Moral Responsibility and Particular Virtues

Book 3 opens with the question of voluntary action, because praise and blame only attach to what is up to us. Involuntary actions fall into two kinds: those done under compulsion (the origin lies entirely outside the agent) and those done through ignorance (the agent does not know the relevant particular facts). Mixed cases — like throwing goods overboard in a storm — are treated with care: the action is more like voluntary, because the person chooses it given their situation, even if they would not choose it in the abstract. Aristotle also distinguishes acts done from ignorance (genuinely involuntary) from acts done in ignorance (e.g., while drunk, which may not be excused).

The analysis of voluntary action leads to an account of choice and deliberation. We deliberate about means, not ends: the end (health, victory, the good) is given; deliberation works backward from it to find what is in our power. Choice is deliberate desire of what is in our power; it is the heart of moral action, since virtues are stable dispositions to choose in the right way. What falls under a person's choice is their moral responsibility.

The book then examines courage and temperance in detail. Courage is the mean with respect to fear and confidence. Its central instance is facing death in battle, not because other dangers do not require courage, but because this is the most demanding case. The courageous person fears what deserves fear and has the right attitude toward fear; the coward fears too much, the rash person too little. Temperance is the mean with respect to bodily pleasures — specifically those of touch and taste — and the intemperate person is one who takes pleasure in the wrong objects or in excess. Both virtues are shown to fit the doctrine of the mean established in Book 2.