Another — which Aristotle saves until last and elsewhere implies is the most difficult problem any human can ever face — is the loss of fine friends in whom you have invested effort, or especially the loss of children, through death. Yet, potentially, even people poorly endowed by nature or who have experienced terrible bereavements can live a good life.
Aristotle insists that individuals who want to treat others fairly need to love themselves. Friendships are important to the Aristotelian, and adopting virtue ethics need not disrupt your life.
We might be able to cope alone, but why would we ever choose isolation? Nor is it ever too late: you can decide to retrain yourself morally at any point in your life. Most appealing of all, Aristotle insists that individuals who want to treat others fairly need to love themselves.
There is no room for self-hatred, self-flagellation or self-deprivation in his humane system. Aristotle saw long before Sigmund Freud that our biological instincts are natural rather than morally despicable. This makes his ethics compatible with modern psychoanalysis. An innovative Aristotelian idea is that supposedly reprehensible emotions — even anger and vengefulness — are indispensable to a healthy psyche.
Sexual desire, since humans are animals, is excellent in proportion. Either excessive or insufficient sexual appetite is conducive to unhappiness.
Anger is also essential to a flourishing personality. Yet anger in excess or with the wrong people is a vice. There are no strict doctrines. Intention is always a crucial gauge of right behaviour: he writes penetratingly about the problems that arise when intended altruistic ends require immoral means. But every ethical situation is different. Aristotle thought that general principles are important, but without taking into account the specific circumstances, especially intention, general principles can mislead.
This is why he distrusted fixed penalties. Each dilemma requires detailed engagement with the nuts and bolts of its particulars. When it comes to ethics, the devil really can be in the detail. Politically speaking, a basic education in Aristotelianism could benefit humanity as a whole. Aristotle is positive about democracy, with which he finds fewer faults than other constitutions. Unlike his elitist tutor Plato, who was skeptical about the intelligence of the lower classes, Aristotle believed that the greatest experts on any given topic eg zoology, of which he is the acknowledged founding father are likely to be those who have accumulated experience of that topic eg farmers, bird-catchers, shepherds and fishermen , however low their social status; scholarship must be informed by what they say.
A ristotle was the first philosopher to make explicit the distinction between doing wrong by omission and by commission. Not doing something when it is right to do it can have just as bad effects as a misdemeanour. This vital ethical principle has ramifications for the way in which we assess public figures. We do ask whether politicians have ever slipped up.
But how often do we ask what they have not done with their power and influence to improve societal wellbeing? We do not ask enough what politicians, business leaders, presidents of universities and funding councils have failed to do, the initiatives that they have never launched, thus abnegating the duties of leadership.
Aristotle was also clear that rich people who do not use a significant proportion of their wealth to help others are unhappy because they are not acting according to the virtuous mean between fiscal irresponsibility and financial meanness.
But they are also guilty of injustice by omission. Aristotle is a utopian. At any rate, as Aristotle looks at the life of the conventional Greek gentleman, he sees that what is characteristic is the life of the mind - as we might say. This is what he takes to be the characteristic pattern of life for Homo Sapiens - the life of contemplation as he calls it. In the first part of today we are looking for more nuggets in Aristotle and what he says about how we should live, what happiness is and whether it is within everyone's grasp.
In the second part you are going to indulge me by allowing me to show you a loud piece of film. You remember I tried to argue that it does indeed make some kind of sense to speak of animals and plants - rhododendrons and frogs - as having 'natures', so why should it make sense for human beings, as sort of animals, to have a nature too?
Rhodos have a nature in this sense. They have genes, and it is their genes which set them up for a particular pattern of growth, a characteristic 'pattern of life'. So do frogs. We could say that today we think of an animal's nature as the information carried by the genes.
If so, I'm sorry to have to say that it isn't quite like nature posited by Aristotle. We can raise the question: maybe by manipulating the genes we can improve human nature.
But if 'good' consists in acting in accordance with your nature, the question of whether you might improve on nature can't be raised. A test case for our contemporary belief about whether things have natures is what we think about genetic manipulation - where you create a new animal say, by putting genes from different animals together not so far from the Frankenstein project.
Suppose such a manipulation were proposed. And suppose you concluded that it wouldn't cause any suffering: would you approve it? Would you disapprove of the creation of a cross between a pig and a cat on the grounds that you would be interfering with the nature of these two animals, or creating an animal with a new 'nature'.
