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This is a preprint. an uncontroversial description of it. 5 In general, appetite and spirit are desires that are aroused by perceiving something in a pleasant or painful way. They belong to the perceptual faculty (DA 431a8-14) and arise in the non-rational part or aspect of the soul (ἐν τῷ ἀλόγῳ at DA 432b5). Although human non-rational desires are rational in a way since they can listen to reason and even be, in some way, persuaded by it (EN 1102b29-1103a4), they nevertheless remain to some extent independent of reason. It is their distinctive feature that one can come to desire something (i.e., come to have an appetite or a spirited desire for something) independently of whether one also believes or judges that one should desire it. 6 Wish, however, originates in the reasoning part or aspect (ἔν τῷ λογιστικῷ); and rather than being aroused by perception of pleasure, it is aroused by thinking or judging that something is good for oneself (EN 1113b23-27). It is thus a kind of desire that is not found among animals other than human beings since only the ability to think or judge things in terms of their goodness. 7 Since decisions result from wish and deliberation, they are based solely rational cognition and rational volition, and are thus, to use Richard Sorabji's expression 'a rational thing'. 8 5 There is no universal consensus about, on the one hand, the extent and the way in which human perceptual cognition and non-rational volition (i.e., appetite and spirit) is integrated with rationality and, on the other hand, the extent and the way in which rational volition (i.e., wish) is or can be consistently thought to be, a genuine desire rather than, say, a mere preference. Consequently, there are controversies about the precise way in which one is supposed to understand Aristotle's claim that desire (or the desiderative faculty) is in some way unified (DA 433a21). For an overview of some of these controversies and problems,

I argue that, for Aristotle, virtue of character is a state of the non-rational part of the soul that makes one prone to making and acting on decisions in virtue of that part’s standing in the right relation to (correct) reason, namely, a relation that qualifies the agent as a true self-lover. In effect, this central feature of virtue of character is nothing else than love of practical wisdom. As I argue, it not only explains how reason can hold direct authority over non-rational desires but also why Aristotle defines virtue of character as hexis prohairetikē.

Why do human beings, on Aristotle’s view, have an innate tendency to badness, that is, to developing desires that go beyond and against their natural needs? Given Aristotle’s teleological assumptions (including the thesis that nature does nothing in vain), such tendency should not be present. I argue that the culprit is to be found in the workings of rationality, in particular in the (necessary) presence of theoretical reason. As theoretical reason requires that human beings have unlimited non-rational desires for the fine (to kalon), it also gives rise to a tendency to form unlimited non-rational desires for other things.

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