From the archive of Samuel Kelton Roberts, Sr., PhD (1 Sept Feb. 2015). Aristotle and Virtue

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1 From the archive of Samuel Kelton Roberts, Sr., PhD (1 Sept Feb. 2015). Aristotle and Virtue Besides Plato/Socrates, the other truly great voice among the ancient Greeks who commented upon and sought to clarify virtue was Aristotle. Aristotle s treatment of virtue is presented in his acclaimed Nicomachean Ethics, a treatise that he wrote for his son, Nicomachus. But Aristotle differs greatly in his approach to ethics, his judgments and his overall method from his teacher Plato. We must always bear in mind that Plato s theory of Forms was of course, not espoused by Aristotle. For Plato, the moral life was shaping one s life according to such ideals. Without the existence of an absolute Good, morality would have no certain basis, and so for Plato ethics was derived from metaphysics. Whereas Plato believed that our notions of the world around us and the ideas we have come from these abstract eternal Forms, Aristotle held almost the reverse: that ideas are derived from the sensations and impressions from the world around us; ideas for Aristotle are the reflection of things around us. While Plato believed that reality was the world of eternal forms perceived by the intellect, Aristotle believed that reality was the perceptible world of concrete things around us. It was the difference between concrete reality and abstract reality. The Theory of the Forms seemed to Aristotle both unverifiable but also open to many logical errors. Moreover, the moral life is not shaping that life according to abstract ideals, but rather the realization of the ends potential within one s nature as a human being. To counter Plato s theory of the Forms, Aristotle posited his doctrine of categories. Things can be said to be in many ways. A tall white horse is in one sense tall, in another sense white, and in another sense a horse. Yet these different ways of being are not equivalent in ontological status, for the tallness and whiteness of the horse depend for their existence entirely on the primary reality of the particular horse. The horse is substantial in its reality in a way that the adjectives describing it are not. To distinguish between these different ways of being, Aristotle introduced the notion of categories: the particular horse is a substance, which constitutes one category; its whiteness is a quality, which constitutes another category altogether. The substance is the primary reality, upon which the quality depends for its existence. Among the ten categories substance, quantity, quality, relation, place time, position, state, action, and affection only substance ( this horse signifies concrete independent existence, while the others quality ( white ) quantity ( tall ), relation ( faster ), and the rest are derivative ways of being in that they exist solely relative to an individual substance. A substance is ontologically primary, while the various other types of being that may be predicated of it are derivative. Substances underlie and are the subjects of everything else. If substances did not exist, nothing would exist. For Aristotle, the real world is one of individual substances which are distinct and separate from each other, yet which are characterized by qualities or other types of being held in common with other individual substances. This commonality, however, does not signify the existence of a transcendent Idea from which the common quality is derived.

2 The common quality is a universal recognizable by the intellect in sensible things, but it is not a self-subsistent entity. The universal is conceptually distinguishable from the concrete individual, but is not ontologically independent. It is not itself a substance. Plato had taught that things like whiteness and tallness possessed an existence independent of any concrete things in which they might appear, but for Aristotle that doctrine was untenable. The error, he held, lay in Plato s confusion of categories, whereby he treated a quality, for example, as a substance. Many things can be beautiful, but that does not mean there is a transcendent Idea of the Beautiful. Beauty exists only if at some point a concrete substance is beautiful. [But then, the Platonist would counter had say how would we even know and how could we agree that we had found a thing called Beauty in individual substances, unless we had access through our intellects of some prior independent Idea called Beauty] So, by replacing Plato s Ideas with universals, common qualities that the mind could grasp in the empirical world, but that did not exist independently of that world, Aristotle turned Plato s ontology upside down. For Plato, the particular was less real, a derivative of the universal; for Aristotle, the universal was less real, a derivative of the particular. Universals were necessary for knowledge, but they did not exist as selfsubsistent entities in a transcendent realm. Plato s Ideas were for Aristotle an unnecessary idealist duplication of the real world of everyday experience, and a logical error. But Aristotle did not completely discard Plato s idea of the form, but he reworked the concept in a radically different way. A substance, Aristotle concluded, is not simply a unit of matter, but is an intelligible structure or form (eidos) embodied in matter. Although the form is entirely immanent, and does not exist independently of its material embodiment, it is the form that gives to the substance its distinctive essence. Thus a substance is not only this man or this horse in simple contrast to its qualities and other categories, for what makes these substances what they are is their specific composition of matter and form i.e., the fact that their material substance has been structured by the form of a man or a horse. Yet form for Aristotle was not static, and it was especially here that Aristotle both sustained certain elements of Plato s philosophy and added a fundamentally new dimension. For in Aristotle s view, form gives to a substance not only its essential structure but also its developmental dynamic. Organic biology, rather than abstract mathematics, was Aristotle s characteristic science, and in lieu of Plato s static ideal reality Aristotle brought a more pronounced recognition of nature s processes of growth and development, with each organism striving to move from imperfection to perfection: from a state of potentiality to a state of actuality, or realization of its form. While Plato emphasized the imperfection of all natural things compared with the Forms they imitated, Aristotle taught that an organism moves from an imperfect or immature condition in a teleological development toward achievement of a full maturity in which its inherent form is actualized: the seed is transformed into a plant, the embryo becomes the child, the child becomes the adult, and so on. The form is an intrinsic principle of operation that is implicit in the organism from the latter s inception, as the form of the oak is implicit in the acorn. 2

