(Journal of the History of Philosophy vol. 50 iss. 3) Ponesse, Julie E. - Ἐνθουσιασμός and Moral Monsters in Eudemian Ethics VIII.2 (2012) (10.1353 - hph.2012.0041) - libgen.li

Ἐνθουσιασμός and Moral Monsters in Eudemian
Ethics VIII.2
Julie E. Ponesse
Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 50, Number 3, July 2012, pp.
315-337 (Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2012.0041
For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/480989
Access provided by University of Otago (17 Dec 2018 23:51 GMT)

jEnqousiasmov~ and Moral Monsters
in Eudemian Ethics VIII.2
Julie E. Ponesse*
1. introduction: a puzzle about

continuous natural good fortune
In a very thorny passage buried at the end of the Eudemian Ethics (VIII.2), Aristotle
undertakes a search for an explanation of the phenomenon he calls eujtuciva. We
might understand this as “good luck” or “good fortune” in matters in which a man
is successful, though irrational, his success befalling him with such regularity that it
exceeds the infrequency of mere coincidence. In the central VIII.2 case, Aristotle
describes the “fortunate” people—tous eujtucei`~ (1247a1)—in the following way:
Those are called fortunate who, whatever they start on, succeed in it without being
good at reasoning. And deliberation is of no advantage to them, for they have in
them a principle that is better than intellect and deliberation, while the others have
not this but have intellect; they have inspiration [ejnqousiasmovn], but they cannot
deliberate. For, though lacking reason, they succeed, and like the prudent and wise,
their divination is speedy. . . . (1248a30–35)1
These are people who “desire that which they ought at the time and in the
manner they ought,” though their rate of success is unwarranted since they suc-
ceed without the aid of reason and “contrary to all knowledge and right reason-
ings” (1248a3–4, 30–31). Unlike the virtuous man who acts well because his
rational impulse is backed by a deliberative process that terminates in decision
(proaivresi~), Aristotle consistently attributes the fortunate men’s implausible
degree of success to tuvch (1247b27–28 and 31, 1248a1–2). His explanation for
why the fortunate experience tuvch in action is that they are fortunate by nature
(fuvsei, 1247a31) and “move without reason in the direction given them by their
nature” (1247b23–24). Because Aristotle, however, consistently opposes luck2
Unless otherwise noted, all translations of the Aristotelian texts are from Barnes’s edition of the
1
Complete Works of Aristotle.

I have chosen to translate ‘tuvch’ sometimes as ‘fortune’ and sometimes as ‘luck,’ depending on
2
which provides the most natural reading of the sentence in question. Unless indicated, no philosophi-
cal significance is intended by the difference. Also, I am not assuming that all instances of ‘tuvch’ (and
its derivates, such as eujtucei`~) in the Eudemian Ethics follow the technical sense of the concept that
Aristotle provides in Phys. II.6.
* Julie E. Ponesse is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The College at Brockport, SUNY.

Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 50, no. 3 (2012) 315–337
[315]
316 j o u r n a l o f t h e h i s t o r y o f p h i l o s o p h y 5 0 : 3 j u ly 2 0 1 2
(tuvch) and nature (fuvs i~) throughout the corpus (Phys. 196b10–14, 198a5–10,
198b32–199a7; Met. 1065a26–29),3 many readers have been perplexed by his attri-
bution of luck to the fortunate man’s nature, taking it to be internally inconsistent.
If, as Aristotle tells us, the fortunate man’s success really is due to luck, properly
speaking, then it cannot be a matter of his nature; if it is due to his nature being
of a certain sort, then he is simply well-natured (eujfuhv~), and Aristotle cannot
literally have meant that luck explains his success in action. Therefore, Aristotle’s
attribution of luck in action to the fortunate man’s nature appears to be, at best,
un-Aristotelian and, at worst, strictly inconsistent with one of his central natural
philosophical commitments.
Some commentators have claimed that Aristotle avoids this inconsistency when,
at the end of the chapter, he suggests that “good fortune” might be used in sev-
eral ways (1247b28–29). Kent Johnson, for example, sees an implicit taxonomy
in the chapter’s summary, which distinguishes what he calls “continuous natural
good fortune”—the focal case of eujtuciva that interests Aristotle in the chapter—
from other types of good fortune, including “episodic good fortune,” which is
rare and due to purely external causes.4 Johnson uses this distinction as license
to claim that, while Aristotle understood episodic good fortune to be a genuine
subspecies of tuvch (because the success of the episodically fortunate man is not
due to his own [natural] impulse but to an external cause), he called the man
who is continuously fortunate because of his nature “fortunate” only colloquially
because his long-term, regular success cannot, as a matter of principle, be due
to tuvch. Aristotle’s eventual conclusion that the fortunate man’s success is due to
the aid of God (1248b4) is, according to Johnson, a sign of his denial that this
man is fortunate in any technical sense of ‘tuvch.’5 Hence Johnson’s solution has
the advantage of reading VIII.2 in a way that makes its conclusion consistent with
claims in other parts of the corpus; it has the disadvantage, however, of requir-
ing that we not read Aristotle in any literal sense when he says at 1247b34 that
continuous good fortune in action is due to a man’s nature.
The aim of this paper is to consider the soundness of Johnson’s conclusion and
to determine what Aristotle could have meant when he attributed the fortunate
man’s success in action to his nature in EE VIII.2. I believe that Johnson’s move to
deny the natural origins of continuous eujtuciva is hasty and unnecessary, and that
there is a way to understand how Aristotle could have quite seriously attributed
continuous natural good fortune to tuvch without violating any major (or minor)
tenet of his natural philosophy. In particular, I think that we should treat Aristotle’s
use of ‘eujtuciva’ imprecisely and non-literally only as a last resort and try, if pos-
sible, to understand it in its literal sense. I begin by considering exactly what sort
The abbreviations for Aristotle’s texts are as follows: Physics (Phys.), Eudemian Ethics (EE), Nico-
3
machean Ethics (EN), Metaphysics (Met.), Magna Moralia (MM), Movement of Animals (MA), Politics (Pol.),
Rhetoric (Rhet.), On Divination in Sleep (Div.), Generation of Animals (GA), Progression of Animals (PA),
De Anima (De An.).
Johnson,“Luck and Good Fortune.” Johnson’s full taxonomy is: episodic external good fortune,
4
continuous external good fortune, episodic natural good fortune, and continuous natural good for-
tune. See EE 1247b28–9 and 1248b3–8.
Johnson, “Luck and Good Fortune,” 100. Johnson’s view is that Aristotle is free to claim that some
5
people are successful on account of tuvch only because he does not treat eujtuciva as one of its subspecies.
jEnqous iasmov~ and moral monsters 317
of success in action the fortunate man is capable of so as to identify what type of
cause would be needed to explain that success. Then, in sections 3 and 4, I analyze
Aristotle’s argument for the claim that eujtuciva is due to the fortunate man’s nature
and evaluate his reasons for hesitating to draw this conclusion. Working within
the parameters of Aristotle’s view that what is fortunate cannot be due to nature,
I specify what sort of cause (ajrchv) could possibly account for the fortunate man’s
successful actions. In the final sections, I focus on the ultimate explanation of this
ajrchv, which I believe is discernable only if we distinguish between two different
levels of explanation, specifically between an explanation of the proximate and
ultimate causes of the fortunate man’s success: the proximate cause of the fortu-
nate man’s eujtuciva is his nature (in particular, the irrational impulses in his soul)
while its ultimate cause is tuvch (because his soul, which contains those impulses, is
generated by accident). The latter claim ultimately rests on a biological explana-
tion of the accidental processes involved in the generation of the fortunate man’s
soul so that it is a matter of luck that he has his characteristic impulses in the first
place; once he has these impulses, it is a matter of his nature that he acts as he
does. I will begin by aiming to determine what is at stake in this part of the text,
precisely of what kind of success in action Aristotle’s fortunate man is capable.
2 . i n t e r p r e t i n g e uj p r a g iv a
To which class of persons—however small—is Aristotle referring in EE VIII.2 when
he describes those who are continuously fortunate in action? In his initial account
at the beginning of chapter 2, and in the corresponding passage in Magna Moralia
(1027a30–31), Aristotle describes the fortunate men as those who are successful
beyond expectation and escape evils that might reasonably have been expected
(1247a24–5, 33, and b4). In fact, we might expect these people never to act well
because they lack the rational impulse—proaivresi~—that good action requires
(EN 1106b36–1107a2, 1139a20–5). In the EE, Aristotle is clear that “it is not by
practical wisdom [frovnhsi~] that they succeed” since “they are foolish even about
those matters in which they enjoy good fortune” (1247a14 and 21–23). But,
although it is clear that the fortunate man’s success in action is (1) unexpected
and (2) unwarranted, it is not immediately obvious of what sort of unexpected
and unwarranted success he is capable. Most of the moral types Aristotle describes
throughout the ethical texts are easily recognizable to us even if they are infre-
quently encountered: the child who first learns by example, the person on the
road to moral maturation who increasingly succeeds more than he errs, the man
of practical wisdom, and even the person whose desires are so authoritative that
he is more like an animal than a human. But where does the eujtucei`~ fall on this
spectrum? What sort of moral paradigm does the fortunate man fit? Is Aristotle
thinking of the moral equivalent of the person who consistently lucks into buying
undervalued stock while his friends are losing money in the stock market? The
gifted student who can ace any test without studying? Are we to imagine a class
of moral savants? Or are these the sorry few who, though they act well as a matter
of course, are incapable of being morally improved by it because they have not
acted for the right reasons and hence do not develop the virtues corresponding to
their actions? I take it that, because Aristotle’s paradigmatic example of an action
that is controlled by luck in VIII.2 is of someone who rolls dice throughout his
life and consistently throws sixes (1247b15–18), we should imagine examples of
events in the moral life that are controlled by luck to be as analogous as possible
to this non-moral case.
Part of the philosophical difficulty with this text is that it is unclear whether
Aristotle thought fortune can control only eujpragiva (well-doing), or ajrethv (virtue)
and eujdaimoniva (happiness) as well. This is the ambiguity under investigation at
the beginning of VIII.2:
But since not only wisdom and excellence produce well-doing [frovnesi~ poiei`
th;n eujpragivan kai; ajrethvn], but we say also that the fortunate [tous eujtucei`~] do
well [eu\ pravttein], thus assuming that good fortune [eujtuciva~] produces well-doing
[eujpragivan] and the same results as knowledge [ejpisthvmh], we must inquire whether
it is or is not by nature that one man is fortunate, another not, and what is the truth
about these things. (1246b37–1247a3)
Commentators have long debated the meaning of eujpragivan in this part of the text
and have reached little agreement. Some have suggested that, because Aristotle’s
interest in this chapter is in identifying possible causes of virtue (in the first line
of the chapter, for example, he wonders whether anything besides frovnhsi~ causes
virtue [ajreth;], 1246b37), he must have virtue in mind when he wonders whether
eujpragivan can be caused by eujtuciva as well as by wisdom (1246b39–1247a2).6 But
others suggest that eujdaimoniva is what is at issue. John Cooper, for example, claims
that “eupraxia is eudaimonia, in the realm of acts. So, when something is done with
eupraxia as its end or for the sake of eupraxia, it is done as one thing that falls un-
der the eudaimonic state of activity.”7 Johnson agrees and insists that ‘eujpragiva’ is
interchangeable with ‘eujdaimoniva’ since Aristotle frequently equates the two, e.g.
“For to do well [eu\ pravttein] and to live well [to; eu\ zh`n] is held to be identical with
being happy [eujdaimonei`n]” (1219b1–2), and “eujdaimoniva is a sort of action, for it
is eujpragiva” (Phys. 197b4–5; EN 1095a18–20, 1098b20 – 22).8 Anthony Kenny,
however, resists this reading. Of these passages Johnson says, “I do not think that
eupragia in this context can mean anything like eudaimonia. Neither in the EN nor
in the EE would Aristotle have agreed that true happiness could come about by
mere luck.”9 Citing the EN’s distinction between (1) the man who acts well sim-
pliciter because he does the actions that the just or temperate man would do, and
(2) the man who does these as the just or temperate man does them (because he
chooses the just or temperate action for its own sake, and from a firm and stable
e{xi~ [1105a27–1105b]), Kenny claims that eujpragiva in this context can only refer
to (1) because the fortunate man does not act from his own virtuous e{xi~.10 If
Kenny is right, the fortunate man can mimic the virtuous man in action, but he is
Though John Cooper ultimately settles on ‘eujdaimoniva’ as the best rendering of ‘eujpragiva,’ he
6
initially suggests that action in accordance with virtue may be the sort of success in action Aristotle
has in mind. See “Aristotle on the Goods of Fortune,” 147.
Cooper, “Aristotle on the Goods of Fortune,” 147.
7
Johnson, “Luck and Good Fortune,” 93.

