1 Moral Responsibility and Aristotle’s Concerns 1
2 Aristotle’s Conception of Moral Responsibility 3
3 Outline by Chapters 5
4 Assumptions about Aristotle’s Texts 8
5 Ordinary Notions of Hekousion and Akousion 9

1 Moral Responsibility and Moral Character 17

1 Moral Responsibility and Moral Agency 17
2 Virtue and Vice of Character 19
3 Rationality and Morality 24
4 The Scope of Moral Agency 28
5 Conclusions about Moral Agency and Moral Character 30

2 Voluntariness, Praiseworthiness, and Character 36

1 Voluntariness and Causal Responsibility 36
2 The Significance of Voluntariness 39

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viii Contents

3 Aristotle’s Canonical Account of Praiseworthiness 44

4 The Causal Presuppositions of Praise and Blame 46
5 The Focal Nature of Praiseworthiness 48
6 Voluntariness and Moral Responsibility 50

3 The Dialectical Inquiry into Voluntariness 59

1 Dialectic and the Inquiry into Voluntariness 60
2 The Aporetic Discussion of Desire (EE 1223a29–b38) 63
3 The Dialectical Premises 66
4 Solving the Puzzles: The Discussion of Decision
(EE 1223b38–1224a4) 71
5 Force and Involuntariness in EE ii 8 76
6 The Dialectical and Deductive Definitions 78
7 The Nicomachean Discussion of Voluntariness Reconsidered 82
8 Goals and Achievements of the Dialectical Inquiry 84

4 Force, Compulsion, and the Internal Origin of Action 93

1 Force and Compulsion in the MM, EE, and EN 94
2 Criteria for Compulsion: Psychological and Rational 98
3 Voluntariness and the Non-accidental Origin of Action 100
4 Accidental and Non-accidental Production 103
5 Compelled Actions as Accidentally Caused 106
6 Problems with the Eudemian Conditions 110
7 Non-accidental Production and the Nicomachean View 112
8 Mixed Actions and Accidental Production 116

5 Responsibility for Character: Its Scope and Significance 122

1 On the Importance of Being Raised in Good Habits 123
2 Full vs. Qualified Responsibility for Character 126
3 The Asymmetry Thesis Introduced (EN 1113b3–21) 129
4 Considerations Against the Asymmetry Thesis
(EN 1113b21–1114a31) 133
5 An Argument for the Asymmetry Thesis Considered
(EN 1114a31–b25) 141
6 Moral Responsibility without Responsibility for Character? 145

6 Moral Agency and the Origination of Action 149

1 Origins, External Causes, and Self-Motion 149
2 The Unmoved Mover in the Moral Agent 153

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Contents ix

3 Worries about Determinism 156

4 Accidental vs. Non-accidental Antecedent Causes 158
5 Distinctive Features of Moral Responsibility 161

Appendix I: Varieties of Knowledge and Ignorance 170

1 Universal and Particular Knowledge 171
2 ‘In Ignorance’ vs. ‘Because of Ignorance’ 176
3 Culpable Ignorance 180

Appendix II: “Up to Us” and the Internal Origin 185

Bibliography 190

General Index 197

Index Locorum 202

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Acknowledgments

While preparing this manuscript, I have benefitted from the comments and
criticism of many colleagues and students. Special thanks are due to John
Carriero, Paula Gottlieb, Terry Irwin, Milton Wachsberg Meyer, Elijah Mill-
gram, Tim Scanlon, and Gisela Striker. Seth Fagen and Mitzi Lee provided
valuable bibliographical assistance, Mitzi Lee and Mary Sullivan saved me
from many errors, and Mary Sullivan helped to prepare the indices. Drafts of
various chapters have benefitted from discussion at colloquia at Queen’s Uni-
versity, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at
Los Angeles, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. For the leisure to
prepare the first draft of the manuscript I am grateful to the President and
Fellows of Harvard College who granted me a Presidential leave during the
academic year 1989–90, and to the National Endowment for the Humanities
who awarded me a Fellowship for University Teachers in 1990.
Susan Sauvé Meyer
Cambridge, Massachusetts