3 [But there is one respect in which Plato and Aristotle are very much in agreement. Aristotle affirms that moral virtue consists in the rational control of the irrational desires and appetites of the soul, but they differed radically on how wisdom and rational thought are derived and developed and how wisdom relates to the moral life. For Aristotle, these virtues courage, temperance, justice, self-respect, liberality are developed by practice until they are established as habits. We become just, Aristotle says, by doing just acts. The major difference between Plato and Aristotle is that the latter does not believe that wisdom alone can be the foundation for virtue; to know the good will not necessarily eventuate in a person doing the good. Socrates was mistaken, believed Aristotle, in claiming that virtue was knowledge and wisdom, that to know the good is to do the good. Aristotle argued that knowledge of the good can affect our conduct only if it is practiced so that it becomes a habit]. Let us work our way through the Nicomachean Ethics and see the outlines of Aristotle s views about virtue and the virtues. We shall be looking primarily at Books I, II, III, and VII. Chap. 1 Book I It is precisely this teleological orientation of Aristotle s philosophy that forms the backdrop for the beginning of the NE. He begins by establishing his teleological foundation for all action. He says, every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. (1094a). Chap. 2 If everything chosen is desired as a means to some further end, and to this chain of means there is no final end desirable for its own sake, all desire will be ultimately futile; there will be no end to it. But if we can discover a final end for such a chain of ends as means, then we will have found the good. This could be the Holy Grail of human activity: Will not the knowledge of it [the good], then, have a great influence on life? One plausible possibility would be the realm of politics after all, politics ordains which of the sciences should be studied in a state. 3 4 Virtually everybody, says Aristotle, say that the highest of all goods is happiness, or eudaimonia, and what we mean by this is a condition of flourishing or living well. But 3

4 there is some question as to what happiness consists in and therefore, what the good life is which would realize happiness for a human being.] In another slap at Plato, Aristotle affirms that we must begin with things familiar to us. We, who are creatures who are human, must be the starting point as our First Principle unlike Plato who started with an abstract Ideal. 5 Let s resume our discussion. There are some dubious assertions about that which yields happiness. Most men, even the vulgar type, would equate the good, or happiness, with pleasure. Still others, the political life or the contemplative life. Others would say honor Others affirm that honor as the end of the public life; while still others believe that a life devoted to making money; while still others hold that a life of the mind, of thinking constitutes the best human life. The problem with honor is that one is dependent on others to enjoy this good. The problem with money is that people undertake this kind of life under compulsion. Besides, money is only a good to get something else. 6 In a continuing slap at the Platonist theory of Forms, Aristotle affirms that the good we are seeking must be something that is attainable by human beings, not some abstract Ideal. we are now seeking something attainable. (1096b 5) For having this as a sort of pattern we shall know better the goods that are good for us Some with hohappiness is not an intermediate end; it is an end in and of itself. (1097b1) [Now, comes the question: what is the good which serves as the final end in human life that for the sake of which we want anything else we want, which we never desire for the sake of getting something else, and which, if we had it, would be so self-sufficient we would want nothing further? This is the human good.] 7 Now, returning to the kind of good we are seeking. Surely the good is that for whose sake everything else is done. Therefore, if there is an end for all that we do, this will be the good achievable by action, and if there are more than one, these will be the goods achievable by action. All of this implies that the chief good must be complete; it must be an end in and of itself, not a means toward another good. This good must be self-sufficient. (1097b 8) 4

