Voluntary Actions
Exploring the territory of choice
WE ARE BACK! HELL YEAH!
This is a popular rendition of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics for contemporary readers. Brief, understandable pieces with a short practice to integrate the wisdom into your life. No philosophical background necessary.
Based on Book 3 Chapters 1-5 of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle.
We don’t deserve praise or blame when things happen to us. Rather, it is in the voluntary actions that we take that we are either virtuous or vicious.
Therefore, if we are examining virtue, we need to define the voluntary and the involuntary.
If someone controls nothing in a situation and is forced by some external force, there is no doubt that it is involuntary. For example, we aren’t at fault if someone pushed us into a vase and it fell and broke. Even if it’s a really expensive vase. Alternatively, if the action’s source is from the individual and is done with full awareness it is voluntary. Even if it's just a cheap vase.
Sounds obvious, right?
But it’s not so simple.
Are things done in fear of greater harm voluntary or involuntary? For example, if a tyrant should order you to do something shameful (like picking your nose in public and then licking the same finger) while threatening your parents and offspring (with face tattoos) if you fail to comply, would your action be voluntary?
Another case: casting off cargo in a storm to lighten the ship's load. In one sense, no one would ever do so voluntarily, but when one’s own life and the lives of others are at stake anyone with sense would do so1. These are mixed cases, where in one sense (the action itself) is voluntary, but in another one (being placed in such a situation where these are the only options) is not voluntary.
These mixed cases can give themselves to even more complex layering.
Imagine you live in a city with a despicable tyrant, notorious for coercing people with terrible threats of imprisonment if they don’t do his rotten bidding. You have a choice to leave, but for reasons of comfort and ease decide to take the risk that you won’t be the one subject to his wicked whims. You were wrong, and now, you’re being commanded to do shameful things, with a terrible price to pay if you fail to do so.
There are analogous situations in corporate jobs, so I’m told.
Either way, this is also a case of mixed voluntary and involuntary action. You voluntarily chose to be under this tyrant's rule, you involuntarily were placed in a terrible dilemma, and you will voluntarily choose one of the choices there.
There’s something radically important to be gleaned here. Since all virtue lies in voluntary action, we have an imperative to make sure that we are as much as possible not placed in these mixed circumstances. A virtuous person will be deliberate in keeping away from circumstances where they will have to choose the lesser of two evils, and chase after those where they can unqualifiedly choose the best good.
It’s not enough to just read.
Manifest this wisdom in your life by doing this practice, or it will slip through your fingers.
It takes less than 5 minutes.
Choose well.
Practice:
Identify the space where you are most voluntary in your actions
Identify the space where you are most involuntary in your actions
What is one thing you can do to make the involuntary space more voluntary? (If it helps, pretend a friend is asking you for advice on this question)
This does not work if there is turbulence on an airplane. Please don’t do this, even if you are sitting next to the emergency exit door. That’s not how planes work. You will get into a lot of trouble if you do this, and probably won’t be allowed on planes in the future. The least of your problems will be that you threw someone’s carry-on into the Atlantic ocean from 35,000 feet up.