8
Kenny, Aristotle on the Good Life, 57.

9
10
Kenny, Aristotle on the Good Life, 57.
incapable of virtue, and therefore happiness, because he does not act from deci-
sion; if Johnson is right, the fortunate man’s eujpragiva makes him virtuous, and
therefore potentially eujdaivmwn. Much hinges on this because, if Aristotle intended
either virtue or happiness by ‘eujpragiva,’ then his EE VIII.2 claim that the fortunate
man is capable of eujpragiva departs significantly from the central view of the EN
and EE that both virtue and happiness depend on decision, namely on a rational
plan for action and not on luck.
Now, we might wonder why Aristotle is concerned that ajrethv (specifically,
eujpragivan kai; ajrethvn, 1246b37) might be achieved by non-standard means (e.g.
by luck) at the end of a text that claims, as the EN does, that happiness consists in
rationally chosen virtuous activity. With this sort of thesis in place, and repeatedly
relied on earlier in the text (and in the EN and MM), it is strange that Aristotle
should even worry that right action can be achieved irrationally, i.e. hit upon rather
than deliberatively chosen. Yet, while he agrees with Plato that men are wise and
good simultaneously (1246b33), Aristotle acknowledges in EE VIII.2 that “not
only wisdom and excellence produce well-doing (eujpragivan), but we say also that
the fortunate do well, thus assuming that good fortune produces well-doing and
the same results as knowledge” (1246b37–1247a2). Furthermore, the breadth
and depth of the argument in this part of the text suggest that inquiry into this
anomalous class of fortunate but irrational people is philosophically important for
his investigation into the nature and purpose of the good human life more gener-
ally. Given Aristotle’s tendency to align eujpragiva with both virtue and happiness
in VIII.2, I think we should accept as a live option that Aristotle may be signalling
a willingness here to admit exceptions to the rule that proaivresi~ is the sole cause
of virtue and, therefore, of happiness as well. There are, I think, only three pos-
sible candidates for eujpragiva: virtue (ajrethv), happiness (eujdaimoniva), and a simpler
form of success in action that involves neither virtue nor happiness (what would be
eujpragiva or its equivalent). In the rest of this section, I will consider each of these
in turn to determine the most plausible interpretation of eujpragiva.
2.1 ajrethv
It is easy to see why some think that the effect of fortune on virtue itself is
what is at issue in VIII.2, because there Aristotle suggests that good fortune
(eujtuciva~) might cause the same thing caused by wisdom (frovnhsi~) and knowledge
(ejpisthvmh), namely excellence in action (or ajrethv) (1246b37–1247a3).11 This
suggests that, at the beginning of the chapter at least, Aristotle is entertaining an
alternate possible cause of the effects normally produced by frovnhsi~ (wisdom).
In EN VI and VII, Aristotle tells us that frovnhsi~ is good deliberation about things
toward one’s own happiness in general (1140a25–28) resulting in a conclusion
about the right action to be done (1141a8–23), namely a virtuous action. Because
what frovnhsi~ produces is virtuous action (directly) and virtue (indirectly), EE
Furthermore, though the ms. tradition is ‘eujpragivan kai; ajrethvn,’ commentators such as Johnson
11
may be following Jackson (“Eudemian Ethics θ I, ii, 1246a26–1248b7”) in reading ‘eujpragivan kat’ ajrethvn’
at 1246b37 literally, as “well-doing according to virtue,” which suggests that good fortune (eujtuciva~)
can cause virtuous activity itself.
1246b37–39 invites us to imagine that these are the effects of which the fortunate
man is capable, and that eujtuciva can, on rare occasions, engender welfare in the
same way as knowledge does (1246b39). Later in the paper, I shift my attention
to an explanation of why and how this might happen. But for now, the challenge
is to determine whether the man who acts well by luck, i.e. by accident, acts virtu-
ously in any genuine sense, since this conclusion would run strikingly counter to
the ethical texts’ central view that virtue requires wisdom.
What distinguishes the fortunate man’s impulses from those of the man who
acts virtuously is that his impulses need not be transformed by deliberation into
choices; they produce correct actions all on their own. In fact, Aristotle is quite
clear that the fortunate man lacks the deliberative capacity and so strictly cannot
deliberate (1248a34). At 1247a13, he says, “[I]t is clear that they [the fortunate
men] do not succeed by means of wisdom.” What the fortunate man specifically
lacks are “the impulses in the soul that arise from reasoning” (oJrmaiv ejn th` yuch` aiJ
me;n ajpo; logismou`, 1247b18–19) and to which he owes his capacity for purposive
choice (1247b30). If rationally chosen action is a strict precondition for virtue, and
the fortunate man lacks the capacity for rational choice, his success in action can-
not lead to virtue, at least not directly. For Aristotle, psychic geography—whether
or not an action has an internal cause (ajrchv)—does not, by itself, make an action
virtuous.12 Because virtuous actions must be “up to” the agent who does them,
and because what is up to a person is a matter of what he can deliberate about
and what he can do (praktav), i.e. what is in his power to bring about by his own
faculties of “thought and desire,” the fortunate man’s actions violate the central
criterion for right action that Aristotle lays out in EN II.4 (see EN 1105a28–34
and 1112a21–31; EE 1226a21–33; and MA 703b8–11). Although the fortunate
man’s record of action might mimic that of the virtuous man, and though his
actions presumably issue from some psychological impulse, he never acts as the
virtuous man does because his actions are not due to the rational principle (ajrchv)
that would make those actions “up to” him (EN 1105b5–9, 1105a30–35).13 So,
either Aristotle is allowing in EE VIII.2 that fortune does sometimes cause virtu-
ous actions, in which case he contradicts his own central view about the required
causes of virtue, or the eujpragiva at issue in this chapter cannot include virtuous
activity. Since the claim that virtue can be due to fortune would strongly contradict
Aristotle’s standard view that ajrethv (or, more precisely, pra`xi~ kat’ ajrethvn) must
be due to decision (e{xi~ proairetikhv, 1106b36 and 1139a23), it is unlikely that he
is flatly rejecting, or even just ignoring, that view here. Strictly speaking, Aristotle
could not have taken good fortune (eujtucivas) to be a narrower species of luck
(tuvch) because that would allow ajrethv to be directly produced by luck, a claim
that he flatly denies (1099b21, 26). Though the fortunate man generally finds
the right thing to do, it is because his non-rational desires lead him to do it and
Meyer, Aristotle on Moral Responsibility, 50.