5 Now if we seek to ascertain what is good for human beings we must first understand the function of man. The good of anything or anybody, particularly a craftsperson, resides in its or his function, e.g., a good weaver. Now, at this point Aristotle suggests that in searching for the human good, we must ask whether human beings have a distinctive function; for in the case of anything which does have such a function, its virtue or excellence consists in its performing that function well and to do so is the good for that subject, the activity in which it flourishes. The hand or the eye has a function, and being a good hand or eye is a matter of performing its function well. But what flourishes in that condition seems to be the whole body of the organism to which this particular function makes a contribution. The carpenter or shoemaker has a function, and being a good carpenter or shoemaker is a matter of performing well the work of the carpenter or the shoemaker well; but what flourishes in that condition seems to be the whole community that benefits from this division of labor or arts. If the human being did have a function, being a good human being would be a mater of performing it well; but is there some whole, equivalent to the community of arts or the organic body, which would flourish in that condition, and if so, how would this help us understand the good for the human being? In the first place, assuming that there is a human function, what would it be, he continues to ask. Human life does involve, we must assert, certain biological processes like breathing, eating digesting, eliminating, etc. But these are common to all living beings and, therefore, not distinctively human. Humans have the capacity for sensation and feeling pleasure or pain; but this is common to all animals and so again are not the uniquely human function. What remains, according to Aristotle, is some kind of practice using language and reason we alone do that. If this were the distinctive human function, performing it well would be the virtue or excellence of a human being. This would seem to suggests that speaking and reasoning well would be the mark of an excellent human being. But analogous to the models of the community of arts and the organic body, there should be some kind of cosmos of the living to which this distinctive human function makes a particular contribution, and which flourishes when the human being functions well, just as the community flourishes when a carpenter makes the contribution of his labor to that community. What we wanted to know, however, was the good for the human being. Is there, then, a part of the human being which performs the distinctive human of exercising logos or reason, so that the human being flourishes when it does it well? Humans, unlike plants and animals, can conduct lives according to what he calls a rational principle. (1098a4) Thus, the function of man is an activity of soul in accordance with rational principle. The human good, therefore, turns out to be the activity of soul in conformity with excellence, over the duration of a life, not just one day or so, for one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day, or a short time, make a man blessed and happy. (1098a18-19). 5

6 8 It appears that happiness and virtue must be an activity relative to goods of the soul and not to external matters. Activity is a key concept here, for one has a choice whether the chief good is a matter of possession or in use, in use of in activity. (1098b34) For the state may exist without producing any good result, as in a man who is asleep or in some other way quire inactive; but the activity cannot; for one who has the activity will of necessity be acting, and acting well. (1099a3) 9 Now, we could hold out for chance by which we could acquire happiness; he affirms that happiness is acquired through learning, rather than merely by chance. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement. (1099b24) Neither animals nor boys can be properly called happy because full maturity and actualization according to the form of the rational soul has not occurred in the boy and cannot in the case of the animal Happiness for human beings will always be a function of the activity of the soul. But we must investigate this soul. The soul has an irrational aspect to it and a rational aspect. One aspect the irrational, is the cause of physical growth whatever it is that is in all nurslings and embryos. This aspect of a soul is common to all living creatures, including of course, human beings. This is in process even when we sleep. part There is another irrational aspect of the soul that shares aspects with the rational 6

7 Finally, there is on one hand philosophic wisdom, theoretical wisdom and practical or moral reason. [Moral Virtue and Practical Wisdom There is one particular human excellence which is the perfection of the activity of deliberation; that is the virtue of prudence or practical wisdom (phronesis). It is the excellence of discerning what is truly good for us, as an individual, or for human beings in general. It is the excellence of a certain kind of thinking an intellectual virtue but it is involved in guiding action and is thus differentiated from the intellectual virtue of theoretical wisdom. Since phronesis is at work in discerning and choosing the mean at which ethical virtue aims, ethical virtue cannot achieve its own end without phronesis. On the other hand, discernment of the good and perfection of deliberation is dependent on having a good character; hence, without ethical virtue, one might have cleverness in figuring out the means to any end, but one would not have phronesis, the virtue of choosing the appropriate means to the right end. Excellence of character, then, and practical wisdom together form a whole which alone counts as genuine virtue.] Book II 1 Just as the intellectual excellence requires time spent in school being taught, so too does moral excellence require some training. For Aristotle, moral excellence comes about as a result of habit, or habituation. But at the same time, Aristotle affirms that it is plain that none of the moral excellences arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can form a habit contrary to its nature. Now Aristotle must have in his mind two realities behind this statement: 1) we can be trained in the moral excellences because we have capacity according to our natures to be trained in them, but 2) they do not arise in use naturally; they do not come forth without some cultivation. With such cultivation, repetition and habituation comes the moral excellences or virtues, for the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing, e.g., men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. (1103b1) For if this were not so, there would have been no need of a teacher, but all men would have been born good or bad at their craft. 2 Now, with respect to our search for the basis for morally excellent acts or the virtues, Aristotle assumes that wherever this search leads us, reason will be critical. He says: that we must act according to right reason is a common principle and must be assumed. (1103b32). Informing his use of reason, Aristotle at this point imports a bit of inductive reasoning as well. He looks around and reasons that ultimately there are two 7

