Choice and Deliberation: On the προαίρεσις

Abstract

The article considers the question of understanding the choice and deliberation within the ethical teaching based on the concepts of self-sufficient act and the subject of morality as its origin. Aristotle’s ethics is exactly such a theory, and the article analyses the fragments from “Nicomachean Ethics” crucial for the understanding of προαίρεσις. Aristotle makes an attempt to describe theoretically the point of transition from the human activity “for the sake of something else” to the acts of the doer making choice “for the sake of the acts themselves”. Within this philosophical task he introduces a concept of προαίρεσις (choice) and deliberation as leading the origin of the act to oneself. This choice does not mean choosing between something, but it is only the choice of self-sufficient acting. Neither the choice, nor the deliberation is the conclusion or deduction from any knowledge, as well as they do not have any form of knowledge, but are given in the actuality of an act. Deliberation as leading the origin of an act to the ruling part of a person and the choice for the sake of the act itself, so to speak, abolish the world based on the cause-effect relationship and means-ends connection: the combined thing of deliberation and choice is what man is doing in the act himself which is being of yourself. Neither the reasoning on the rightness of the act, nor the desire of an end are sufficient for the act; Aristotle puts προαίρεσις as an efficient, moving origin between them and the act.Deliberation and the choice are performative that is they are equal to their givenness in the act. They are not mediated by either time, or circumstances, or the actor. Even more: προαίρεσις is the man himself and a virtuous man is the one choosing for the sake of the act itself.