I have suggested that Aristotle proposes the central importance of the idea of human nature, and holds that the good life lies in fulfilling one's nature as a human being. Yesterday we talked about virtues.
You kindly collaborated in drawing up a list of what we would identify as virtues today. The list is an interesting one. Could we take this just a stage further? I wonder if you would, each of you, just choose a shortlist of what you judge to be the most important virtues - the things most important to you judging what virtues a person has. Ring just five from the list as I have circulated it. Let me have the sheets at the end and I will let you know what they seem to be saying.
While you are doing that with the left half of your brain, let me put to you a further nugget from Aristotle on this business of virtues. He seems to have thought that every virtue was a sort of mid-way point between two extremes - his 'doctrine of the mean'. Think of a person being confronted with danger. He or she might run away. Or they might react over-aggressively, perhaps throwing their lives away when such a thing was disproportionate to the situation.
That is, a person might react in a cowardly way, or in a rash way. But as Tony Blair might agree, there is a third way: a middle way between these two extremes. It is the way of courage.
The trouble is, it's difficult to see how this works with other examples of virtues. We can perhaps see it sort of works with these, but if you try it with others you might find it unconvincing. You may agree with Thomas Carew, writing in , about mediocrity in love, and saying he for one wants the extremes - passionate love, or if not passionate love than passionate hate:. Give me more love, or more disdaine; The Torrid, or the frozen Zone, Bring equall ease unto my paine; The temperate affords me none: Either extreame, of love, or hate, Is sweeter than a calme estate.
Give me a storme; if it be love, Like Danae in that golden showre I swimme in pleasure; if it prove Disdaine, that torrent will devoure My Vulture-hopes; and he's possest Of Heaven, that's but from Hell releast: Then crowne my joyes, or cure my paine; Give me more love, or more disdaine.
We have Aristotle's answer to the question of what happiness consists in. It consists in 'activity of soul in accordance with virtue'. It is living according to the pattern of life which is characteristic of the human species, performing well those activities which make that pattern up. I say that happiness is not pleasure. But according to Aristotle it does yield pleasure. Acting according to the pattern that is characteristic of the human species, for a human being, is pleasurable.
The life of a virtuous person 'has no need of pleasure as a sort of adventitious charm, but has its pleasure in itself. Happiness does not reside in one action or another. Free newsletter: the hottest new books, features and more. Premium online access is only available to PW subscribers. If you have an active subscription and need to set up or change your password, please click here.
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Aristotle assumes that when someone systematically makes bad decisions about how to live his life, his failures are caused by psychological forces that are less than fully rational. His desires for pleasure, power or some other external goal have become so strong that they make him care too little or not at all about acting ethically. To keep such destructive inner forces at bay, we need to develop the proper habits and emotional responses when we are children, and to reflect intelligently on our aims when we are adults.
But some vulnerability to these disruptive forces is present even in more-or-less virtuous people; that is why even a good political community needs laws and the threat of punishment.
Clear thinking about the best goals of human life and the proper way to put them into practice is a rare achievement, because the human psyche is not a hospitable environment for the development of these insights. Defective states of character are hexeis plural of hexis as well, but they are tendencies to have inappropriate feelings. The significance of Aristotle's characterization of these states as hexeis is his decisive rejection of the thesis, found throughout Plato's early dialogues, that virtue is nothing but a kind of knowledge and vice nothing but a lack of knowledge.
Although Aristotle frequently draws analogies between the crafts and the virtues and similarly between physical health and eudaimonia , he insists that the virtues differ from the crafts and all branches of knowledge in that the former involve appropriate emotional responses and are not purely intellectual conditions. In this respect, Aristotle says, the virtues are no different from technical skills: every skilled worker knows how to avoid excess and deficiency, and is in a condition intermediate between two extremes.
The courageous person, for example, judges that some dangers are worth facing and others not, and experiences fear to a degree that is appropriate to his circumstances.
He lies between the coward, who flees every danger and experiences excessive fear, and the rash person, who judges every danger worth facing and experiences little or no fear. Aristotle holds that this same topography applies to every ethical virtue: all are located on a map that places the virtues between states of excess and deficiency. He is careful to add, however, that the mean is to be determined in a way that takes into account the particular circumstances of the individual a36—b7.
