Train Your Inner Child: Aristotle on Taming Desire with Reason
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle divides the human soul into two broad parts: the rational part and the irrational part. The rational part consists of two elements. It consists of science and the discovery of principle truths, and the other with wisdom applied in practical matters. The irrational part also consists of two elements. The first has to do with common desires such as the need to eat and grow and the other with personal desire and emotional appetite. However, the latter, the irrational part, can be taught to listen to reason as a child listens to a parent.
Both elements are essential to the pursuit of happiness. The intellectual virtue, which belongs to the rational part, consists of intelligence, wisdom, and refined skill. Obtaining moral virtue is possible when desire and emotional appetite are influenced by reason to feel pleasure and pain that produces courage, temperance, and justice. While morality in a general sense may, in part, be opposed to reason, moral virtue is the progression of the irrational part of the soul through rational guidance.
Aristotle illustrates the relationship with the analogy of a paralyzed limb: the body as a whole may command the hand to rise, but the hand does not obey because it is paralyzed. Similarly, in the continent or incontinent person, reason issues the correct command, but the appetites may oppose it. When the rational part is incontinent, the irrational desire acts independent of reason; in the continent person, it directs desire to strive toward a virtuous end. Only in the truly virtuous person does reason and appetite work in concert, aiming at a harmonious and content end.
Aristotle ultimately distinguishes two main classes of excellence:
1. Intellectual excellence, which belongs to the rational part and is developed through teaching and direction.
2. Moral excellence, which belongs to the irrational part and is developed primarily through learned experience and positive outcomes.
Neither class is complete without the other. For example- a person can be intellectually brilliant yet morally vicious (like a clever tyrant). While a morally well-intentioned person will act foolish and imprudent. True excellence requires both practical wisdom to deliberate correctly, and virtuous character to desire the right ends from the outset. The virtuous person is not someone who constantly suppresses appetite with cold reason; he or she is someone whose feelings have been so shaped that reason and desire work in concert.
Modern society, however, often exalts the purely rational—scientific knowledge, technical mastery, and instrumental reason—while neglecting or even scorning the formation of moral character. We treat human beings as if their highest function were to calculate efficiently rather than to live well. This one-sided rationalism forgets that reason achieves fulfilment only when it is integrated with a well-ordered soul, where the irrational part has been educated to love the noble and hate the base.
Where the irrational part is antiquated with respect to rational part, what makes us invaluable and human is instead, undervalued and inferior- one such example is our unalienable Rights. Another consequence is since the irrational part is detached from the rational, it allows us to harm ourselves without reflection and purpose.
The Canundrum of Empathy in Politics
Society values empathy, however, without rational guidance, empathy leads to apathy as it can encourage a person to identify with the plight of an individual as if it was oneself, consumed by appetite without the aid of the rational part preventing true individual correction. This leads to being consumed by an irrational feeling of helplessness (appetite) that further drives an emotional response. This further still leads to irrational decisions. Empathy introduces an impossible task as it requires one to fully understand the rational part of the affected individual primarily because our own rational part is constantly under development.
Politically, empathy also leads to justification of Illegal immigration while ignoring the close ties it has with the reinstitution of slavery and the very real and closely connected consequences on American citizens, American societies and communities, American heritage, and ultimately our grasp on not just the idea of Liberty, but the positive outcomes of Liberty- the Blessings of Liberty. Empathy is not only unnecessary to offer correction, but it can also be dangerous leading either to apathy or sympathy- in essence, empathy becomes the middleman disadvantaging the possibility that true sympathy will direct the actions that lead to self-governance. Sympathy, however, allows an individual to understand the plight of others and offers correction and encouragement based on self-reflection leading to self-governance. In essence, it allows the person being sympathized with to examine options and apply their own rational part to reconnect with the irrational part, which is the outcome constant progression leading to excellence and is a prerequisite to genuine liberty- the Blessings of Liberty.
Genuine Liberty and Political Power
Genuine liberty is not the mere absence of external constraint; it is the freedom to act in accordance with a soul that has integrated reason and character. Only such persons can deliberate together justly and prudently in political community. When moral experience is neglected, politics becomes either the domination of the clever over the weak, or the tyranny of unchecked appetites masquerading as popular will.
Therefore, political power must remain limited and dedicated to the cultivation of human excellence—both intellectual and moral—rather than becoming an instrument of pure technique or raw desire. A polity that forgets the need to form virtuous citizens will inevitably oppose the very liberty it claims to protect and value.