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Abbreviations of Aristotle’s Works

APst. Posterior Analytics

Catg. Categories
DA De Anima
De Int. De Interpretatione
EE Eudemian Ethics
EN Nicomachean Ethics
GA De Generatione Animalium
MA De Motu Animalium
Met. Metaphysics
MM Magna Moralia
Ph. Physics
Poet. Poetics
Pol. Politics
Rhet. Rhetoric
Top. Topics

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Tables

4.1 Two scenarios for “A produces B accidentally” 105

6.1 Aspects of efficient causation 154
6.2 Examples of accidental production 159

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Introduction to the 2011 Edition

Voluntariness, Morality, and Causality

This is a book about Aristotle’s views on voluntariness (to hekousion) and

involuntariness (to akousion), a topic to which he devotes lengthy and interest-
ingly different treatments in the Eudemian and the Nicomachean Ethics. The
issues raised by these discussions have proved to be of enduring interest in the
interval since the original publication of this volume, and my aim in the pres-
ent introduction is to locate its main lines of argument in the context of this
more recent scholarship.1
While it may not appear obvious to modern readers why a treatise on ethics
should be concerned with the difference between voluntary and involuntary
action, Aristotle is not the first to invoke the notion in an ethical context. A
familiar refrain in Plato’s dialogues is that no one does wrong voluntarily.2 In
these contexts, Plato presents wrongdoing as deriving from ignorance of the
good and he exploits the ordinary assumption that actions performed in
ignorance are involuntary.3 His goal is not, of course, to absolve wrongdoers
of responsibility or blame. Rather, his point is to exhort his audience to

1
I will also refer to a few works published earlier: Broadie 1991, whose chapter on the volun-
tary continues to be widely cited; Donini’s magisterial monograph, Ethos: Aristoteles e il determin-
ismo (1989), now translated beautifully into English as Donini 2010; and Heinaman 1986,
which was omitted from my original bibliography. Destrée 2011 has a particularly thorough
account of recent literature.
2
Prot. 345e1–4, 358c7, e5–6; Gorg. 509e5–6; Tim. 86d7–e3; Laws 731c2–3, 734b2–3,
860d5–e4. In these contexts, ‘voluntarily’ (hekôn) is often translated “willingly”. I defend the
appropriateness of translating Aristotle’s pair of terms by ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ on pp.
9–16 below. See also Heinaman 1986: 128–130, Bostock 2000: 102–3, and Taylor 2006: 125–
6. The new French translation by Bodeus 2004 uses ‘consenti’ (roughly, “intentional”) for hekou-
sion, on which see Labarrière 2009:11.
3
Hence the equivalent statement of the thesis as “no one does wrong knowingly” (e.g. Prot.
352c4–7, 355b1–3). On the relation between the two theses, see Segvic 2009.

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xiv Voluntariness, Morality, and Causality

cultivate ethical knowledge. Aristotle, by contrast, is interested in voluntari-

ness as a causal notion. He considers a human agent to be an origin (archē )
or cause (aitios) of actions and he investigates voluntariness with a view to
capturing that causal relation. He introduces the topic of voluntariness by
noting that it is a condition for praise and blame, and he is evidently con-
cerned to establish that our good actions and our bad ones are equally volun-
tary—an emphatic rejection of the Platonic account, on which only our good
actions are voluntary.
Just how Aristotle construes the causality involved in voluntary action, as
well as the implications he thinks it has concerning praise and blame, are mat-
ters of dispute. Interpretations have run the gamut from supposing that Aris-
totle is articulating a libertarian analysis of human agency as the ground for
holding people responsible for their actions,4 to the proposal that Aristotle is
concerned simply with the conditions in which praise and blame are effective
instruments for shaping character and influencing future actions.5 The read-
ing I offer in the chapters below strikes a middle course. Aristotle is not con-
cerned to carve out for human agency an exceptional status within the causal
nexus of the natural world, but neither is he concerned simply with how edu-
cators and other social forces might influence behavior and shape character.
He is genuinely interested in describing the conditions in which human agents
are responsible for their actions, a form of responsibility that is, in his view,
integral to the workings of character.

