Aristotle and the Law: Forethought, Voluntary Action, and Action on Election

Abstract Aristotle believes that, since ethics is a practical discipline, we would waste our time if we described virtues that we cannot reasonably aim at. We can see that we are capable of acquiring virtue, if we examine legal practice, because it assumes that we are capable of doing good and bad actions and of being virtuous and vicious. The actions that legislators prescribe are those that are open to praise and blame, and these are voluntary actions. Athenian orators agree with Aristotle’s claim that voluntary actions are subject to praise and blame. But the explicit distinction that Athenian laws draw is a different distinction, between forethought (pronoia) and the lack of it. The conditions for acting from forethought, and hence being liable to punishment, are matters of controversy in Athenian forensic speeches. Similarly, it is difficult to draw a clear distinction between acting on forethought and acting on election ( prohairesis ). In his three ethical works Aristotle seeks to expound and to clarify the relevant distinctions by replacing the legal category of forethought with his category of the voluntary. He seeks to clarify claims about the relation of action on election to voluntary action, by presenting an improved account of election.