GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

Il6 BTHICS AND POLITICS: THE GREEKS
just as truly as the contrary act of self-indulgence, will be
an expression of obedience to whatever happens to be
our strongest instinctive drive to action at die moment
Hence, whatever the resultant action may be, it must be
interpreted as the result of a conflict between two instinctive
drives, a conflict in which the stronger will in*
cvitably win.
The truth of this analysis has, say the psycho-analysts,
been obscured by the use of ambiguous phrases such as
self-control and self-denial. These phrases suggest that in
controlling a desire, I am in some unexplained way acting
in defiance of my nature. But it is only by drawing upon
my own natural forces that I can defy my nature* If it
were not natural for me to restrain my desire, I could not
restrain it, so that in self-denial and self-control I am being
just as truly self-indulgent as in an indiscriminate yielding
to purely self-regarding desires.
Summing up, we may say that, if the view that the basis
of all action is instinctive or impulsive, that, in other words,
it is non-rational, is correct, the use of the will to repress
desire is only a sublimated version of an instinctive drive
to suppress a desire which we instinctively feel to be
inimical to the good of the whole. If we desire to pass
an examination, we will to suppress a desire to go to the
cinema when we ought to be studying. But the will in .this
case is simply the expression, more or less disguised, of the
desire to pass the examination, for which we are no more
responsible than for the desire to go to the cinema.
Circularity of Aristotle's Arguments. Now it is possible
that this account of the springs of human conduct
may be true; reasonably certain, that it contains at least
some elements of truth. That it is entirely true, I do not
believe, 1
although I readily concede its plausibility.
My present concern is to insist that, if true, it is fatal to
the notion offreedom; and if fatal to die notion of freedom,
1 In Chapter VII, pjx 267-271 I have suggested reuons for not
accepting this view in its entirety*