Voluntariness, responsibility, and morality

In the chapters below, I describe this as an account of what we might today call
“moral responsibility” —“moral” to indicate its connection to the virtues of
character (courage, temperance, generosity, justice) — and “responsibility” to
indicate the causal relation Aristotle posits between agents and their voluntary
actions. This terminology has proved to be a distraction, especially to readers
who take “morality” to be a distinctively modern notion.6 While Chapter 1

4
Most recently Destrée 2011 and Natali 2004 chapters VIII and IX. Broadie 1991: 158–9
takes Aristotle’s discussion of voluntariness, at least in the EE, to articulate a “proto-indetermin-
ism” about human agency, but this is, in her view, a practical perspective adopted by those
engaged in action or in the evaluation of agents, rather than a metaphysical account of action.
Bobzien (forthcoming) rejects this new wave of indeterminist interpretations.
5
Most recently Frede 2011: 98–99.
6
Thus Tuozzo 1997 and the review by Roberts in Philosophical Review 104 (4), October
1995: 577–9; but compare Dahl’s review in Ethics 106 (2) January 1996: 455–7 and the more
nuanced reservations expressed by Chappell (Mind 105 (417) 181–6. Bobzien (forthcoming) §2

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Voluntariness, Morality, and Causality xv

below explains my grounds for applying the label ‘moral’ to Aristotle’s virtues
and vices of character, and hence the fairly minimal implications of construing
the relevant kind of responsibility as moral, the bulk of the argument in the
rest of the book does not depend on this construal. Readers who are allergic to
associating the term ‘moral’ with the ancient ethical tradition may safely
bracket the term and replace it with ‘ethical’.
Indeed, one of my central interpretive claims about Aristotle is that a thesis
often associated with distinctively “moral” responsibility is conspicuously
absent from his account. This is the view that moral responsibility for one’s
actions, in contrast with merely casual responsibility (which inanimate objects
and non-human animals can have), requires that we be responsible for the
behavioral dispositions from which we act: in other words, that moral respon-
sibility for action requires responsibility for character. Aristotle is often taken
to subscribe to such a thesis, on the basis of his argument the Nicomachean
Ethics III 5 that we are responsible for our states of character.7 However, Aris-
totle does not present this thesis as a necessary condition for responsible action.
In fact, most of the texts where he is generally taken to be arguing for the
thesis do not concern responsibility for character at all.8 Rather, Aristotle is
there contesting the Platonic thesis that only our virtuous actions, not also our
vicious ones, are voluntary. Such, at any rate, is the burden of Chapter 5.9
While the implications of these issues for general philosophical questions
about responsibility, causality, and agency are large, my primary focus below
is on elucidating key texts in Aristotle’s ethical writings. My aim is to lay bare
their structure and argumentation, with a view especially to identifying the
problems that Aristotle takes himself to be addressing when he discusses vol-
untariness. I begin (Chapter 2) by investigating the connection that Aristotle

defends the thesis that moral responsibility is at stake in Aristotle’s discussion of voluntariness,
while Donini argues emphatically against the view that a distinctively modern kind of responsi-
bility is at stake there (Donini 2010: 138–9, esp. n 6). By contrast, interpreters as diverse as
Heinaman and Natali are quite happy to use expressions such as ‘moral responsibility’ or ‘moral
evaluation’ à propos Arisottle’s account of the voluntary (Heinaman 1986: 128, 130; Natali 2004:
206 and 2002: 290, although the relevant passages of the latter are omitted from the 2004 ver-
sion]. Annas 1993 is an extended argument for reading ancient ethical philosophy as moral
philosophy, although she does not discuss voluntariness or responsibility except obliquely
(p. 49), when discussing EN 1106a2–4. Meyer 2008 is my own account of the distinctive fea-
tures of ancient ethical philosophy.
7
Thus, for example Broadie 1991: 160, Pakaluk 2005: 144–6 and Destrée 2010: 287. See
also Zingano 2007, chapter 10.
8
The careful assessment of Aristotle’s argument in Donini 2010: 140–148 concurs with my
contention that only responsibility for action is at stake in EN 1113b6–21. Ott 2000 resists this
interpretation, adducing considerations from Plato’s later dialogues.
9
I offer an abbreviated version of these arguments in Meyer 2006.