12
While the fortunate man may know what he is doing (that setting his enemy’s weapons on fire
13
will likely save his city from a foreign threat and this is an act of bravery), he does not choose the action
for its own sake (since he is incapable of choice, generally), nor does his action issue from a firm and
unchangeable character. As such, he satisfies only one of the conditions for virtue (EN 1105a31–39).
not because he is a genuinely virtuous person. He simply always feels like doing
what, as it happens, is right.
2.2 eujdaimoniva
If eujpragiva is not virtue, perhaps it is eujdaimoniva, as Cooper and Johnson suggest.
The puzzle Aristotle raises in EE VIII.2 concerning the causes of eujpragiva seems
to be part of his direct response to the project begun in I.1, where he states that
the purpose of his inquiry is to determine what living well consists in:
But first we must consider what living well [to; eu\ zh`n] consists in and how it is to be
attained: Is it by nature that all those become happy who win this appellation at all—
just as men are naturally tall, or short, or of different complexions? Or is it through
learning—happiness being a form of knowledge? Or again, is it through a kind of
training?... Or is it none of those ways, but one of two further alternatives: either a
divine dispensation, as if by divine inspiration, like those in the possession of a deity
or supernatural powers, or is it a matter of luck? After all, many say that happiness
[eujdaimonivan] and good fortune [eujtucivan] are the same thing. (1214a15–26)14
Because here Aristotle takes it as a live option that people become happy (eujdaivmwn)
as the result of luck, and since he frequently equates eujdaimoniva with eujpragiva, it
would not be surprising if his worry in VIII.2 is that it is possible to fare well, not
through the voluntary expression of virtue in action, but by luck. Furthermore,
Aristotle repeatedly equates doing well with being happy. He says in EE II.1, for
example, that “both acting well and living well [eu\ pravttein kai; to; eu\ zh`n] are the
same thing as being happy [tw` eujdaimonei`n], and each of these (both the living
and the acting) is an employment and an activity” (1219b1–3; Pol. 1325a23).
Furthermore, Physics II.6 tells us that “happiness [eujdaimoniva] is a kind of rational
activity: it is activity going well [eujpraxiva]” (197b4–5).15 But even if Aristotle in-
tended somehow to align eujpragiva with eujdaimoniva in EE VIII.2 (which would be
unsurprising since he often uses ‘eujpragiva’ interchangeably with ‘eujdaimoniva’),
he cannot have meant that the latter is directly produced by the former, or that
the two are strictly equivalent, on pain of contradicting himself. Throughout the
corpus, Aristotle consistently defines eujdaimoniva as an activity of the soul in accor-
dance with perfect virtue, which is achievable only by voluntary action (e.g. EN
1102a5 and 1099b25–26; EE 1215b22–24 and 1219a39). Because virtue is the
disposition to make rational choices and act in right ways (EN 1106b36–1107a3; EE
1219a30–39), eujdaimoniva consists in acting in the right ways for the right reasons.
Hence, Aristotle cannot consistently and unqualifiedly conclude as he appears
to in EE VIII.2 that happiness can be caused by fortune in any literal sense, un-
less he was retracting one of his central ethical views. Some commentators have
suggested that it is precisely because the eujtucei`~ lack the appropriate (rational)
Loeb translation. It is worth mentioning that the MM states the worry about the vulnerability of
14
happiness to fortune even more explicitly: “As we are discussing Happiness [eujdaimoniva~], we are next
led to speak of Good Fortune or Luck. For most men suppose that the happy life is the fortunate life,
or at any rate includes Good Fortune. And perhaps they are right. For without external advantages
life cannot be happy; and they are in Fortune’s control. We are obliged, therefore, to speak of Good
Fortune [eujtuciva~]” (1206b30–36).
See also EN 1095a17–20 and 1098b21.
15
impulses for the correct actions they do that Aristotle intentionally used ‘eujpra-
giva’ throughout VIII.2, rather than the more pregnant ‘ajrethv’ or ‘eujdaimoniva.’ On
this view, the fortunate men are capable of some kind of success in action but
not virtue or happiness, themselves. But, if neither of these, what precisely does
eujpragiva amount to?
2.3 eujpragiva
In EE VIII.2, the success of the fortunate people is mentioned on thirteen dif-
ferent occasions and in two different but related ways (sometimes it is eujpragiva,
sometimes katorqou`n).16 At the beginning of the chapter when Aristotle defers
to the e[ndoxa about the fortunate men, he says the fortunate fare well and good
fortune engenders welfare (eujpragivan, 1246b37 and 1247a2); thereafter, he uses
the plainer word for success and says, for example, “[T]hey succeed [katorqou`s i]
in spite of being unwise” (1247a16; 1247a30). In order to determine what sort
of success owes to fortune here, it is worth examining Aristotle’s other uses of
‘eujpragiva’ and ‘katorqou`n(ou`s i).’ Besides its two occurrences in EE VIII.2, ‘eujpra-
giva’ appears in three other places throughout the corpus—earlier in the EE, and
in the Pol. and Rhet.—but each of these uses is equally imprecise and therefore
unhelpful. Katorqou`n appears at EN 1098b29 and 1106b26, where Aristotle says it
is possible in one way only: by hitting the mean. Since hitting the mean pertains
to virtue, this would seem to suggest that ‘katorqou`n’ can be used interchangeably
with ‘virtue’ (or, at least, that ‘katorqou`n’ is one way to describe virtuous activity,
since it is successful activity). But that would seem to return us to the previous
problems to do with equating the fortunate man’s success—called ‘eujpragiva’ or
‘katorqou`n’—with virtue, itself. Furthermore, there is good reason to resist this
inference, since Aristotle insists in EN VI.9 that arriving at the right conclusion,
but on the wrong grounds, is not deliberative excellence (1142b25–26). The
most plausible reading of ‘eujpragiva’ in EE VIII.2, therefore, is a kind of success
that involves hitting the mean, and therefore performing the correct action, but
which does not imply (nor can it) that, by hitting the mean, the fortunate man
does so in the right way or acts in the same way as the man of virtue.
So, what are we to make of Aristotle’s use of ‘eujpragiva’? How are we to un-
derstand how the fortunate man’s success—which is something like the virtuous
man’s success—is due to fortune? Johnson provides a promising way to approach
an answer to this question. He says,
Eudaimonia is, among other things, an activity of the soul in accordance with perfect
virtue (e.g. 1219a37–38; NE 1098a16–18). Virtue, inter alia, is a disposition to make
choices and act in the right ways (1219a33–34; NE 1106b36–1107a2). If eudaimonia
entails virtue, and virtue entails certain dispositions, then a person cannot be eudaimon
unless he has certain dispositions. So, for a person to have eudaimonia by means of
good fortune, the good fortune will have to be responsible for the person’s activity
of the soul in accordance with perfect virtue. That is, the good fortune will have to
be the cause of the person’s acquiring certain dispositions.17
‘Eujpragivan’ is at 1246b37, 1247a2. ‘Katorqou`n’ (or ‘katorqou`s i’) is at1247a3, 13, 16, 24 and 30;
16
1247b11, 25, 28 and 35; 1248a31; and 1248b5.

17
EN 1099b24 rules out eujdaimoniva being directly caused by tuvch for the same reasons
it denied that ajrethv could be directly caused by tuvch (because the fortunate man
lacks the virtue-defining rational dispositions). Though the fortunate man may
have dispositions that reliably lead to some form of eujpragiva, Aristotle cannot say
that they are the virtuous man’s dispositions on pain of contradiction (1106b36,
1139a23, 1099b21; and EE 1247a13). Though tuvch cannot be the proximate, or
primary, cause of the fortunate man’s eujpragiva, Aristotle would seem to be entitled
to attribute to the class of persons in VIII.2 eujpragiva as long as the fortunate either
“do well” (eu\ pravttein) in a sense not related to virtue or on account of having
virtuous dispositions that are, themselves, due to tuvch. On this reading, if acting
well is vulnerable to fortune, it will have to be vulnerable to it only derivatively, i.e.
only because the dispositions that produce the activity in which happiness consists
are themselves vulnerable to fortune. Our search, then, is for an explanation of
the dispositions (or something like dispositions) the fortunate men have that allow
them repeatedly to do what the virtuous man does; what is in question is whether
those dispositions are due to luck.
So what sort of starting point does the fortunate man possess? Though there
is some impulse in his soul that explains why he acts well, it cannot be decision or
anything like the ajrchv that makes his action “up to” him (Aristotle denies that the
fortunate man has this sort of rational ajrchv [1247a15]). And if his impulses are
not rational, then there can only be an accidental relation between them and the
correct actions he does.18 Yet because Aristotle frequently denies that anything is
because of (dia;) its accidental cause (Met. 1026b4, 1027a19–29, 1064b30),19 there
must be some starting point of, and hence some explanation for, the fortunate
man’s successful actions (that does not reduce to proaivresi~). And, given the fact
that the fortunate man’s success is regular and continuous, as well as Aristotle’s
natural philosophical commitment that what happens by fortune is irregular and
discontinuous (196b10–13), there will have to be a non-accidental cause in the
fortunate man’s soul capable of explaining the regular occurrence of his successful
actions. I take it that this is the primary object of Aristotle’s search in the opening
lines of VIII.2, namely for an ultimate cause of successful actions that, though
somehow accidental, is capable of producing regular results. It is to the object of
that search that I will now turn.
3. the three most likely explanations