The arithmetic mean between 10 and 2 is 6, and this is so invariably, whatever is being counted. But the intermediate point that is chosen by an expert in any of the crafts will vary from one situation to another. There is no universal rule, for example, about how much food an athlete should eat, and it would be absurd to infer from the fact that 10 lbs. Finding the mean in any given situation is not a mechanical or thoughtless procedure, but requires a full and detailed acquaintance with the circumstances.
It should be evident that Aristotle's treatment of virtues as mean states endorses the idea that we should sometimes have strong feelings—when such feelings are called for by our situation. Sometimes only a small degree of anger is appropriate; but at other times, circumstances call for great anger. The right amount is not some quantity between zero and the highest possible level, but rather the amount, whatever it happens to be, that is proportionate to the seriousness of the situation.
Of course, Aristotle is committed to saying that anger should never reach the point at which it undermines reason; and this means that our passion should always fall short of the extreme point at which we would lose control. But it is possible to be very angry without going to this extreme, and Aristotle does not intend to deny this.
The theory of the mean is open to several objections, but before considering them, we should recognize that in fact there are two distinct theses each of which might be called a doctrine of the mean. First, there is the thesis that every virtue is a state that lies between two vices, one of excess and the other of deficiency.
Second, there is the idea that whenever a virtuous person chooses to perform a virtuous act, he can be described as aiming at an act that is in some way or other intermediate between alternatives that he rejects. It is this second thesis that is most likely to be found objectionable. A critic might concede that in some cases virtuous acts can be described in Aristotle's terms. If, for example, one is trying to decide how much to spend on a wedding present, one is looking for an amount that is neither excessive nor deficient.
But surely many other problems that confront a virtuous agent are not susceptible to this quantitative analysis. The objection, then, is that Aristotle's doctrine of the mean, taken as a doctrine about what the ethical agent does when he deliberates, is in many cases inapplicable or unilluminating.
A defense of Aristotle would have to say that the virtuous person does after all aim at a mean, if we allow for a broad enough notion of what sort of aiming is involved.
For example, consider a juror who must determine whether a defendant is guilty as charged. He does not have before his mind a quantitative question; he is trying to decide whether the accused committed the crime, and is not looking for some quantity of action intermediate between extremes. Nonetheless, an excellent juror can be described as someone who, in trying to arrive at the correct decision, seeks to express the right degree of concern for all relevant considerations. He searches for the verdict that results from a deliberative process that is neither overly credulous nor unduly skeptical.
Similarly, in facing situations that arouse anger, a virtuous agent must determine what action if any to take in response to an insult, and although this is not itself a quantitative question, his attempt to answer it properly requires him to have the right degree of concern for his standing as a member of the community. He aims at a mean in the sense that he looks for a response that avoids too much or too little attention to factors that must be taken into account in making a wise decision.
Perhaps a greater difficulty can be raised if we ask how Aristotle determines which emotions are governed by the doctrine of the mean. Consider someone who loves to wrestle, for example. Is this passion something that must be felt by every human being at appropriate times and to the right degree? Surely someone who never felt this emotion to any degree could still live a perfectly happy life. Why then should we not say the same about at least some of the emotions that Aristotle builds into his analysis of the ethically virtuous agent?
Why should we experience anger at all, or fear, or the degree of concern for wealth and honor that Aristotle commends? These are precisely the questions that were asked in antiquity by the Stoics, and they came to the conclusion that such common emotions as anger and fear are always inappropriate. Aristotle assumes, on the contrary, not simply that these common passions are sometimes appropriate, but that it is essential that every human being learn how to master them and experience them in the right way at the right times.
A defense of his position would have to show that the emotions that figure in his account of the virtues are valuable components of any well-lived human life, when they are experienced properly.
Perhaps such a project could be carried out, but Aristotle himself does not attempt to do so. This term indicates that Aristotle sees in ethical activity an attraction that is comparable to the beauty of well-crafted artifacts, including such artifacts as poetry, music, and drama. He draws this analogy in his discussion of the mean, when he says that every craft tries to produce a work from which nothing should be taken away and to which nothing further should be added b5— A craft product, when well designed and produced by a good craftsman, is not merely useful, but also has such elements as balance, proportion and harmony—for these are properties that help make it useful.
Similarly, Aristotle holds that a well-executed project that expresses the ethical virtues will not merely be advantageous but kalon as well—for the balance it strikes is part of what makes it advantageous.
