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ARISTOTLE'S MORALS AND POLITICS 113
Aristotle's theory reduces itself. Aristotte tries to escape
its implications by insisting that "a man is somehow
responsible for his moral state; he is somehow responsible
for what appears good to him". If he is not, then, Aristotle
agrees, "virtue is no more voluntary than vice, each man's
end being determined for him, not by choice but by
nature or in some other way".
But this does not really help matters, for we want
to know in what sense a man is "responsible for his moral
state", since his moral state is formed by
his actions.
Modem Version of Self-Determinism. Self-Determinism
is a theory widely held at the present time. It
has been developed by modern psychologists and is the
basis, usually unavowed, of the conception of human
nature invoked by psycho-analysis. So developed, it
perhaps
the most formidable body of argument that those who
constitutes, as I shall try in a later chapter to show, l
believe in free will have to face, and it is worth while
pausing for a moment to consider what precisely in its
modern form it asserts, and what are the grounds on
which it bases its assertions. Let us take as typical of this
school of thought the views of Freud.
Freud holds that the origin and explanation of all
oonscious events is to be found in the unconscious. Our
conscious thoughts and desires are, therefore, the reflections
more or less distorted and more or leqs sublimated
of unconscious elements in our nature. We do not know
if we did it would not
what is going on in the .unconscious;
be unconscious, but, in respect of our knowledge of it,
conscious;
therefore we cannot control it.
If we do not know it and cannot control it, we are not
responsible for it; therefore we are not responsible for the
particular version of it that appears in consciousness. In
other words, we are not responsible for our thoughts and
desires. Our thoughts determine what we think, our
desires what we do. If, in short, consciousness is rightly
1 See Chapter VII, pp. 237-244.