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xvi Voluntariness, Morality, and Causality

posits between praiseworthiness and voluntariness, which I elucidate in light

of his distinction between praise and encomium in EN I 12 and his frequent
remarks about the praiseworthiness of virtue and the blameworthiness of vice.
This background, together with careful attention to Aristotle’s precise state-
ments of the causal conditions of praise and blame,10 shows that Aristotle
takes character and actions to be praiseworthy in different, although system-
atically related, ways. Actions are praiseworthy and blameworthy because we
are responsible for bringing them about, whereas states of character are praise-
worthy and blameworthy because of the actions that they bring about. The
focal causal notion in each case is that of character issuing in action – hence
my original subtitle: “Character and Cause”.11

The Eudemian and Nicomachean accounts

Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the texts in which Aristotle explores the nature of
the hekousion and the akousion and develops his own positive account of the
matter. These are EE II 6-9 and EN III 1.12 The former, in particular, is an
exceedingly tortuous stretch of argument that has proved baffling many read-
ers. While the latter account may appear more straightforward, it too has its
puzzling elements, such as the requirement that involuntary actions be painful
or regretted.13 I resist both these impressions, arguing that the Eudemian dis-
cussion is a perfectly respectable piece of dialectical reasoning, that the Nico-
machean account presupposes and extends it, and that seen from this vantage
point, the apparent oddities of the latter are well motivated applications of
central tenets of Aristotle’s analysis.

10
E.g. the conclusion of the argument at EE 1223a9–15, is usually construed as the thesis
that we are responsible for our states of character. However, Aristotle is careful to conclude
there that the virtue and vice “concern (peri, a14) things for which we are responsible”—not
that they are themselves things for which we are responsible. Broadie, for example, omits this
point in her analysis of the argument (1991: 162–3).
11
That Aristotle takes voluntary actions to be the route by which a person’s character makes
its mark on the world is endorsed by Broadie 1991:124 and Pakaluk 2004: 118–119. On the
relation of this to Aristotle’s remark that prohairesis (decision) displays character better than
action (EN 1111b5–6) see Meyer 2006:140 and 2008: 71–2.
12
I refer to chapters as marked by the marginal Roman numerals in the editions of the EN by
Burnet (1894) and of the EE by Walzer and Mingay (1991).
13
Broadie 1991: 132–142 is a forceful statement of the difficulties provoked by this require-
ment, although she fails to note (p. 133) that Aristotle articulates the requirement for involun-
tary actions quite generally, not just for those due to ignorance (EN 1111a32). Bostock 2000:
111–112 finds similar difficulties.

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Voluntariness, Morality, and Causality xvii