One thing that makes the opening passage of VIII.2 (1246b37–1247a3) so strik-
ing is that in it, Aristotle is not merely interested in whether or not fortune causes
eujpragiva, but also in what are the causes of the fortune that is responsible for these
anomalous cases of well-doing. In other words, Aristotle’s interest is not just in
the primary, or proximate, cause of the fortunate man’s successful actions but
Irrational impulses could, for example, account for acting correctly by fortune just as a man
18
chooses rightly based on a false inference because he has the wrong middle term (EN 1142b22–26).
A counterpoint to this claim is one at 1247b5, where Aristotle says that “fortune is a cause,”
19
but I do not think we should take this as evidence that he thought fortune is a cause in any technical
sense. Phys. II.6 investigates tuvch as a cause, but Aristotle is very clear there that accidental causes are
different in kind from per se causes (see 196b14–29).
also in their secondary, or ultimate, cause, and therefore in the ultimate origin of
the action’s proximate cause. Since, as I have shown, tuvch cannot be the actions’
proximate cause, and yet since it must somehow explain them, tuvch must in some
way be their ultimate cause. My main goal in the rest of the paper is to understand
how tuvch is the ultimate cause of the fortunate man’s success in action.
Aristotle begins his inquiry into the cause(s) of the fortunate man’s success by
identifying what he takes to be three of its most plausible explanations: nature
(fuvs i~), intellect (nou`~), or divine guidance (ejpitropiva). He is quite clear, for rea-
sons I have already discussed, that the fortunate men do not succeed on account
of being guided by their intellect, since “practical wisdom is not irrational but has
a principle on account of which it acts thus and so, but these people would not be
able to say why they succeed” (1247a14–16). As Johnson says, the fortunate man is
a[logos, at least with respect to why he has been successful in the matter that makes
him fortunate.20 Aristotle also rejects the possibility that eujtuciva is caused by a God
or divine being “in the way that a ship badly constructed often sails better, though
not because of itself but because it has a good steersman” (1247a25–26). Echo-
ing the principle of the Pelagian heretics—that divine favor depends on human
merit (and that the gods would favor only someone who is already best and wisest
[1247a26–29])—his rejection of God as a possible explanation appears to be a
matter of principle, a principle that is relied on in two other places in the corpus:
in the parallel discussion of eujtuciva in MM II.8, and with respect to the origin of
prophetic dreams in On Divination in Sleep (Div.).21 In the latter, Aristotle reiter-
ates a form of what Philip van der Eijke calls the “distribution argument,” where
he claims that if the gods are concerned with human affairs, as they seem to be, it
would be reasonable for them to distribute goods to those who are the best and
most akin to themselves (those who are wisest and have nou`~) on the assumption
that only these people attend to what is beloved by the gods (Div. 462b20–22,
463b15–18, 464a19–20; EN 1179a25–29) and who “most of all like and honour
understanding” (1179a27–30).22 But Aristotle recognizes, as a matter of fact, that
goods are sometimes found in those who are not the best and wisest. If the authors
of the EE and Div. are “of the same mind” on this matter, however, the explanation
for the fortunate man’s success in EE VIII.2 cannot be intentional divine dispensa-
tion; such an irrational act would simply be inconsistent with the gods’ natures.
Having disposed of two of the three most likely explanations for eujtuciva—nou`~,
on the ground that the fortunate men are irrational, and divine guidance because
they are therefore unworthy beneficiaries—Aristotle concludes incautiously early
in VIII.2 that those who are (continuously) fortunate must be so “by nature” (kaqa;
h\n fuvsei ejsti;n eujtuchvs, 1247a23). He hypothesizes, “[I]f a man’s succeeding or
not succeeding is due to his being of a certain sort, as a man does not see clearly
because he has blue eyes, not fortune but nature is the cause; therefore he is not
a man who has good fortune but one who has as it were a good nature [eujfuhv~]”

20
Van der Eijk provides an extended, and very useful, explanation of the parallel discussions in
21
each of these texts. See “Divine Movement and Human Nature in Eudemian Ethics 8.2.”
Here Aristotle is presumably referring to the wise man (to;n sofo;n) described, for example, in
22
EN VI.7 (1141a13–19).
(1247a36–39). On this reading, continuous good fortune is a natural phenom-
enon. It is neither experienced sporadically throughout one’s life (as episodic
external good fortune is), nor is it due to disease, trauma, or some other circum-
stantial cause. It is because the fortunate people have a certain quality (poiouv~,
1247a13) in themselves that they are capable of good action. Because this quality
cannot be a disposition (e{xi~)23—otherwise the fortunate man would be virtuous
and capable of explaining how the good action was achieved—by elimination it
must be possessed by nature in a way that explains how he differs “right from birth”
(1247a11). Furthermore, though the fortunate man cannot have a disposition
properly speaking, he must have something like a disposition—a natural quality
that can be relied upon—to explain his regular success. In MM II.8, Aristotle
calls this quality an impulse: “For the fortunate man is he who apart from reason
has an impulse to good things and obtains these, and this comes from nature”
(1207a36–37). Because Aristotle speculates that the fortunate man may be dif-
ferent “right from birth” (i.e. different from the person who has the potential for
virtue), what he presumably has is a congenital ability that does not reduce to the
rational impulse for virtue.
4. an unwelcome paradox
What troubles Aristotle about the conclusion he draws at 1247a23 is that, if
the fortunate man’s “unexpected achievement” really is due to his nature, he
should be “fortunate” always or for the most part and should “succeed a second
time too owing to the same cause,” for the same cause produces the same effect
(1247b10–11).24 And, if the fortunate man is successful in the same way that
a man does not see clearly because he is dark-eyed, then he would seem to be
“well-natured” (1247a36–39) and not fortunate at all, his own psychic principle
regularly producing its natural and expected effects. What perplexes Aristotle
here is that fortunate events are supposed to happen rarely (Phys. 196b11–12;
EE 1247a32–33) because they lack, as James Lennox says, any “essential connec-
tion between source of change and product of change”25 that could explain their
regularity (Phys. 197a5–6; Met. 1025a14 ff. and 1064b30). But the fortunate man
of EE VIII.2 is regularly successful—that is, some non-deliberative quality in him
regularly and reliably causes his successful results. So the challenge is to understand
why Aristotle was satisfied with the conclusion that nature is the cause of eujtuciva
I am only ruling out interpreting the fortunate man’s unique quality as a e{xi~ in the technical
23
sense, i.e. in the sense of ‘e{xi~’ as a first actuality or capacity (DA 417a21–b16). Aristotle’s focus in the
EN is on states that involve a tendency to do x on the right occasions because they have been formed by
repeated activities, i.e. by habituation in the regular practice of x actions (1103a26–b25). The fortunate
man may have repeatedly performed x actions in the past, but there is no indication that he performs
future x actions on account of them or because of any previously habituated state. Being habituated
for virtue assumes that a person has a nature that is capable of actions that express correct reason
(EN 1103b32). Aristotle is clear that the fortunate man does not have this capacity (1247a14–16).
The problem is stated more acutely at 1247a31–33: “But again, nature of course is the cause of a
24
thing that happens either always or generally in the same way, whereas fortune [tuvch] is the opposite.”
Lennox, “Teleology, Chance, and Aristotle’s Theory of Spontaneous Generation,” 227.
25
when (as he fully acknowledges) his more broad-reaching philosophical commit-
ments seem to preclude him from drawing such a conclusion.26
At EE 1247b18, Aristotle distinguishes between rational and irrational impulses
in a way that may help to overcome this problem. We are told that the fortunate
man forms the right desire for the right thing at the right time (1248a16), but
because its formation is non-deliberative, the cause of his desiring the right thing
cannot be decision (the EN’s required ajrchv of right action). The fortunate man
has the right impulses, Aristotle says, even though he has no reason why he feels
impelled to do what he does (1247b22–26) in the way that some people sing well
though they are untaught and lack knowledge of how to sing (1247b21–23).27
His having the right impulses is, in some significant sense, a fluke because he
simply “fastens on” the right course of action without its being the product of
prior deliberation and decision (1225a28–33).28 Of course, this does not mean
there is no explanation of his success in action. What we have trouble explaining
in the singing case is how it is possible for a person to sing well while lacking the
knowledge that is proper to that tevcnh. For Aristotle, a tevcnh is a “state concerned
with making, involving a true course of reasoning” (1140a21) and which gives its
possessor the ability to produce something reliably under a variety of conditions,
and on the basis of having knowledge of the relevant principles. Just as the car-
penter relies on some geometrical principles to produce his results reliably, the
musician must have knowledge of the structure of the music (harmony, melody
and rhythm, etc.), and perhaps also of the mood of the audience and the nature
of the performers who came before her. Just as some can sing well without the
professional knowledge of singing, by analogy the fortunate man reliably acts well
under a variety of conditions without the course of reasoning that is supposed to
create, and account for, that sort of success. Though the fortunate man’s impulses
do not model those of the virtuous man, this does not mean that he lacks some
more general skill; it might belong to the nature of his non-rational impulses that
right actions immediately appeal to him. But if that is the case, what the fortunate
man possesses is some capacity other than the virtuous man’s particular tevcnh be-
One risk this chapter—or an interpretation of it—runs is equivocating between luck as cause, on
26
the one hand, and as effect on the other. When Aristotle wonders at the beginning of VIII.2 whether
“the fortunate do well” and “good fortune produces well-doing,” it sounds as though he is considering
luck to be a cause of the fortunate man’s successful actions. The fact that he later favors nature as the
cause of eujtuciva (he concludes that “not fortune but nature is the cause” at 1247a37) also suggests that
he initially considered fortune to be its possible cause. But when Aristotle describes the fortunate man
as eujtuchv~, it sounds as though it is his success in action, i.e. the effects of his nature, that are fortunate
(see also 1247a36 ff.). Since the EE language closely mirrors that of Phys. II, where Aristotle describes
a fortuitous market meeting as being caused “by luck,” and because Aristotle’s worry in the 1247b10
passage is about the impossibility of an accidental cause producing a regular effect, I think we should
assume that when Aristotle says a man is fortunate in action, we should take him to mean that his
action is in some way caused by fortune, that “fortune” is an explanation of the action’s etiology. In
this case, it would be the luck that causes the fortunate man’s regular success that needs explaining.
Here, Aristotle may be thinking of the sort of example he gives in Politics VIII.5, where he
27
describes the Lacedaemonians, who, without having learned music, nevertheless can correctly judge
good and bad melodies (1339b2–3).
To say that the fortunate man’s having the right impulses is a fluke is not to say that his actions
28
are uncaused altogether or that they do not have some per se cause. It is just to say that his impulses,
lacking reason, cannot be the per se cause of his actions described as “virtuous.”
cause the cause of his success—his impulse—is non-prohairetic and inarticulate.
So, what sort of impulse does the fortunate man possess? Since a rational impulse
would be a proaivresi~, and hence could be articulated, the fortunate man’s impulse
(which he cannot articulate) must be irrational. Since an irrational impulse could
be either an appetitive desire (ejpiqu`miva) or a more general, undifferentiated wish
(bouvlhsi~), and since both of these are in the soul (oJrmai; ejn th` yuch` [1247b18]),29
the cause of the fortunate man’s success in action must be internal (even if it is
non- or irrational), making it not surprising that Aristotle should attribute it to the
fortunate man’s nature. The ‘ejn’ in ‘oJrmai; ejn th` yuch`’ is, therefore, philosophically
quite significant. Though the fortunate man’s impulse is irrational, it is “in” his
soul and is therefore properly thought of as being due to his nature.30
Now that we know that the fortunate man’s impulse is natural—at least in
the sense that it is in his soul—and that it must be non-rational (since it causes
actions that are properly called “fortunate”), we can try to determine precisely
(a) what sort of impulse the fortunate man has and (b) why he has it, that is, why
he has it rather than the impulse for decision. Because Aristotle likens the fortu-
nate man to those who have an inexplicable talent for singing, and because the
salient fact about the latter is the lack of connection between success in singing
and knowledge of how to sing well, we can imagine that what perplexes Aristotle
about the fortunate man is his surprising degree of success in action despite his
lack of skill in deliberation. This is doubly perplexing because we not only want to
know what it is that replaces deliberation in the formation of the fortunate man’s
correct desires but also what explains his possession of this unique ability in the
first place. We need, therefore, not just an account of the nature of this impulse
but of its origin as well.
5 . ’ e n q o u s i a s m vo ~ a n d t h e o r i g i n o f t h e f o r t u n a t e
man’s irrational impulses
My contention has been that the fortunate man’s impulse, which is somehow due
to tuvch, is natural but not rational. The challenge now is to determine what sort of
impulse could fit this profile. At the end of VIII.2, Aristotle tells us that what the
fortunate man has is a sort of divine inspiration (’enqousiasmov~ at 1248a34)—what
we might think of as a divine cheat-sheet—that allows him to succeed in whatever
he initiates, to choose correctly out of proportion with his skill for doing so and
on account of which he cannot deliberate (1248a30, 34–35). He says these men
“use the divine” and do so throughout their lives because their impulses come
directly from God (or from their divine parts) (1248a38 ff.). To be precise, the
picture is not that because the fortunate man lacks reason, some less adequate
surrogate impulse steps in to replace it, but conversely that the fortunate man’s
This is consistent with Aristotle’s description of e’ nqousiasmov~ from Pol. 1342a6 and EE 1225a25
29
as an “affection of the soul.”

