Hence these people are called
belly-gods, this implying that they fill their belly beyond what is
right. It is people of entirely slavish character that become like
this. But with regard to the pleasures peculiar to individuals many
people go wrong and in many ways. For while the people who are 'fond
of so and so' are so called because they delight either in the wrong
things, or more than most people do, or in the wrong way, the
self-indulgent exceed in all three ways; they both delight in some
things that they ought not to delight in (since they are hateful), and
if one ought to delight in some of the things they delight in, they do
so more than one ought and than most men do.
Plainly, then, excess with regard to pleasures is self-indulgence
and is culpable; with regard to pains one is not, as in the case of
courage, called temperate for facing them or self-indulgent for not
doing so, but the selfindulgent man is so called because he is
pained more than he ought at not getting pleasant things (even his
pain being caused by pleasure), and the temperate man is so called
because he is not pained at the absence of what is pleasant and at his
abstinence from it.
The self-indulgent man, then, craves for all pleasant things or
those that are most pleasant, and is led by his appetite to choose
these at the cost of everything else; hence he is pained both when
he fails to get them and when he is merely craving for them (for
appetite involves pain); but it seems absurd to be pained for the sake
of pleasure.
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