Thomas R. Martin, An Overview of Classical Greek History from Mycenae to Alexander

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Aristotle on Just Behavior

Aristotle sharply departed from the Socratic idea that knowledge of justice and goodness was all that was necessary for a person to behave justly. He argued that people in their souls often possess knowledge of what is right but that their irrational desires overrule this knowledge and lead them to do wrong. People who know the evils of hangovers still get drunk, for instance¹. Recognizing a conflict of desires in the human soul, Aristotle devoted special attention to the issue of achieving self-control by training the mind to win out over the instincts and passions. Self-control did not mean denying human desires and appetites; rather, it meant striking a balance between suppressing and heedlessly indulging physical yearnings, of finding “the mean.”² Aristotle claimed that the mind should rule in striking this balance because the intellectual is the finest human quality and the mind is the true self, indeed the godlike part of a person.