At Phys. 192b14–15, Aristotle defines a thing’s nature as an internal principle of motion or
30
source of change (see also Met. 1015a13–15). Because he equates the nature of an organism with its
form (Phys. 193b7), and because an organism’s form or essence—its first actuality—is its soul (DA
412a27, 414a28), the nature of an organism is, in at least one sense, its soul.
unique sort of impulse disables any deliberative capacity he might have otherwise
had (1248a31–34). Furthermore, since the distribution argument rules out this
divine impulse being the product of intentional divine dispensation, we need an
explanation for its existence besides the will of God.
Exactly what does Aristotle mean by ejnqousiasmov~? Taken together with its other
“ancient” uses (the word occurs in three other notable places: at Politics 1340a10
and 1342a5, and also at Timaeus 71e) we might, as the word suggests, interpret it
as the kind of enthusiastic divination of which Plato frequently made use (in the
Ion [534d], for example) to refer to the God-given state of being beside oneself.31
Of the poets who compose beautifully not because of their mastery of the subject
but because of a divine power (534c) Plato says,
[T]hat’s why the god takes their intellect away from them when he uses them as his
servants, as he does prophets and godly diviners, so that we who hear should know
that they are not the ones who speak those verses that are of such high value, for their
intellect is not in them: the god himself is the one who speaks, and he gives voice
through them to us. (534d)
Socrates mentions a similar kind of divine dispensation at the end of the Meno to
describe statesmen such as Themistocles who, like soothsayers and prophets, give
speeches that lead to the city’s success because they are “possessed by the god”
although they know nothing of what they say (99e).32 The language of intentional-
ity in both passages is unmistakable; the statesman’s skill, like the poet’s, is clearly
due to the agency of God. This hierophanic view of e’ nqousiasmov~, evident in both
the Ion and the Meno passages, amounts to a kind of divine conductivity; the souls
of those who are inspired or possessed are merely conduits through which some-
thing sacred or divine (iJevro~) manifests (faineov) itself in the world,33 modeling the
process in which Michelangelo’s Adam receives the divine touch through which
the breath of life is transmitted (“The Creation of Adam,” 1511).
But, if ejnqousiasmov~ implies that God is the subject acting on him who is inspired,
then there are three reasons why it is unlikely that it is this sort of divine inspiration
that Aristotle has in mind in EE VIII.2. First, it would contradict the conclusion of
the distribution argument on account of which he earlier dismissed God as the
cause of eujtuciva at 1247a28–30. If Aristotle relies on that principle here, then
the absence of any rational impulse the fortunate man might have had cannot
to be due to God’s choice to remove it. Second, Aristotle’s use of ‘ejnqousiasmov~’
‘ jEnqousiasmov~’ and its derivatives occur in several other places throughout the Aristotelian and
31
Platonic corpuses (e.g. De Mundo 395b27; Problems 922b22; Rhet. 1408b14; Cratylus 396d3; Philebus
15e1) but most reduce to this basic sense of frenzy. Within the ancient corpus, there is also the idea
that man can accomplish nothing significant without a certain amount of madness or divine possession:
“And a third kind of possession and madness comes from the Muses. This takes hold upon a gentle
and pure soul, arouses it and inspires it to songs and other poetry, and thus by adorning countless
deeds of the ancients educates later generations. But he who without the divine madness comes to
the doors of the Muses, confident that he will be a good poet by art, meets with no success, and the
poetry of the sane man vanishes into nothingness before that of the inspired madmen” (Phaedrus
245a; cf. Symposium 218b).
We get a similar sense in the Phaedrus: “For the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona
32
when they have been mad have conferred many splendid benefits upon Greece both in private and in
public affairs, but few or none when they have been in their right minds. . .” (244b).
Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 21.
33
does not obviously require the intentional inspiration of Plato’s “divine frenzy”
described, for example, at Phaedrus 238d and 241e, where Socrates jests that his
“unusual fluency” of words might be due to his being possessed by the nymphs. In
the Ion, God intentionally disengages the poet’s intellect so he can use him as His
servant. But, although the divine works in the fortunate man’s soul in EE VIII.2,
the language there never suggests that his intellectual capacity (or incapacity) is
due to the agency of God. As Van der Eijk has rightly suggested, since Aristotle
elsewhere uses ‘ejnqousiasmov~[n]’ to denote merely an “affection [pavqo~] of the
soul” (Pol. 1342a6; EE 1225a25), there is no reason to think he has something
more agential in mind here.34 A third, but related, reason can be gleaned from
the grammatical constructions of the sentences themselves. When, to explain the
poets’ divine frenzy, Plato says “[G]od takes their intellect away from them,” the
subject “god” acts on “them,” i.e. the poets. The same construction is used in all
three of the relevant Div. passages (462b20–21, 463b16, and 464a20) and in the
corresponding passage at MM 1207a7-8 where Aristotle says, “We hold that God
. . . distributes both good and evil to those who deserve it.”35 In all four of Aristotle’s
passages, plus that from the Ion, God (as subject) acts on the person whose soul is
affected (the object), which echoes the language at EE 1247a27, where Aristotle
speculates that the fortunate man may have the “deity as steersman.” But when
Aristotle hypothesizes at the end of VIII.2 that the fortunate have ejnqousiasmov~
(1248a34), the subject and object are noticeably reversed. There he says, “[T]hese
men use the divine” (1248a38), and later that the fortunate man acts through God
(dia; qeo;n, 1248b4). Neither construction directly implies the agency of a divine
entity. Perhaps we ought not read too much into this grammatical difference, be-
cause it is slight and not obviously intentional. It may, however, signal that Aristotle
is honoring the distribution argument’s prohibition of intentional dispensation,
thinking instead of the sort of conclusion drawn in MM 2.8 that “good fortune,
then, is nature without reason” (a[logo~ fuvs i~, 1207a35) and is, therefore, not
necessarily a matter of divine favor. jEnqousiasmov~, on this more neutral reading,
can imply a kind of divine conductivity as long as it does not require God to be
the conductor. But we still need to understand how the presence of the irrational
impulse in the fortunate man’s soul—that explains his eujtuciva—is “divine” though
not divinely given (1248b). We need to understand, in other words, how the for-
tunate man comes to have this anomalous nature in the first place.
As soon as Aristotle starts to hypothesize about the source of the fortunate
man’s impulse at 1248a15, he is pushed into a more general worry about the ajrchv
of any correct desire. He says, “The question might be raised ‘Is luck [tuvch] the
cause of this very thing—desiring what one should or when one should?’ Or will
luck in that way be the cause of everything?” (1248a15–17). Aristotle seems to be
worried that if the fortunate man’s non-deliberative impulses are due to luck, then
so too are the initial impulses that are the sources of the wise man’s deliberation
van der Eijk, “Divine Movement and Human Nature in Eudemian Ethics 8.2,” 245.
34
As van der Eijk explains, ‘God’ (ho theos) is the subject of ‘use’ (chresthai), and man is the object,
35
which makes the fortunate man (or, more precisely, his soul) the instrument of the God. God “takes
away” (exairoumenos), implying an intentional divine intervention (“Divine Movement and Human
Nature in Eudemian Ethics 8.2,” 245).
on pain of infinite regress. If the divine origin of the movement in the rational
person’s soul is equivalent to that in the case of those who are foolish but fortunate,
then any interesting distinction between excellence and continuous natural good
fortune would be lost, because God would be the primary source of change in all
souls and there would be no sense in which any of our actions are ever up to us, a
conclusion that Aristotle denies (e.g. EN 1113b5–7). Ultimately, the worry is that
any sense in which the fortunate man is antecedently advantaged might equally
well apply to any man, so that genuine moral action, and therefore appropriate
attributions of praise and blame, is impossible. Though, as Aristotle says at EN
1153b31, “all things by nature have something divine [in them],” if there is to
be any relevant distinction between the person who “owes his success to a god”
(1248b4) and he who owes it to the divine element in himself (nou`~), Aristotle
must have thought that ejnqousiasmov~ is more a cause of the fortunate man’s actions
than of those of the wise men. To escape the problem, Aristotle would need to
show (1) that “the divine element in us” (to; ejn hJmi`n qei`on, 1248a27)—what the
EN calls ‘understanding’ or ‘intellect’ (nou`~, 1177a16 and b28)—is different in
kind from that in the fortunate man’s soul, and (2) that it does not have another
relevant source of movement outside of itself. Aristotle is on firm ground as long
as the ajrchv that properly explains the divine element in the fortunate man (the
irrational impulse) is different in kind from that which explains the divine element
in the standard human case.
Aristotle is clear that the ajrchv of the fortunate man’s actions cannot be nou`~,
since, as he says explicitly at 1248a28–29, it is “superior to knowledge and intel-
ligence [nou`~].” Furthermore, since the fortunate man’s impulse is irrational, it
cannot belong to the part of the soul in which nou`~ resides. And if the fortunate
men are “those for whom good fortune [tuvch ajgaqh;] is a cause of good things”
(1247b1), then the ultimate explanation of their impulses, and hence their success
in action, must be tuvch. Since tuvch, properly speaking, is an accidental cause, the
ultimate explanation of the presence of the irrational impulse in the fortunate
man’s soul must be accidental even if that impulse has divine origins. But because
Aristotle seems to be identifying two different efficient causes of the fortunate
man’s success—nature and fortune—and because there cannot be two causes of
a single unified event in the same sense (Phys. 196b28), we need to understand
in what sense nature is its cause and in what sense it owes to tuvch. We need, in
other words, a fine-grained causal explanation of the fortunate man’s eujpragiva.
As a possibility, I propose the following explanation that rests heavily on the basic
distinction Aristotle makes in his natural philosophy between intrinsic efficient
causation and accidental causation.
I take it that Johnson resists treating eujtuciva as a species of tuvch because he
reads a paradox into the phrase “the fortunate [oiJ eujtucei`~] must be so by nature
[fuvsei],” assuming that it violates Aristotle’s distinction between nature, which
“is the cause of a thing that happens either always or generally in the same way,”
and fortune, which is the opposite (EE 1247a31–33; Phys. 196b10–14).36 But this
It is noteworthy that this understanding of the difference between nature (fuvs i~) and for-
36
tune (tuvch) is not only a cornerstone of Aristotle’s natural philosophy and can be found repeatedly
contradiction arises only if we take the causal relation to exist between the so-
called “fortunate” results—the successful actions—and the irrational impulses in
the fortunate man’s soul that cause them; it disappears if we reframe the relation
to exist between the fortunate results and the cause of the impulses themselves (if
it turns out that the impulses have an accidental cause). I will argue that Aristotle
contradicts himself only if he means that nature and luck cause the fortunate man’s
successful actions in the same way, a conclusion I believe we need not draw. Instead,
I think it is possible to see Aristotle’s conclusion as consistent if we distinguish, as
he so often does, between two sorts of causes and two levels of explanation (e.g.
Met. 1044a33–b3): one for the successful actions that are caused by the fortunate
man’s own internal (but irrational) impulses, and one for the impulses them-
selves. My contention is that eujtuciva has its origin in the fortunate man’s nature,
specifically in his soul, when his soul is not generated by the normal, goal-directed
reproductive processes. To determine if this is the explanation Aristotle could have
had in mind, we need to think about his view of the purpose and generation of
souls in the standard case.
6. the generation of the fortunate man’s soul