The young person learning to acquire the virtues must develop a love of doing what is kalon and a strong aversion to its opposite—the aischron , the shameful and ugly. Determining what is kalon is difficult b28—33, a24—30 , and the normal human aversion to embracing difficulties helps account for the scarcity of virtue b10— It should be clear that neither the thesis that virtues lie between extremes nor the thesis that the good person aims at what is intermediate is intended as a procedure for making decisions.
These doctrines of the mean help show what is attractive about the virtues, and they also help systematize our understanding of which qualities are virtues. Once we see that temperance, courage, and other generally recognized characteristics are mean states, we are in a position to generalize and to identify other mean states as virtues, even though they are not qualities for which we have a name.
Aristotle remarks, for example, that the mean state with respect to anger has no name in Greek b26—7. Though he is guided to some degree by distinctions captured by ordinary terms, his methodology allows him to recognize states for which no names exist. So far from offering a decision procedure, Aristotle insists that this is something that no ethical theory can do.
His theory elucidates the nature of virtue, but what must be done on any particular occasion by a virtuous agent depends on the circumstances, and these vary so much from one occasion to another that there is no possibility of stating a series of rules, however complicated, that collectively solve every practical problem.
This feature of ethical theory is not unique; Aristotle thinks it applies to many crafts, such as medicine and navigation a7— Aristotle thinks of the good person as someone who is good at deliberation, and he describes deliberation as a process of rational inquiry.
The intermediate point that the good person tries to find is. A standard or measure is something that settles disputes; and because good people are so skilled at discovering the mean in difficult cases, their advice must be sought and heeded. Although there is no possibility of writing a book of rules, however long, that will serve as a complete guide to wise decision-making, it would be a mistake to attribute to Aristotle the opposite position, namely that every purported rule admits of exceptions, so that even a small rule-book that applies to a limited number of situations is an impossibility.
He makes it clear that certain emotions spite, shamelessness, envy and actions adultery, theft, murder are always wrong, regardless of the circumstances a8— Although he says that the names of these emotions and actions convey their wrongness, he should not be taken to mean that their wrongness derives from linguistic usage.
He defends the family as a social institution against the criticisms of Plato Politics II. He is not making the tautological claim that wrongful sexual activity is wrong, but the more specific and contentious point that marriages ought to be governed by a rule of strict fidelity. Similarly, when he says that murder and theft are always wrong, he does not mean that wrongful killing and taking are wrong, but that the current system of laws regarding these matters ought to be strictly enforced.
So, although Aristotle holds that ethics cannot be reduced to a system of rules, however complex, he insists that some rules are inviolable. We have seen that the decisions of a practically wise person are not mere intuitions, but can be justified by a chain of reasoning. This is why Aristotle often talks in term of a practical syllogism, with a major premise that identifies some good to be achieved, and a minor premise that locates the good in some present-to-hand situation.
At the same time, he is acutely aware of the fact that reasoning can always be traced back to a starting point that is not itself justified by further reasoning. Neither good theoretical reasoning nor good practical reasoning moves in a circle; true thinking always presupposes and progresses in linear fashion from proper starting points. And that leads him to ask for an account of how the proper starting points of reasoning are to be determined.
Practical reasoning always presupposes that one has some end, some goal one is trying to achieve; and the task of reasoning is to determine how that goal is to be accomplished. This need not be means-end reasoning in the conventional sense; if, for example, our goal is the just resolution of a conflict, we must determine what constitutes justice in these particular circumstances.
Here we are engaged in ethical inquiry, and are not asking a purely instrumental question. But if practical reasoning is correct only if it begins from a correct premise, what is it that insures the correctness of its starting point?
By this he cannot mean that there is no room for reasoning about our ultimate end. For as we have seen, he gives a reasoned defense of his conception of happiness as virtuous activity. What he must have in mind, when he says that virtue makes the goal right, is that deliberation typically proceeds from a goal that is far more specific than the goal of attaining happiness by acting virtuously. To be sure, there may be occasions when a good person approaches an ethical problem by beginning with the premise that happiness consists in virtuous activity.
But more often what happens is that a concrete goal presents itself as his starting point—helping a friend in need, or supporting a worthwhile civic project.