Chapter 3 explains how the argument in EE II 6-9 makes sense if we read it

as a dialectical exploration of potential criteria for voluntariness whose aim is
to secure the (anti-Platonic) result that cases of wrongdoing are voluntary.
Aristotle starts out with the hypothesis that the difference between voluntary
and involuntary action may be modeled by the distinction between natural
and “forced” (biaion) movements, where forced movements are conceived of
as contrary to internal impulse. He considers how to apply this paradigm to
the case of human action, compares its implications to those of the Platonic
conception of voluntariness, and rejects any version on which obvious cases of
wrongdoing (e.g. akratic action) turn out to be forced. The conception of
force that emerges from this dialectic has been revised and expanded to apply
to the case of distinctively human action (where conflicting internal impulses
are possible):14 in addition to being contrary to impulse, forced action must
not originate in the agent.
This is the requirement for force that Aristotle stresses at the beginning of the
Nicomachean account, where he introduces forced action as one of the two
kinds of involuntary action. The other type, comprising acts due to ignorance,
is also mentioned in the Eudemian account, but only briefly and at the end,
where it is hastily and (I argue) ineptly integrated into the results of the more
elaborate discussion of force. Rectifying this fault in the Eudemian account is
one of Aristotle’s achievements in the Nicomachean version.15 There he also
devotes considerable attention to identifying precisely the sort of knowledge
that is required for voluntariness—once again with a view to resisting the Pla-
tonic contention that actions performed in ignorance of the good are involun-
tary. His additional goal, I argue, is to complete the project, begun in the EE,
of integrating the two paradigms for involuntariness (forced actions and those
due to ignorance) into a single coherent account.16 His error in the EE is to
construe “action due to ignorance” as exemplifying the contrariety essential to
forced actions. In the EN, by contrast, he recognizes that the requisite contra-
riety is independent of the epistemic requirement, but still views contrariety to
impulse as central to involuntariness—hence his insistence that actions due to
ignorance must be painful or regretted if they are to count as involuntary.17

14
Natali construes the potential for internal conflict as the source of the contingency of
human action (Natali 2004: 211–12).
15
Heinaman 1986 provides additional reasons for supposing the EN account is an improve-
ment over that of the EE.
16
By contrast, other readers, such as Broadie 1991 and Bostock 2000, find Aristotle vacillat-
ing between the conflicting paradigms.
17
In Broadie and Rowe 2002 the translation of akousion as “counter-voluntary” rather than
“involuntary” nicely captures this essential contrariety; but it gives the misleading impression

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xviii Voluntariness, Morality, and Causality

The Nicomachean account of voluntariness, so understood, builds on and com-

pletes the dialectical argument of the Eudemian discussion.
A particularly difficult class of actions to which Aristotle devotes attention
in his discussions of voluntariness are cases of what we might call coercion or
duress—for example, throwing the ship’s cargo overboard in a storm to save
the ship and the lives of its crew. Are such actions voluntary or involuntary? In
the EE, he inclines to the verdict that they are involuntary (1225a11-14), but
in the EN he resolutely insists that they are voluntary (1110b1-6). Chapter 4
explores Aristotle’s apparent vacillation on this question, which arises from
alternative options for making precise the notion of an action having its “ori-
gin” (archē) in an agent. Aristotle resolves the issue, I argue, in the light
of his over-arching goal of rejecting any account that classifies blameworthy
actions as involuntary. 18

Aristotle’s causal notions

Exploring Aristotle’s treatment of these difficult cases reveals the continuity

between the causal notions invoked in his treatments of voluntariness and
those that he deploys more broadly in his natural philosophy. Most important
among these, in Chapter 4, is the distinction between accidental (kata sumbe-
bekos) and non-accidental causation, which Aristotle invokes explicitly when
discussing the voluntariness of actions under duress.19 To be the origin of an
action, in Aristotle’s terms, is to be its non-accidental cause. Chapter 6 explores
the relation of voluntariness to “self-movement”— another item in Aristotle’s
causal repertoire, which is articulated at length in the Physics.20 The voluntary
agent, as the “origin” of an action, is thereby in Aristotle’s view a “self-mover”.
This means, among other things, that some aspect of the agent is an “unmoved
mover”. This is to say that it moves the agent to act, but exercises this causality
that involuntariness on its own fails to involve such contrariety. I note below (pp. 9–16) that this
is a feature both of the ordinary Greek notion of the akousion and of the English ‘involuntary’
on one of its ordinary senses.
18
Taylor 2006: 129–140 discusses the EN treatment of these cases in detail. Nielsen 2007 is
the best recent discussion of Aristotle’s account, especially regarding its implications for our
general understanding of his ethical theory. Klimchuk 2002 focuses on the jurisprudential impli-
cations of Aristotle’s position.
19
EN V 8, 1135a15–19. Thus Natali 2002: 275 and 2004: 181 is mistaken to object that
there is no textual support for applying Aristotle’s notion of accidental causation to the case of
voluntary action.
20
A flurry of relatively recent work on self-motion includes the papers in Gill and Lennox
1994, as well as Berryman 2002 and Morison 2004. Natali 2002: 271–4, 282–3 is critical of
most such accounts.

