Abstract Scholars disagree about how to understand Aristotle’s account of the vicious person. Some argue that he allows the vicious agent internal harmony and principled action; others maintain that vice entails disorder, conflict, and the absence of genuine commitment to a unified conception of the good. This debate turns on an apparent inconsistency in Aristotle’s claims. In Nicomachean Ethics VII, he describes the intemperate person as regretless and motivationally consistent; in NE IX.4, he describes the base person as regretful and motivationally conflicted. I argue that there is no inconsistency because Aristotle is an experiential pluralist about vice: he allows that different vicious people can have different psychological experiences. An agent’s psychological experience depends on how she evaluates her own character. This interpretation reveals that Aristotle denies that internal disunity and motivational conflict are essential to vice. In this, his position marks a sharp departure from that of Plato for whom conflict and disorder are essential to vice.
Sadie McCloud (2026) studied this question.