Kitap 3
5
Again, desire can run counter to choice, but not desire to desire.i.e., you cannot feel two contradictory desires at once (though you can of course desire two incompatible things: you may want to eat your cake and have it; but you cannot strictly speaking at the same time both desire to eat the cake and desire not to eat it). But you can desire to do a thing and choose not to do it. And desire has regard to an object as pleasant or painful, choice has not.But as good or bad.
6
(2) Still less is choice the same as passion. Acts done from passion seem very far from being done of deliberate choice.
7
(3) Again, choice is certainly not a wish, though they appear closely akin. Choice cannot have for its object impossibilities: if a man were to say he chose something impossible he would be thought a fool; but we can wish for things that are impossible, for instance immortality.
8
Also we may wish for what cannot be secured by our own agency, for instance, that a particular actorGreek dramas were produced in competitions (and it is noteworthy that in the Old Comedy at Athens the play itself dramatized a contest or debate). or athlete may win; but no one chooses what does not rest with himself, but only what he thinks can be attained by his own act.
9
Again, we wish rather for ends than for means, but choose the means to our end; for example we wish to be healthy, but choose things to make us healthy; we wish to be happy, and that is the word we use in this connection, but it would not be proper to say that we choose to be happy; since, speaking generally, choice seems to be concerned with things within our own control.
10
(4) Nor yet again can it be opinion. It seems that anything may be matter of opinion—we form opinions about what is eternal,Cf. 3.3 and note. or impossible, just as much as about what is within our power. Also we distinguish opinion by its truth or falsehood, not by its being good or bad, but choice is distinguished rather as being good or bad.