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Voluntariness, Morality, and Causality xix

without itself being “moved”. It is, however, a mistake to suppose, as some

readers do, that an Aristotelian self-mover is thereby exempt from the influ-
ence of external causes, or that the activity whereby it causes its own move-
ment is undetermined by antecedent conditions.21 The unmoved aspect of the
agent, I propose, is the state of character that issues in the action, and the sense
in which it is “unmoved” in exercising its causality is quite simply that it is not
“in motion”. This is a mode of causality that Aristotle finds quite broadly in
the natural world, and is closely connected with the way in which formal
causes interact with efficient causes.22 I explain how it accords with Aristotle’s
understanding of a state of character as a disposition (hexis) of our capacities
for action and passion, and I explore his resources for resisting the objection
that humans are not genuine self movers, on the ground that the causal history
of our actions can always be traced back to external and antecedent causes.
I argue that Aristotle’s distinction between accidental and non-accidental
causes provides a powerful response to such worries.23

What is “up to us”

Another feature of Aristotle’s account often interpreted in libertarian terms is

his frequent refrain that our voluntary actions are “up to us to do and not to
do”. An action’s being up to an agent in this way, it is supposed, amounts to its

21
In a new version of such indeterminist construals of self-motion, Natali 2002: 284 rightly
points out, in agreement with Meyer 1994: 68–9, that the object of desire, which Aristotle iden-
tifies as the “mover” of the self-mover’s desire, is not an efficient cause that precipitates the self-
mover’s desire. But he makes the stronger, and less plausible, further claim that the external
object (e.g. the lamb perceived by the hungry lion) does not have an efficient-causal effect on the
self-mover’s desire (Natali 2002: 285–6).
22
A point I develop in greater detail in Sauvé 1987 (see original bibliography). Natali offers
a similar explanation, roughly that formal causes “channel” the motive force of efficient causes
(Natali 2004: 210; cf. 189–90, 2002: 284)—an account whose plausibility is in some tension
with his blanket insistence (2002: 281–4, 2004: 189–194) that causes from different Aristote-
lian modalities cannot be combined in a continuous causal sequence.
23
Berryman 2002 objects that my invocation of accidental causation in this context fails to
capture what is distinctive of self-movement. I am inclined to agree now that my proposal does
not explain the “two-sidedness” of animal locomotion, but I still think that it shows Aristotle
to be justified in halting the regress of causes with the voluntary agent. The interpretation of
animal self-motion in Morison 2004, which has concerns about cosmology rather than action
theory as its focus, deploys Aristotle’s notion of the “accidental” in a manner different from,
but compatible with the view I defend. Natali, who objects to my invocation of the accidental
in this context (see note 20 above), responds to the threatened regress by arguing that it com-
mits the anachronism of reducing formal and final causes to efficient causes (Natali 2002:
282–3).

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xx Voluntariness, Morality, and Causality

