EleutherIA — Defined term

Eph’ Hemin (What is In Our Power)

τὸ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν

Classical Greek

To eph' hemin (τὸ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν, what is up to us) marks the range of actions that Aristotle connects with deliberation, voluntary action, praise, and blame. In Nicomachean Ethics III.5, 1113b6–14, he states that virtue and vice are up to us and gives a reciprocal relation between acting and not acting; 1114a–b then connects responsibility for character with earlier voluntary conduct. This does not by itself establish causally undetermined alternatives. Bobzien analyses Aristotle's usage as two-sided at a generic level while stressing that it entails neither determinism nor indeterminism, and contrasts it with a one-sided causative reconstruction of Stoic usage.

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