Which specific project we set for ourselves is determined by our character. A good person starts from worthwhile concrete ends because his habits and emotional orientation have given him the ability to recognize that such goals are within reach, here and now. Those who are defective in character may have the rational skill needed to achieve their ends—the skill Aristotle calls cleverness a23—8 —but often the ends they seek are worthless.
The cause of this deficiency lies not in some impairment in their capacity to reason—for we are assuming that they are normal in this respect—but in the training of their passions. Since Aristotle often calls attention to the imprecision of ethical theory see e. In every practical discipline, the expert aims at a mark and uses right reason to avoid the twin extremes of excess and deficiency. But what is this right reason, and by what standard horos is it to be determined?
Aristotle says that unless we answer that question, we will be none the wiser—just as a student of medicine will have failed to master his subject if he can only say that the right medicines to administer are the ones that are prescribed by medical expertise, but has no standard other than this b18— It is not easy to understand the point Aristotle is making here.
Has he not already told us that there can be no complete theoretical guide to ethics, that the best one can hope for is that in particular situations one's ethical habits and practical wisdom will help one determine what to do? Furthermore, Aristotle nowhere announces, in the remainder of Book VI, that we have achieved the greater degree of accuracy that he seems to be looking for.
Aristotle explains what each of these states of mind is, draws various contrasts among them, and takes up various questions that can be raised about their usefulness. Nor is it easy to see how his discussion of these five intellectual virtues can bring greater precision to the doctrine of the mean.
We can make some progress towards solving this problem if we remind ourselves that at the beginning of the Ethics , Aristotle describes his inquiry as an attempt to develop a better understanding of what our ultimate aim should be.
The sketchy answer he gives in Book I is that happiness consists in virtuous activity. In Books II through V, he describes the virtues of the part of the soul that is rational in that it can be attentive to reason, even though it is not capable of deliberating.
But precisely because these virtues are rational only in this derivative way, they are a less important component of our ultimate end than is the intellectual virtue—practical wisdom—with which they are integrated. If what we know about virtue is only what is said in Books II through V, then our grasp of our ultimate end is radically incomplete, because we still have not studied the intellectual virtue that enables us to reason well in any given situation.
One of the things, at least, towards which Aristotle is gesturing, as he begins Book VI, is practical wisdom. This state of mind has not yet been analyzed, and that is one reason why he complains that his account of our ultimate end is not yet clear enough.
But is practical wisdom the only ingredient of our ultimate end that has not yet been sufficiently discussed? Book VI discusses five intellectual virtues, not just practical wisdom, but it is clear that at least one of these—craft knowledge—is considered only in order to provide a contrast with the others. Aristotle is not recommending that his readers make this intellectual virtue part of their ultimate aim.
But what of the remaining three: science, intuitive understanding, and the virtue that combines them, theoretical wisdom? Are these present in Book VI only in order to provide a contrast with practical wisdom, or is Aristotle saying that these too must be components of our goal?
He does not fully address this issue, but it is evident from several of his remarks in Book VI that he takes theoretical wisdom to be a more valuable state of mind than practical wisdom.
It is strange if someone thinks that politics or practical wisdom is the most excellent kind of knowledge, unless man is the best thing in the cosmos. He says that theoretical wisdom produces happiness by being a part of virtue a3—6 , and that practical wisdom looks to the development of theoretical wisdom, and issues commands for its sake a8— So it is clear that exercising theoretical wisdom is a more important component of our ultimate goal than practical wisdom.
Even so, it may still seem perplexing that these two intellectual virtues, either separately or collectively, should somehow fill a gap in the doctrine of the mean. Having read Book VI and completed our study of what these two forms of wisdom are, how are we better able to succeed in finding the mean in particular situations? The answer to this question may be that Aristotle does not intend Book VI to provide a full answer to that question, but rather to serve as a prolegomenon to an answer.
For it is only near the end of Book X that he presents a full discussion of the relative merits of these two kinds of intellectual virtue, and comments on the different degrees to which each needs to be provided with resources. We will discuss these chapters more fully in section 10 below. One of his reasons for thinking that such a life is superior to the second-best kind of life—that of a political leader, someone who devotes himself to the exercise of practical rather than theoretical wisdom—is that it requires less external equipment a23—b7.
Aristotle has already made it clear in his discussion of the ethical virtues that someone who is greatly honored by his community and commands large financial resources is in a position to exercise a higher order of ethical virtue than is someone who receives few honors and has little property.