alternative being “open” or “possible” in a sense that determinism precludes.24

While I do not address this position directly in the chapters below, I would
supplement my remarks on what is “up to us” in Appendix II with the follow-
ing observations. While Aristotle does say at that such actions “admit of being
otherwise” (EE 1222b41-1223a9), the sort of contingency invoked by the lat-
ter locution has, first of all, no implications regarding the truth or falsity of
determinism.25 Second, Aristotle does not explain the notion of being “up to
us” in terms of that contingency. Indeed, where Aristotle does elucidate the
notion of something’s being “up to us”, he proceeds simply by distinguishing it
from things whose occurrence or non-occurrence depends on factors other
than ourselves: for example, whether the sun will rise this morning or whether
my ticket will be drawn in the lottery.26 Thus he explains what is “up to us” as
“what might happen through us” (EN 1112b27) and the “us”, as I argue in
Appendix II, is identified in terms of the psychological faculties involved in
voluntary agency: roughly, thought and desire. So construed, it follows quite
easily that those actions which originate in us are up to us to do and not to do.
Thus Aristotle’s insistence that our voluntary actions are “up to us” in this way
is not an invocation of their contingency, but of their dependence on our pow-
ers of voluntary agency.
Indeterminist interpreters of “up to us” in Aristotle sometimes appeal for
support to his contention that only what is up to us is a proper object of
deliberation (EN 1112a31).27 Such, for example, is the position of the Aris-
totelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. 200 CE) who proposes
that the “two–sidedness” of what is “up to us” is to be understood in terms of
Aristotle’s notion of a rational capacity, which is explicated in Metaphysics IX
as a “capacity for opposites” (1046b1-7). Aristotle here says that a non-ratio-
nal capacity, such as fire’s capacity to burn, is one that, given the appropriate

24
Thus Broadie 1991: 150–54, 171–2, who labels Aristotle a “proto-indeterminist” (158–9);
also Chappell 1995: 42–7, Destrée 2011: 289–96 and Natali 2002: 288–9. Even Donini 2010,
who takes Aristotle’s fully developed view in the EN to be a form of psychological determinism,
finds the Eudemian account to be “more decisively indeterministic” (p. 108). By contrast,
Bobzien 1998: 282, 412 and 1998a argues that Aristotle’s conception of what is “up to us to do
and not to do,” in contrast to that of later philosophers, is not libertarian. On the history of the
notion in ancient philosophy see Frede 2011 and Destrée et al. (forthcoming).
25
A point I argue in greater detail in Meyer 1998.
26
Thus Frede 2007 and 2011. See also Bobzien (forthcoming) §§ 5–6, who uses the helpful
locution “things within the agent’s reach” to capture the relevant category.
27
Broadie 2001 and Zingano 2007 chapter 9 are sympathetic to such interpretations, which
are roundly criticized by Nielsen 2011.

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Voluntariness, Morality, and Causality xxi

conditions for its exercise, necessarily brings about its effect. By contrast,
when a rational capacity (such as the medical art) is similarly situated, its
exercise is not necessary (1048a5-8). For example, the physician may either
treat the patient or leave him to die. Such a conception of “two-sidedness”,
however, does not make Aristotle an indeterminist. Whether the physician
treats the patient, he explains, depends on his desire or choice; but once this
factor is taken into account his action (or inaction) is no less necessary than
fire’s burning (1048a10-15). Furthermore, this account implies nothing
about whether the crucial desire or choice is determined by antecedent con-
ditions; thus Alexander is wrong to invoke it as evidence that Aristotelian
action is libertarian.28

Questions about determinism

In resisting these libertarian interpretations of Aristotle, my aim is not to

establish that he is a determinist about action.29 Even if libertarianism and
determinism are exhaustive options for the classification of human action, it is
misleading to classify particular philosophers as libertarian or determinist
unless they explicitly face or articulate a recognizable thesis of determinism.30
To be sure, a version of determinism was hotly contested in post-Aristotelian
philosophy, in the context of debates over the Stoic doctrine of fate,31 and

28
Donini 2010: 89–91 makes a careful textual case that the account of “two-sided capacities”
in Metaphysics IX fails to imply that states of character are similarly “two-sided”. Bobzien 1998:
403 concurs. On the difference between virtues and “two sided capacities” see Garver 2006,
chapter 2. Coope 2010: 441 raises additional objections to Alexander’s proposal that the notion
of such a two-sided capacity illuminates Aristotle’s notion of what it up to us. Natali 2002:
290–93 and 2004: 194–7, 215–17 deofends a version of Alexander’s indeterminist interpreta-
tion (on the basis of De Anima III 10, 433b5–10). On the relation between Aristotle’s and
Alexander’s notions of what is up to us, see Labarrière 2009.
29
Thus I would dissent from the classification of my interpretation as “determinist” in Des-
trée 2011: 286 n4. By contrast, Donini 2010 expressly argues that Aristotle is a determinist
about action.
30
I discuss the difference between affirming a thesis of (in)determinism and being committed
to it in Meyer 2003. In effect, Donini 2010 is an argument that Aristotle is committed to deter-
minism about action.
31
On that debate see Bobzien 1998 and Salles 2005. While Natali proposes that the
Stoic conception of a causal chain coincides largely with modern conceptions of determin-
ism (Natali 2002: 283, 295; 2004: 178), I argue in Meyer 2009 that this appearance is
deceiving.

