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.So if the determinate is of the nature of the good , of the good bynature, then the determinate qualifies whatever possesses it as pleasant as well.(Aristotle s example of the indeterminate is a bad, corrupted, or pain-wrackedlife: 1170a22 24.)Aristotle sees a constitutional relation between the determinate, on the onehand, and the good and the pleasant, on the other.We have just seen thathe holds the entailment in the one direction, the determinate being good andpleasant.We find the opposite direction in his discussion of the opinions ofthe Academics.The question at issue is whether the good and pleasure aredeterminate.The Academics accept that the good is determinate, but raise anobjection to the claim that pleasure is determinate.Aristotle s first response isto disambiguate their argument by separating being pleased from pleasure.Hefirst runs their argument and then responds to it, assuming that they have beingpleased in mind:[T]hey say that the good is determinate, whereas pleasure is indeterminate, because itadmits of more or less.Now if they reach this judgement by considering being pleased,the same will hold of justice and of the other excellences qualities of which thesethinkers openly say that the persons qualified by them are more so or less so, and actmore in accordance with the excellences, or less: people can be just to a greater degree,or courageous, and they can also perform just acts or behave moderately to a greater orlesser degree.(1173a15 22) Pleasure, Good, and Truth 253The conclusion that the Academics aim for is that pleasure is indeterminate.Their argument for this is that being pleased admits of more or less.Aristotleobjects that if this argument works, then, by the same token, justice and theother excellences are also indeterminate.For the possession of justice and the otherexcellences admits of more or less: obviously people can be just, or courageous, toa greater or lesser degree.Again, people can act more or less in accordance withthe excellences: obviously people can perform acts which are just or temperateto a greater or lesser degree.If pleasure is shown to admit of more and less, andso to be indeterminate, by the indisputable fact that people s instantiation orpossession of pleasure admits of more or less, then the same is shown of justiceby the indisputable fact that people s instantiation or possession of justice, too,admits of more or less.But both the Academics and Aristotle reject the idea thatjustice and the other excellences are indeterminate; Aristotle would consider itan absurdity.Therefore, there is no valid inference from conclusions about beingpleased to conclusions about pleasure; and so the Academics argument does notshow that pleasure is indeterminate.Next Aristotle develops his own position, using the Academics argument as aspringboard.Suppose that the Academics tried, instead, to show that pleasure isindeterminate by arguing from pleasure, not from being pleased:But if the judgement in question [that pleasure is indeterminate] refers to the pleasures [sc.to what a pleasure is, not to being pleased], they are perhaps failing to give the explanation;that is, if some pleasures are unmixed while others are mixed.And why should pleasurenot be in the same case as health, which while being determinate nevertheless admits ofmore and less? For the same kind of balance does not exist in everyone, nor is there alwayssome single balance in the same person, but even while it is giving way it continues to bepresent up to a certain point, so differing in terms of more and less.The case of pleasuretoo, then, may be of this sort.(1173a22 29)Aristotle s position is that pleasure is determinate and admits of more and less.That it is determinate can be clearly seen when the pleasures are unmixed; thatthey admit of more and less becomes clear when they are mixed.Like health,pleasures can differ in kind between different people, but even in the sameperson.They differ in balance-type, or qualitatively as they deteriorate away.The key idea that allows Aristotle to say both that pleasure is determinate, andthat it admits of more and less, is the idea that there is variation in what counts aspleasure.Compare what he says about health
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