"There is a difference
between investigating and deliberating: to deliberate is to investigate a particular kind
of object. We must also try to grasp what excellence in deliberation is: whether it is
some sort of scientific knowledge, opinion, shrewd guessing, or something generically
different from any of these.
Now, scientific knowledge it is certainly not: people do not investigate matters
they already know. But good deliberation is a kind of deliberation, and when a person deliberates he is engaged in investigating and calculating [things not yet decided]. Nor
yet is it shrewd guessing. For shrewd guessing involves no reasoning and proceeds
quickly, whereas deliberation takes a long time. As the saying goes, the action which follows
deliberation should be quick, but deliberation itself should be slow. Furthermore,
quickness of mind is not the same as excellence in deliberation: quickness of mind is a
kind of shrewd guessing. Nor again is excellence in deliberation any form of opinion at
all. But since a person who deliberates badly makes mistakes, while he who deliberates
well deliberates correctly, it clearly follows that excellence in deliberation is some kind
of correctness. But it is correctness neither of scientific knowledge nor of opinion. There
cannot be correctness of scientific knowledge any more than there can be error of scientific
knowledge; and correctness of opinion is truth. Moreover, anything that is an object
of opinion is already fixed and determined, while deliberation deals with objects which
remain to be determined. Still, excellence in deliberation does involve reasoning, and we
are, consequently, left with the alternative that it is correctness of a process of thought;
for thinking is not yet an affirmation. For while opinion is no longer a process of investigation
but has reached the point of affirmation, a person who deliberates, whether he
does so well or badly, is still engaged in investigating and calculating something [not yet
determined].
Good deliberation is a kind of correctness of deliberation. We must, therefore,
first investigate what deliberation is and with what objects it is concerned. Since the
term “correctness” is used in several different senses, it is clear that not every kind of
correctness in deliberation [is excellence in deliberation]. For (1) a morally weak or
a bad man will, as a result of calculation, attain the goal which he has proposed to
himself as the right goal to attain. He will, therefore, have deliberated correctly, but
what he will get out of it will be a very bad thing. But the result of good deliberation
is generally regarded as a good thing. It is this kind of correctness of deliberation
which is good deliberation, a correctness that attains what is good.
But (2) it is also possible to attain something good by a false syllogism, i.e., to
arrive at the right action, but to arrive at it by the wrong means when the middle term is
false. Accordingly, this process, which makes us attain the right goal but not by the right
means, is still not good deliberation.
Moreover, (3) it is possible that one man attains his goal by deliberating for a long
time, while another does so quickly. Now, long deliberation, too, is not as such good
deliberation: excellence in deliberation is correctness in assessing what is beneficial,
i.e., correctness in assessing the goal, the manner, and the time.
Again, (4) it is possible for a person to have deliberated well either in general, in
an unqualified sense, or in relation to some particular end. Good deliberation in the
unqualified sense of course brings success in relation to what is, in an unqualified sense,
the end, [i.e., in relation to the good life]. Excellence in deliberation as directed toward
some particular end, however, brings success in the attainment of some particular end.
Thus we may conclude that, since it is a mark of men of practical wisdom to have
deliberated well, excellence in deliberation will be correctness in assessing what is conducive
to the end, concerning which practical wisdom gives a true conviction."
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