‘Thought’ and ‘feeling’: the two terms aptly capture a contrast and a connection that lie at the heart of Aristotle’s moral psychology. Together they define the focus of a book that may serve the novice as a lucid introduction, and the expert as a reminder of the richness of relevant material. Though Aristotle’s tone is rarely one of hesitancy, his conception is ambivalent, and it is good to be alerted to the inescapability of uncertainty. Paula Gottlieb valuably deploys and discusses texts that are all pertinent, but not all equally familiar.
The reader who comes fresh to Nicomachean Ethics 1.13 (hereafter cited as NE) may receive a more straightforward impression. Here reason stands to desire as a Victorian father to his children: as Gottlieb observes, “The terminology of obeying can be taken to herald a Kantian style view of motivation, where thinking lords it over desiring and feeling” (15)....
