Book 2
3
Therefore the opposite is voluntary. It follows then that all the things that a man does not in ignorance, and through his own agency, when it is in his power not to do them, are voluntary acts, and it is in this that the voluntary consists; and all the things that he does in ignorance, and through being in ignorance, he does involuntarily.
4
But since to understand or know has two meanings, one being to have the knowledge and the other to use it, a man who has knowledge but is not using it would in one case be justly described as acting in ignorance but in another case unjustly— namely, if his non-employment of the knowledge were due to carelessness. And similarly one would be blamed for not having the knowledge, if it were something that was easy or necessary and his not having it is due to carelessness or pleasure or pain. These points therefore must be added to our definition.
4
Let this, then, be our mode of definitionPerhaps the Greek should be altered to give Let this be our decision. about the voluntary and involuntary.
1
Next let us speak about purposive choice,The term denotes not the deliberate choice of an object but the selection of means to attain an object: see 7. first raising various difficulties about it.For one might doubt to which class it naturally belongs and in what class it ought to be put, and whether the voluntary and the purposely chosen are different things or the same thing.
2
And a view specially put forward from some quarters, which on inquiry may seem correct, is that purposive choice is one of two things, either opinion or appetition; for both are seen to accompany it.