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xxii Voluntariness, Morality, and Causality

Alexander’s libertarian interpretation of Aristotle is informed by those debates.

But what would count as an affirmation (or denial) of determinism in the
context of Aristotle’s causal vocabulary and background assumptions is a very
tricky question,32 which I won’t address here, beyond the simple observation
that given the wide semantic range of ‘necessity’ in Aristotle,33 it is unsafe to
read his affirmation of the contingency our actions as eo ipso a denial of any-
thing recognizable by philosophers today as a thesis of determinism.34 While
it is safe to say that Aristotle insists on features of human action whose com-
patibility with determinism has been hotly debated by philosophers for centu-
ries, contemporary libertarian interpreters of Aristotle tend to construe these
features as straightforwardly indeterminist—which is to beg the question on
the issue of compatibility.35
I take the position in the chapters below that Aristotle himself shows no
inclination to worry that determination by antecedent conditions is incompat-
ible with voluntariness, praiseworthiness, or our actions being “up to us”. While
he does assume that an action whose “origin” is “in us” cannot be attributed to
origins “beyond those in us” (e.g. EN 1113b19-20), this is a concern about
external causation, not causal determination,36 and the proper Aristotelian

32
On the complexities, see Broadie 1991: 130–1, who maintains that he nowhere engages
with the thesis of determinism (157–9, 171), as well as Frede 2011: 15–16, 28. While
Natali also stresses the differences between Aristotle’s causal notions and those invoked in
familiar formulations of determinism, he does take Aristotle to have “identified the main
theoretic difficulties of determinism” in De Interpretatione 9 and Metaphysics E 2 (Natali 2002:
278 n19).
33
See the range of uses of ‘necessary’ (anankaion) enumerated in Metaphysics V 5.
34
A point I develop in Meyer 1998. By contrast, Destrée 2011 takes it to be sufficient proof
of Aristotle’s commitment to indeterminism that he affirms the contingency of particular
actions. Donini 2010, although arguing that Aristotle is a determinist about action in the EN,
takes the EE’s ascription of contingency to actions to be indeterminist, but also an immature
view later superseded by the determinism in the Nicomachean account of the “unidirectional-
ity” of developed character. Against construing Aristotelian character as fully determining how
one acts in particular circumstances, see Dimuzio 2000 and 2008, as well as Destrée 2011.
35
Such is explicitly the case with Natali, for example, who writes that whether to clas-
sify a philosopher as determinist depends inter alia “on the criteria we deem necessary in
order to demonstrate the freedom of human choice” (Natali 2002: 267; 2004: 175). This
leaves no conceptual space to raise the question of whether freedom is compatible with
determinism. Destrée 2011: 289–96 allows some room for a compatibilist interpretation
of Aristotle’s claim that our actions are up to us, it invokes a “general” capacity to do oth-
erwise rather than the possibility of performing either a particular pair of alternatives; yet,
he still begs the question against a wide range of compatibilist positions (see note 34
above). This may be why he classifies my compatibilist interpretation of Aristotle as “deter-
minist” (p. 286 n4).
36
On the difference between these two worries, see Meyer 2009: 87–89.

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Voluntariness, Morality, and Causality xxiii

context for interpreting his concerns is the doctrine of self movement. While I
do argue in the course of Chapter 6 that Aristotle’s repertoire of causal notions
provides him with the resources to mount a powerful response to incompati-
bilist challenges, I take this to be a strength of his position, but not a goal of his
discussion.

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