The Nicomachean Ethics Book 7, Chapter 10 (1152a8-35) Summary

  • Differences between the prudent and the person lacking restraint: 1) the prudent are virtuous; 2) the prudent are "skilled in action"; 3) person lacking restraint reasons like a drunk person.
  • A clever person often masquerades as a prudent person, but he can lack self-restraint and make bad choices.
  • A person lacking restraint isn't a bad sort. He doesn't plan his badness. He just doesn't think at all. Or he thinks and forms convictions but doesn't stick to them.
  • Both the self-restrained and those who lack self-restraint go above and beyond what's normal for most people, just on opposite sides of the spectrum from each other.
  • Some people lacking self-restraint are better than others: those who just don't think and those who are uncontrolled out of habit are curable.