because they have no universal
judgement but only imagination and memory of particulars.
The explanation of how the ignorance is dissolved and the
incontinent man regains his knowledge, is the same as in the case of
the man drunk or asleep and is not peculiar to this condition; we must
go to the students of natural science for it. Now, the last premiss
both being an opinion about a perceptible object, and being what
determines our actions this a man either has not when he is in the
state of passion, or has it in the sense in which having knowledge did
not mean knowing but only talking, as a drunken man may utter the
verses of Empedocles. And because the last term is not universal nor
equally an object of scientific knowledge with the universal term, the
position that Socrates sought to establish actually seems to result;
for it is not in the presence of what is thought to be knowledge
proper that the affection of incontinence arises (nor is it this
that is 'dragged about' as a result of the state of passion), but in
that of perceptual knowledge.
This must suffice as our answer to the question of action with and
without knowledge, and how it is possible to behave incontinently with
knowledge.
4
(2) We must next discuss whether there is any one who is incontinent
without qualification, or all men who are incontinent are so in a
particular sense, and if there is, with what sort of objects he is
concerned.
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