One way to understand Aristotle’s notion of soul is to see it as a kind of functioning
of a body organized so that it can support vital functions. Nature, Aristotle says,
does things for specific purposes (Generation of Animals, 741b5–6, 788b20–21; PA
661b24, 691b5; Progression of Animals, 704b15), one of which is to generate the
various parts of the soul that are needed to support rational human activity (GA
731b25–31). As Aristotle says at EN 1098a3–16, the work of the rational soul (the
practical intellect, in particular) is to support the activities in accordance with vir-
tue: the capacity to chart particular courses of action, to identify the good and to
deliberate the means to attain it. Humans are able to develop this capacity by way
of training and habituation, but they must first possess a soul with the appropriate
potentiality (1103a25–1103b2; De Anima, 417a21–b1). In the standard case, i.e.
when nature achieves its purposes, sexual reproduction produces a soul that can
support this capacity and the characteristic rational impulse—proaivresi~—that
virtue will later require (IA 639b11–640a1). But, as Aristotle says in Phys. II.8, mis-
takes are possible in the operation of nature, and natural processes can sometimes
fail to be completed: “[W]henever the end results always or usually, it is neither
coincidental nor a result of luck [tuvch~]. And in natural things that is how it is in
every case, unless something prevents it” (199b25–6). Aristotle describes these
“failures in the purposive effort” in the Physics (e.g. 199b4) and in his biological
works. In Phys. II.8, for example, he says,
Now mistakes occur even in the operations of art: the literate man makes a mistake
in writing and the doctor pours out the wrong dose. Hence clearly mistakes are pos-
sible in the operations of nature also. If then in art there are cases in which what is
rightly produced serves a purpose, and if where mistakes occur there was a purpose
throughout his natural philosophical and biological texts, but is restated nearly verbatim in EE in the
context of his discussion of the fortunate man. Hence, we can assume that Aristotle is quite serious in
EE VIII.2 when he worries about attributing a natural cause to what happens “by fortune.”
in what was attempted, only it was not attained, so must it be also in natural products.
. . .” (199a34–b4)
For Aristotle, just as grammatical mistakes occasionally undermine the purpose

