Reason and Responsibility in Aristotle
T.H. Irwin
In Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle's Ethics
University of California Press, 1980

"Happiness is the ultimate end, and the proper object of a rational person's desire, because it is the achievement of everything that deserves to be achieved for its own sake, and is therefore the most complete of goods (1097a25-b21).... [W]e have reason to pursue happiness just because it is the ultimate end that includes everything that we have reason to choose for itself; when we understand this, we have a rational desire for happiness." (IRWIN-1980b, pp. 128-129)

"When Aristotle says that animals and children lack decision [PSA: commitment], he means that they cannot form deliberative desires reached by deliberation on their final good; they lack rational wish [PSA: the power to make resolutions], the desire belonging to the rational, deliberative part of the soul (DA 432b5-6, EE 1223a27-28)." (IRWIN-1980b, p. 129)

"Aristotle recognizes - indeed insists - that a state of character, once formed, does not depart overnight. It is not only a set of beliefs but also the result of training of nonrational desires - emotions, feelings, appetites, desire for pleasure, and rejection of pain - in a particular direction, so that they are attached to particular objects. These attachments, once formed, are hard to shift." (IRWIN-1980b, p. 141)

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