ABSTRACT
The discussion of emotions and other feelings was needed for two reasons: in so far as eudaimonia requires the exercise of our natural capacities kat’ arete¯n (‘in accordance with virtue’), we needed to form some conception of what it is to be functioning well on the level of emotions and desires. As I have already suggested, and as will appear more clearly in the present chapter, Aristotle suggests that a balanced emotional sensitivity is an important element which makes for good moral decision making. But he certainly does not think that moral decision making is simply an emotional response to situations. Moral decisions involve choices, made for reasons; and to speak of choice and reason is to speak of the exercise of an intellectual capacity. Aristotle believes that we can train ourselves in good moral decision making, just as we can train ourselves to have appropriate emotional responses to situations. So he has to examine what the intellectual ability to make good decisions, and hence good moral decisions, consists in. And, having done that, he then has to try to present an integrated account of how the intellectual and the emotional relate to one another in good moral decision making.