of writing, mistakes in the natural realm produce results that deviate from type.
With respect to generative processes specifically, missteps in nature’s reproduc-
tive purpose (which is to produce an offspring of type) result in various degrees of
deviation from type (De An. 415a26–b8; Pol. 1252a26–31). Aristotle tells us that
the ideal case of animal reproduction is that in which the semen contains sufficient
vital heat as to enable it to master thoroughly the (comparatively cold) female
matter: the greatest vital heat produces the greatest likeness of the father in the
embryo (GA 767b15–17, 770b2–5, 30–35).37 Slight diminutions in the semen’s
vital heat—resulting in a recalcitrance of the “generative residue in the menstrual
fluids” to be fully concocted into the paternal form—will produce slight departures
from type, including sons who more closely resemble their grandfathers, or more
distant ancestors, than their fathers (GA 768a31–33). Greater reductions in vital
heat will produce greater deviations from type, which will qualify as “monstrosi-
ties” (tevrata, GA 770b5). These include offspring with, for example, extra digits
or doubled generative parts (i.e. tragaivna[i], GA 770b35), female offspring, men
who resemble neither of their parents, and monsters such as Empedocles’s “man-
faced oxprogeny” (GA 767b5ff., 770a24ff.; Phys. 198b31). Aristotle’s most com-
monly cited effects of generative processes that fail to attain their natural ends are
physical (involving, for example, a lack of physical resemblance to the parent, or
missing, extra, or misplaced digits or organs), but there are places in the corpus
where he suggests that the effects can be psychological as well. In the EN VII.5, for
example, Aristotle describes a condition he calls “brutishness” (qhriovth~), which
can be produced not only by bad habit and disease but also by an original and
fundamentally bad nature (1148b30–49b8).38 As Aristotle says later in the chapter,
these people “naturally lack reason” (1149a10) and, as such, are persons only
homonymously. Unsurprisingly, Aristotle does not speculate, within the ethical
texts themselves, about the embryological processes that are responsible for these
naturally bad characters, but we can imagine that there would have to be some
failure of generation that accounts for these “diseased nature[s]” (1148b30) that
makes them analogous to physical failures of generation.
There has been much recent speculation about the material causes of differ-
ent psychological abilities in the Aristotelian corpus, and I will not rehearse that
debate here.39 Suffice it to say, a material explanation underpins many of Aristotle’s
psychological claims. One of the most striking passages occurs in GA II.3, where
Aristotle says, “[I]t is true that the faculty of all kinds of soul seems to have a con-
nexion with matter different from and more divine than the so-called elements;
but as one soul differs from another in honour and dishonour, so differs also the
For Aristotle, the semen’s power of orderly heating is for the sake of producing an offspring
37
that is formally identical to its parents (see Lennox, “Teleology, Chance, and Aristotle’s Theory of
Spontaneous Generation,” 230; GA 727b16, 729b27, 734b33; and PA 639b12–642b4).
These brutes include the female who rips open pregnant women and devours their children, the
38
slave who ate his fellow’s liver, and Phalaris, the tyrant who brutally tortured his victims (1148b20ff.).
See, for example, Freudenthal, Aristotle’s Theory of Material Substance.
39
nature of the corresponding matter” (736b32). At the material level, what ulti-
mately explains differences in an offspring’s soul capacities—including psychologi-
cal monstrosities of various sorts—is failures in vital heat. Aristotle’s explanation of
a woman’s inability to be fully virtuous, for example, is that she lacks reason—or,
more technically, the authority of the bouleutikovn (deliberative reason)—and
that is ultimately explained biologically. The father’s inability to supply enough
vital heat to fully pneumatize the blood (GA 767b5–8, 768a33–34) produces an
offspring whose soul lacks sufficient sensation for practical intelligence. Given
Aristotle’s general strategy of explanation for congenitally anomalous psychologi-
cal features and his connection between psychological and material properties,
the most likely explanation for the fortunate man’s congenital disengagement
of reasoning is insufficient vital heat. On this view, the fortunate man suffers at
conception from a debilitating lack of reason because nature has failed to create a
soul with a first-level duvnami~ for moral excellence (DA II.5).40 Just as a failure in the
semen to fully concoct the “ultimate nourishment” explains the lack of authority
of the bouleutikovn in women, so too insufficient vital heat during conception would
seem to be the most apt explanation for why the fortunate man lacks deliberative
reason altogether. (Why he possesses the “divine impulse” in its place is a further
question.) Because, in the standard case, generation supplies the offspring with
a soul that has the potential for deliberation, and because Aristotle recognizes
that sometimes nature produces other results by chance (e.g. mutilated parts and
extra digits), it is reasonable to expect there to be accidental processes involved
with the generation of the human soul that produce atypical effects with respect
to its potential for certain virtue-specific impulses.41 In the central EE VIII.2 case,
the anomalous kind of soul in question is one in which reasoning is disengaged
(1248a34) because it contains irrational “impulses” (oJrmaiv, MM 1207a35ff) in-
stead, which impel the fortunate man toward things for which he is well suited
(1207a39), disposing him to do correct actions. And, since the fortunate man’s
incapacity for deliberative decision, and therefore for virtue, is the product of his
soul departing from type, which is a type of monstrosity, I propose that we consider
the eujtucei`~ of EE VIII.2 to be what I will call “moral monsters.” On this view, the
Recently, several commentators have persuasively argued that this sort of biological account
40
explains why Aristotle thought women and slaves, for example, are incapable of full virtue from birth.
(See, for examples, Deslaurier, “Vital Heat, Intelligence, and Sexual Difference in Aristotle”; and Ward,
“Is Human a Homonym for Aristotle?”.) The particulars of the cases of the female and the fortunate
man are, however, slightly different. With respect to women, the deliberative capacity is present but it
is without authority. However, in the case of the fortunate men, Aristotle does not indicate that they
possess the capacity for deliberation at all. In their case, the issue is not a lack of authority of the bou-
leutikovn but its complete absence. The biological processes that explain these failures of generation
may not, however, be substantially different in kind.
Though a fuller analysis of this phenomenon is beyond the scope of this paper, a complete
41
account of the generation of the fortunate man’s soul would require an explanation of why vital heat
would create non-rational impulses in some men (rather than the standard species-specific rational
impulses or none at all) generally, and what it is, specifically, about insufficient vital heat in this case
that produces impulses of the kind under investigation in EE VIII.2. The fact that we do not find that
sort of biological explanation in the Eudemian Ethics, however, is not at all surprising or uncharacter-
istic. (Aristotle does not, for example, explain the biological processes that account for natural lacks
of reason at EN 1149a10.)
fortunate men are monsters because they possess a soul that contains impulses
uncharacteristic of the human type.
Recall that what troubles the author(s) of MM, Div., and EE is a difficulty in
understanding why God would give impulses for good actions to those who are not
worthy. The explanation I have proposed circumvents this difficulty. The fortunate
man’s irrational impulses are simply the result of an accident at the embryologi-
cal level, and so there is no need to attribute them to the agency of God (thereby
avoiding any contradiction with the distribution argument on which Aristotle
relies). Since their cause is ultimately accidental, and since accidental causes do
not admit of per se explanations, we ought not expect such an explanation of the
irrational impulses in the fortunate man’s soul. To ask why some people receive
these impulses would be much like asking, “Why is an offspring a female rather
than a male?” God, for Aristotle, is no more responsible for the fortunate man’s
irrational impulses—and therefore for his success in action—than He is for an
offspring being a female or having an extra finger or a misplaced liver. For this
reason, we need not take Aristotle’s claim that the fortunate man is a “better con-
duit” through which the divine can express itself as a sign that he thought God
intentionally favors these men: once the failure in generation has occurred, any
future reasoning powers are disengaged and the divine is automatically better
expressed in any actions this man commits (since the barrier to its expression
has been removed). These are simply the anomalous, but expected, effects of the
failure of any entity to generate in kind.42
7 . a r e t h e e uj t u c e i` ~ r e a l l y e uj t u c h; ~ ?
I have argued that the fortunate man Aristotle describes in EE VIII.2 is a moral
monster, analogous to the biological monsters Aristotle describes in GA IV.3 and
4 and the beasts of EN VII.5 who are overcome by their desires. This might seem
to be an inapt comparison since the latter are creatures on the “edge” of morality,
those whose natures have made virtue and vice43 altogether impossible (1149a1).
As such, they are obvious failures of nature and would appear to have nothing in
common with the class of fortunate men Aristotle describes in EE VIII.2, namely
those who are more likely to have success in action. At 1247a2, Aristotle calls the
fortunate men eujtucei`~, implying that they have experienced good luck, not bad,
and that their success in action benefits them, making their lives better than they
would otherwise be. (I am assuming, here, that any instance of good luck is good
for the person whose luck it is [see Phys. 197a25–29].) Though the fortunate man
is not genuinely a virtuous person, and though he lacks eujdaimoniva, it would seem
that he is better off than the common man. Even if the fortunate man’s eujpragiva
A sign that Aristotle may have had a biological explanation of the fortunate man’s irrational
42
impulses in mind is that, when he considers the possibility that the fortunate men are so because of
their nature (the conclusion on which he eventually settles), he speaks not only of a natural endow-
ment but repeatedly employs specifically biological language. His question about whether nature makes
men with different qualities so that they differ from birth “as some are blue-eyed and some black-eyed”
(1247a10) gestures toward a biological explanation of the character of the fortunate man as being
analogous to the biological explanation of eye color.
At 1149a1–2, Aristotle says those with a bestial nature are “outside the limits of vice.”
43
does not amount to virtue, he more often than not does the right thing, which
would seem to put him ahead of many of us in terms of moral excellence. But this
fact seems to be incongruous with my suggestion that the fortunate men are really
monsters, because biological monsters, at least, are usually grotesque in some way
(think of the multi-headed, single-toed, and otherwise mutilated creatures of GA
IV.4). Likewise, the beasts of EN VII.5 are the moral equivalent of these biological
monstrosities, performing actions no human would rationally choose to do. But
the eujtucei`~ will not offend our moral sensibilities as Empedocles’s ox-progeny
offends our aesthetic ones. On the contrary, they might be the envy of many for
their ability to “hit upon” the actions the rest of us have to work to perform. If
so, how can we understand in what sense the fortunate man is a moral monster?
Though our modern minds are inclined to read ‘monstrous’ as a synonym for
‘grotesque,’ ‘obscene,’ ‘heinous,’ or even ‘evil,’ or to think of those whom mon-
strosity affects—like Phalaris or Frankenstein’s monster—as pitiable, Aristotle does
not always have this sinister sense in mind. A monster, for Aristotle, is simply a cor-
ruption of the natural order, the product of external forces derailing reproduction
from fulfilling its natural course. But not all such failures are bad. Though it may
not be preferable for a woman to be born a woman (given Aristotle’s opinion about
her potential for deliberative excellence), it is not bad for the species she helps to
continue (in fact her existence is a natural necessity, GA 766a30–b3, 767b9, 15–17);
though twins are monsters in Aristotle’s technical sense, it is not clear he thought
they suffer from any biological or psychological limitation.44 Likewise, even if be-
ing fortunate in the EE VIII.2 sense is bad for the man who is incapable of virtue,
his correct actions (those which are brave, generous, just, etc.) may benefit other
individuals and the community to which he belongs.45 Despite this, the fortunate
men are no less monstrous in the technical sense than are biological monsters
or those with bestial states. All are failures in nature to reproduce the type. And
because the generative failure in the fortunate man’s case results in a lack of the
deliberative capacity that virtue strictly requires, his monstrousness incapacitates
him for, rather than predisposes him to, any kind of life of virtue. Because the
fortunate man cannot deliberate, he is actually less, rather than more, capable of
virtue, though he is more likely than most to do what the virtuous man does. In
reality, these men are fortunate in name only; they are actually very unfortunate
because their congenital disability has made it impossible for them to deliberate,
and therefore to reach a decision to act for the sake of the good, just as mules are
unable to reproduce (GA II.8) and women are unable to make choices with full
authority. All things considered, no one should envy the “skill,” or the life, of the
so-called “fortunate” man since his eujtuciva actually incapacitates him for the life
Aristotle says is best for humans, the life of virtue (EN 1098a3–4).46
A possible counterpoint to this claim is Aristotle’s concern in History of Animals VII.4 that hu-
44
man twins composed of one boy and one girl are unlikely to survive, as compared with twins of the
same sex (584b37–584a3).
Recall the example of setting the enemy’s weapons on fire, given in a previous note. While the
45
fortunate man does not choose to do this act for its own sake, doing so will likely save his city from a
foreign threat and is productive in that sense.
I acknowledge, here, that there is some controversy over whether the life of virtuous activity is
46
actually the best life for humans or whether it is the life of contemplation (i.e. theoretical activity). This
8. conclusion
Thirteen passages throughout the EN, EE, MM, Politics, and Rhetoric 47 suggest that
Aristotle thought it is an important question whether we become happy by effort
and care, or by some external cause. Though he quite emphatically concludes in
EN I.9 that it would be “seriously inappropriate [livan plhmmele;~] . . . to entrust
what is greatest and finest to fortune” (1099b24), Aristotle’s regular interest in
questions concerning the role of luck in the good life suggests that he took the
potential answers to be philosophically quite significant. Though Aristotle is sen-
sitive elsewhere in the ethical texts to the vulnerability of the moral life to luck,
what is striking about the EE passage is that it attempts to explain the cause(s) of
luck itself, i.e. the cause(s) of the irrational impulses that explain the fortunate
man’s repeated success in action. The penultimate chapter of the Eudemian Ethics,
in which Aristotle faces the issue head on, is especially vexing, because it looks as
though the method he initially set up to solve the puzzle about the causes of eujtuciva
leaves him at an insoluble impasse once he shows that not one of its three most
likely explanations—wisdom, nature, and divine guidance—is, by itself, sufficient
to explain the phenomenon. Though Aristotle settles on nature as their source,
he is left to explain whether the fortunate man’s anomalous nature is due to the
agency of God or to luck (tuvch) (1207a8–10). In a sense, both explanations are
right. Aristotle’s final round of explanation, which settles on ejnqousiasmov~ as the
source of the continuously fortunate man’s success, appears in the end to be a
way to affirm the initial taxonomy, since it is a hybrid of two of the most plausible
explanations: the proximate cause of the fortunate man’s eujtuciva is his nature (in-
sofar as his irrational impulses are internal to his soul),48 while its ultimate cause
is tuvch (because his soul, which contains those impulses and better expresses the
divine on account of them, is produced by accident). The initial challenge was to
understand how eujtuciva could be due to nature when fortune and luck are the
results of accidental causes, and hence cannot be regular results of a single cause.
The solution I have suggested is that we should understand the nature in question
to be the proximate rather than ultimate cause of eujtuciva so that the fortunate
man’s success ultimately owes to psychic impulses created by luck. I have argued
that there is no reason to think that the generation of the fortunate man’s soul is
any less vulnerable to tuvch than is the generation of certain physical features, and
therefore good reason to consider the fortunate man of VIII.2 to be the moral ana-
logue to the biological monsters Aristotle describes in the GA. Furthermore, since
is a longstanding debate, and it is one in which I do not intend to engage here. What is important for
my purposes is that, at the very least, virtue is necessary for a good human life. Because the fortunate
man of VIII.2 is incapable of it, he is incapable of living a good human life.
Johnson (“Luck and Good Fortune,” 94) provides the following list: EN 1095b32–1096a2,
47
1099a32ff., 1100b22ff., 1124a14, 1153b16, 1171a21–b28; EE 1214a23–26; MM 1206b30–1207b18,

