Kitap 7
3
But of those who exceed in relation to the bodily enjoyments with regard to which we speak of men as temperate or profligate, he who pursues excessive pleasure, and avoids the extremesProbably this should be amended to moderate bodily pains, cf. 4.4. of bodily pains such as hunger, heat, cold, and the various pains of touch and taste, not from choice but against his own choice and reason, is described as unrestrained not with a qualification—unrestrained as regards these pleasures and pains—as is one who yields to anger, but just simply as unrestrained.
4
(A proof that unrestrained unqualified denotes unrestraint as regards bodily pleasures and pains, is that we speak of men as soft who yield to these, but not those who yield to anger or the like.) And hence we class the unrestrained man with the profligate (and the self-restrained with the temperate)This parenthesis may be an interpolation. , but not those who yield to anger or the like, because Unrestraint and Profligacy are related to the same pleasures and pains. But as a matter of fact, although they are related to the same things, they are not related to them in the same way; the profligate acts from choice, the unrestrained man does not. Hence we should pronounce a man who pursues excessive pleasures and avoids moderate pains when he feels only weak desires or none at all, to be more profligate than one who does so owing to intense desires; for what would the former do if he possessed the ardent desires of youth, and felt violent pain when debarred from the necessary pleasures?
