Euboulia

Euboulia is Aristotle's term for excellence in deliberation. We deliberate well when we arrive at the correct way to pursue something good for us. The Aristotelian text is at NE VI. ix.

The correct way to pursue a worthwhile objective is what we would call the best plan or strategy for doing so. Aristotle, unfortunately, does not say much about planning. His model of deliberation seems to be the simple practical syllogism, which says nothing at all about the correct way to pursue a given objective. Part of the problem, I suspect, is that plans are something we make or construct, and Aristotle is loathe to think of deliberation as an activity that aims to produce something. Yet deliberation is very much about constructing feasible plans. Or, if you wish to slice the decision process into different stages, deliberation is the ultimate (or penultimate) stage of the decision process which selects the best plan from among the alternatives that have been constructed. What we deliberate about when we deliberate are the plans that we have created. If we have created no alternative plans or strategies to pursue an objective, we have nothing to deliberate.

So this is our first basic dissent from Aristotle's notion of euboulia. Euboulia is essentially a productive and creative activity which explores many ways and finally selects the best. The product of delibertion is something physical real, a written plan of action like a home construction schedule incorporating the architect's designs. "Show me your plans" is a reasonable challenge for anyone who professes euboulia.

A second dissent from Aristotle's account of euboulia concerns his classing it as an intellectual excellence and not (as well and as much) an excellence of charcter. In the next book of the NE Aristotle will puzzle over the phenomemon of akrasia, the main species of which is abandoning a well deliberated course of action under emotional pressure or stress. How can this happen, he wonders, and his answer seems to speak about a forgetfulness of some key premise of the deliberation. We can agree that a plan we akratically desert was deficient or defective in some sense such that pressure from the passions could cause it to collapse. But that means that a plan that is subject to collapse was not well made. Akratic failure means the decision maker did not exhibit euboulia. Euboulia does not produce plans that fail to weather predictible emotional stresses.

What Aristotle's account of euboulia completely misses is the key stage in the decision process in which the decision maker anticipates the emotional resistance his best choice may/will provoke and deals with it. Emotion reacts to the costs and risks associated with a plan. Are these under control? Are these acceptable given the importance of what is being pursued? The best plan for achieving some objective is not a plan we should commit to if we have not taken the time to reflect upon what we must put at risk to implement this plan. If we are not sure we should take these risks or that we can cope with them, then we should not proceed. If we doanyway, akratic desertion is all too likely outcome.

For this reason I consider euboulia also an excellence of character, for it necessarily involves a kind of training in toughness to resist fears and desires and other passions. If we do not have the toughness (karteria) to overmaster the fears and temptations that a plan may provoke, that plan is not feasible or practicable for us, whatever other skills and resources we possess in abundance.