1323a25; Pol. 1323a38, 1331b41; Rhet. 1361b39–1362a11, 1390a29–1391b3.
This generates an interesting point. In Phys. II.1, Aristotle defines something’s nature as its in-
48
ternal origin of change and stability (192b8–33). But because this is also his description of an efficient
cause (192b14 and 29), to say that the irrational man’s impulse that is responsible for his eujpragiva is
part of his nature is to say that the impulse is the efficient cause of the good action. This should not
dissuade us from thinking that the result does not have an accidental cause. Though the impulse is
the per se cause of the result, it is itself generated “by luck.”
eujpragiva is regularly and predictably caused by the fortunate man’s own impulses,
which are due to luck, there is no problem about getting regular effects from an
accidental cause (since tuvch only indirectly causes his regular successful actions).
And, because the presence of the irrational impulse in his soul is generated by
accident, and not because of intentional divine dispensation, Aristotle does not
violate the conclusion of the divine distribution argument he relies on in Div. and
MM. He is therefore fully entitled when, in the middle of VIII.2, he says that the
cause of the fortunate man’s success is tuvch (1247b1).
bibliography and abbreviations

Aristotle. The Athenian Constitution, The Eudemian Ethics, On Virtues and Vices. Translated by H. Rackham.
The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: The Harvard University Press, 1935.
———. The Complete Works of Aristotle. The Revised Oxford Translation. Edited by Jonathan Barnes.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
———. Eudemian Ethics, Books I, II and VIII. Translated by Michael W. Woods. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1992.
Charlton, William. Aristotle’s Physics, Books I and II. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.
Cooper, John M. “Aristotle on the Goods of Fortune.” The Philosophical Review 94 (1985): 173–96.
Deslauriers, Marguerite. “Vital Heat, Intelligence, and Sexual Difference in Aristotle.” Unpublished
manuscript.
Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 1987.
Freeland, Cynthia A. “Accidental Causes and Real Explanations.” In Aristotle’s Physics: A Collection of
Essays, edited by Lindsay Judson, 49–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Freudenthal, Gad. Aristotle’s Theory of Material Substance: Heat and Pneuma, Form and Soul. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995.
Jackson, Henry. “Eudemian Ethics θ I, ii, 1246a26–1248b7.” The Journal of Philology 32 (1913): 208–9.
Johnson, Kent. “Luck and Good Fortune in the Eudemian Ethics.” Ancient Philosophy 17 (1997): 85–102.
[“Luck and Good Fortune”]
Judson, Lindsay. “Chance and ‘Always or For the Most Part’ in Aristotle.” In Aristotle’s Physics: A Collection
of Essays, edited by Lindsay Judson, 73–100. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Kenny, Anthony. Aristotle on the Perfect Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Lennox, James G. “Aristotle on Chance.” In Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology: Studies in the Origins of Life
Science, edited by James G. Lennox, 250–58. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
———.“Teleology, Chance, and Aristotle’s Theory of Spontaneous Generation,” Journal of the History
of Philosophy 20 (1982): 219–32.
Meyer, Susan Sauvé. Aristotle on Moral Responsibility. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993.
Mills, Michael J. “Aristotle’s Dichotomy of Eutuchia (Eudemian Ethics Theta, 2, 1247b18-1248a15).”
Hermes 111 (1983): 282–95.
Plato. Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1997.
Sober, Elliott. “Evolution, Population Thinking and Essentialism.” In Philosophy of Science: An Anthology,
edited by Marc Lange, 388–406. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2007.
van der Eijk, Philip. “Divine Movement and Human Nature in Eudemian Ethics 8.2.” In Medicine and
Philosophy in Classical Antiquity: Doctors and Philosophers on Nature, Soul, Health and Disease, 238–58.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Ward, Julie K. “Is Human a Homonym for Aristotle?” Apeiron 41 (2008): 75–98.

(Journal of the History of Philosophy vol. 50 iss. 3) Ponesse, Julie E. - Ἐνθουσιασμός and Moral Monsters in Eudemian Ethics VIII.2 (2012) (10.1353 - hph.2012.0041) - libgen.li

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

(Journal of the History of Philosophy vol. 50 iss. 3) Ponesse, Julie E. - Ἐνθουσιασμός and Moral Monsters in Eudemian Ethics VIII.2 (2012) (10.1353 - hph.2012.0041) - libgen.li

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ἐνθουσιασμός and Moral Monsters in Eudemian

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

For additional information about this article

Access provided by University of Otago (17 Dec 2018 23:51 GMT)

1. introduction: a puzzle about

Complete Works of Aristotle.

* Julie E. Ponesse is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The College at Brockport, SUNY.

Johnson, “Luck and Good Fortune,” 93.

Kenny, Aristotle on the Good Life, 57.

Meyer, Aristotle on Moral Responsibility, 50.

1247b11, 25, 28 and 35; 1248a31; and 1248b5.

3. the three most likely explanations

Johnson, “Luck and Good Fortune,” 89.

as an “affection of the soul.”

6. the generation of the fortunate man’s soul

For Aristotle, just as grammatical mistakes occasionally undermine the purpose

1099a32ff., 1100b22ff., 1124a14, 1153b16, 1171a21–b28; EE 1214a23–26; MM 1206b30–1207b18,

bibliography and abbreviations

You might also like