As for Deliberation, do people deliberate about everything—are all things possible objects of deliberation—, or are there some things about which deliberation is impossible?
The term object of deliberation
presumably must not be taken to include things about which a fool or a madman might deliberate, but to mean what a sensible person would deliberate about.
Well then, nobody deliberates about things eternal, Footnote 1The term includes the notion if immutability. such as the order of the universe, or the incommensurability of the diagonal and the side, of a square.
Nor yet about things that change but follow a regular process, whether from necessity or by nature Footnote 2Here and in 3.7 necessity
denotes natural law in the inanimate world, while nature
or growth
means natural law as governing animate creatures. Aristotle held that these agencies, and with them the operation of human intelligence and art, beside their designed results, produced by their interplay certain by-products in the shape of undesigned and irregular occurrences, which are referred to in the next section. These in the natural world he spoke of as due to τὸ αὐτόματον, or spontaneous
; when due to the activity of man he ascribed them to fortune or chance. In 3.7 chance is made to include the spontaneous.
or through some other cause: such phenomena for instance as the solstices and the sunrise.
Nor about irregular occurrences, such as droughts and rains. Nor about the results of chance, such as finding a hidden treasure.
The reason Footnote 3In the mss. the words The reason why . . . list of causes
come after But we do not deliberate . . . Scythia.
why we do not deliberate about these things is that none of them can be effected by our agency.
We deliberate about things that are in our control and are attainable by action (which are in fact the only things that still remain to be considered; for Nature, Necessity, and Chance, with the addition of Intelligence and human agency generally, exhaust the generally accepted list of causes). But we do not deliberate about all human affairs without exception either: for example, no Lacedaemonian deliberates about the best form of government Footnote 4Or, the best line of policy.
for Scythia; but any particular set of men deliberates about the things attainable by their own actions.
Also there is no room for deliberation about matters fully ascertained and completely formulated as sciences; such for instance as orthography, for we have no uncertainty as to how a word ought to be spelt. We deliberate about things in which our agency operates, but does not always produce uniform results; for instance about questions of medicine and of business; and we deliberate about navigation more than about athletic training, because it has been less completely reduced to a science; and similarly with other pursuits also.
And we deliberate more about the arts Footnote 5A less well attested reading gives more about our opinions,
and Aristotle does not usually distinguish sharply between the arts and crafts and the practical sciences (the theoretic sciences cannot here be meant, see 3.3,4). than about the sciences, because we are more uncertain about them.
Deliberation then is employed in matters which, though subject to rules that generally hold good, are uncertain in their issue; or where the issue is indeterminate, Footnote 6The text is probably corrupt, and perhaps should be altered to run and in which the right means to take are not definitely determined.
and where, when the matter is important, we take others into our deliberations, distrusting our own capacity to decide.
And we deliberate not about ends, but about means. A doctor does not deliberate whether he is to cure his patient, nor an orator whether he is to convince his audience, nor a statesman whether he is to secure good government, nor does anyone else debate about the end of his profession or calling; they take some end for granted, and consider how and by what means it can be achieved. If they find that there are several means of achieving it, they proceed to consider which of these will attain it most easily and best. If there is only one means by which it can be accomplished, they ask how it is to be accomplished by that means, and by what means that means can itself be achieved, until they reach the first link in the chain of causes, which is the last in the order of discovery. (For when deliberating one seems in the procedure described to be pursuing an investigation or analysis that resembles the analysis of a figure in geometry Footnote 7The reference is to the analytical method of solving a problem: the figure required to be drawn is assumed to have been drawn, and then we analyse it and ask what conditions it implies, until we come down to something that we know how to draw already. —
indeed it appears that though not all investigation is deliberation, for example, mathematical investigation is not, yet all deliberation is investigation—and the last step in the analysis seems to be the first step in the execution of the design.)
Then, if they have come up against an impossibility, they abandon the project—for instance, if it requires money and money cannot be procured; but if on the other hand it proves to be something possible, they begin to act. By possible, I mean able to be performed by our agency—things we do through the agency of our friends counting in a sense as done by ourselves, since the origin of their action is in us.
(In practising an art Footnote 8This clause seems implied by the context. ) the question is at one moment what tools to use, and at another how to use them; and similarly in other spheres, we have to consider sometimes what means to employ, and sometimes how exactly given means are to be employed.
It appears therefore, as has been said, that a man is the origin of his actions, and that the province of deliberation is to discover actions within one’s own power to perform; and all our actions aim at ends other than themselves.
It follows that we do not deliberate about ends, but about means. Nor yet do we deliberate about particular facts, for instance, Is this object a loaf? or, Is this loaf properly baked? for these are matters of direct perception. Deliberation must stop at the particular fact, or it will embark on a process ad infinitum.
The object of deliberation and the object of choice are the same, except that when a thing is chosen it has already been determined, since it is the thing already selected as the result of our deliberation that is chosen. For a man stops enquiring how he shall act as soon as he has carried back the origin of action to himself, and to the dominant part Footnote 9i.e., the intellect or reason, which chooses a line of action for the individual, as the Homeric monarch chose a policy for his kingdom. of himself, for it is this part that chooses.
This maybe illustrated by the ancient constitutions represented in Homer: the kings used to proclaim to the people the measures they had chosen to adopt.
As then the object of choice is something within our power which after deliberation we desire, Choice will be a deliberate desire of things in our power; for we first deliberate, then select, and finally fix our desire according to the result of our deliberation.
Let this serve as a description in outline of Choice, and of the nature of its objects, and the fact that it deals with means to ends.