The virtue of magnificence is superior to mere liberality, and similarly greatness of soul is a higher excellence than the ordinary virtue that has to do with honor.
These qualities are discussed in IV. The grandest expression of ethical virtue requires great political power, because it is the political leader who is in a position to do the greatest amount of good for the community. The person who chooses to lead a political life, and who aims at the fullest expression of practical wisdom, has a standard for deciding what level of resources he needs: he should have friends, property, and honors in sufficient quantities to allow his practical wisdom to express itself without impediment.
But if one chooses instead the life of a philosopher, then one will look to a different standard—the fullest expression of theoretical wisdom—and one will need a smaller supply of these resources. This enables us to see how Aristotle's treatment of the intellectual virtues does give greater content and precision to the doctrine of the mean.
The best standard is the one adopted by the philosopher; the second-best is the one adopted by the political leader. In either case, it is the exercise of an intellectual virtue that provides a guideline for making important quantitative decisions. This supplement to the doctrine of the mean is fully compatible with Aristotle's thesis that no set of rules, no matter how long and detailed, obviates the need for deliberative and ethical virtue.
If one chooses the life of a philosopher, one should keep the level of one's resources high enough to secure the leisure necessary for such a life, but not so high that one's external equipment becomes a burden and a distraction rather than an aid to living well. That gives one a firmer idea of how to hit the mean, but it still leaves the details to be worked out. The philosopher will need to determine, in particular situations, where justice lies, how to spend wisely, when to meet or avoid a danger, and so on.
All of the normal difficulties of ethical life remain, and they can be solved only by means of a detailed understanding of the particulars of each situation. Having philosophy as one's ultimate aim does not put an end to the need for developing and exercising practical wisdom and the ethical virtues.
In VII. We began our discussion of these qualities in section 4. Like the akratic, an enkratic person experiences a feeling that is contrary to reason; but unlike the akratic, he acts in accordance with reason. His defect consists solely in the fact that, more than most people, he experiences passions that conflict with his rational choice. The akratic person has not only this defect, but has the further flaw that he gives in to feeling rather than reason more often than the average person.
Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of akrasia: impetuosity propeteia and weakness astheneia. The person who is weak goes through a process of deliberation and makes a choice; but rather than act in accordance with his reasoned choice, he acts under the influence of a passion. By contrast, the impetuous person does not go through a process of deliberation and does not make a reasoned choice; he simply acts under the influence of a passion.
At the time of action, the impetuous person experiences no internal conflict. But once his act has been completed, he regrets what he has done. One could say that he deliberates, if deliberation were something that post-dated rather than preceded action; but the thought process he goes through after he acts comes too late to save him from error.
It is important to bear in mind that when Aristotle talks about impetuosity and weakness, he is discussing chronic conditions. The impetuous person is someone who acts emotionally and fails to deliberate not just once or twice but with some frequency; he makes this error more than most people do.
Because of this pattern in his actions, we would be justified in saying of the impetuous person that had his passions not prevented him from doing so, he would have deliberated and chosen an action different from the one he did perform. The two kinds of passions that Aristotle focuses on, in his treatment of akrasia , are the appetite for pleasure and anger.
Either can lead to impetuosity and weakness. But Aristotle gives pride of place to the appetite for pleasure as the passion that undermines reason.
We thus have these four forms of akrasia : A impetuosity caused by pleasure, B impetuosity caused by anger, C weakness caused by pleasure D weakness caused by anger.
It should be noticed that Aristotle's treatment of akrasia is heavily influenced by Plato's tripartite division of the soul in the Republic. Plato holds that either the spirited part which houses anger, as well as other emotions or the appetitive part which houses the desire for physical pleasures can disrupt the dictates of reason and result in action contrary to reason.
The same threefold division of the soul can be seen in Aristotle's approach to this topic. Although Aristotle characterizes akrasia and enkrateia in terms of a conflict between reason and feeling, his detailed analysis of these states of mind shows that what takes place is best described in a more complicated way. For the feeling that undermines reason contains some thought, which may be implicitly general. Perhaps what he has in mind is that pleasure can operate in either way: it can prompt action unmediated by a general premise, or it can prompt us to act on such a syllogism.
By contrast, anger always moves us by presenting itself as a bit of general, although hasty, reasoning. But of course Aristotle does not mean that a conflicted person has more than one faculty of reason.
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