8 things that will undermine and destroy any excellence: defect and excess. Both, for example will destroy excellent health. 3 Another critical analytical tool that he will use is the pleasure/pain correlates. We must take as a sign of states the pleasure or pain that supervenes on acts. (1104b4). Translated, this means that degrees of pleasure or pain will be evident in certain acts we do. The extent to which one can overcome the lure of pleasure or the dread of pain will be a sign of moral excellence. 4 Aristotle argues the link between knowing and doing. A man will be proficient in grammar, then, only when he has both done something grammatical and done it grammatically; and this means doing it in accordance with the grammatical knowledge in himself. [Additionally, each of the moral virtues is a rationally determined mean between the extremes of excess and deficiency. Courage is a mean between the vice of cowardice (excess fear) and the vice of rashness (deficient fear). Self-respect is a mean between the vice of vanity (excess) and the vice of humility (deficiency). Calculating the mean does not imply a narrow, self-protective middle course. Determining the mean requires rational judgment based upon consideration of all the facts in the particular situation. (T. Z. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre: the Philosophic Quest, 74). The judgment about a mean is always made relative to this situation.] Virtue is a fixed disposition then, aiming at the mean; the ability to make the correct choice is due to prudence or practical wisdom (phronesis). 5 Now, to consider what excellence is. Things in the soul are of three kinds passions, faculties, states. Excellence, therefore, must be one of these. Go through the analysis to get to his conclusion that moral excellence must be of a state. 6 Consequently, it turns out that Aristotle s account of the mean develops in two phases. Initially, the mean is presented as an objective target which the agent aims to hit by the way he chooses to deal with his emotions and by his choice of action. Once the agent s perspective is taken into consideration, however, the process shifts into its second phase. The mean is no longer simply an objective goal of choice and action; it now begins to 8

9 assume the character of an extreme contrary to the agent s own inclination to the opposite extreme. Thus, to a cowardly person courage appears as rashness, to an impetuous person it appears as cowardice. Since the mean is difficult to discern, the second best way to achieve the aim of hitting the mean, according to Aristotle, is to become aware of our own misleading propensities, especially the attraction to pleasure and the aversion to pain. We must compensate for these proclivities by willing ourselves to go against our natural grain and to choose in the opposite direction. Remember, a key concept in all of this is that what we choose is a function of the kind of person we are. Moreover, moral excellence is like a perfect piece of art: it cannot be added to or subtracted from. 7 8 In summary, there are three kinds of dispositions, then, two of them vices, involving excess and deficiency and one an excellence, namely, the mean. A little geometry helps here: for the extreme states are contrary both to the intermediate state and to each other, and the intermediate to the extremes, as the equal is greater relatively to the less, less relatively to the greater, so the middle states are excessive relatively to the deficiencies, deficient relatively to the excesses. 9 For Aristotle therefore, moral excellence, or virtue, is a mean a mean between two vices, the one involving excess, the other deficiency, and that it is such because its character is to aim at what is intermediate in passions and in actions, Book III This book seems concerned about the nature of responsibility. In what situations are we responsible and in what situations are we exempt? 1 Voluntary actions are linked with praiseworthiness; we forgive and sometimes pity the involuntary. A key concept in Aristotle s notion of voluntariness is the observation that actions that emanate from inside of us must be termed justifiably voluntary. Conversely, actions that are involuntary emanate from outside of ourselves, e.g., coercion or threats. The compulsory, then, seems to be that whose moving principle is outside, the person compelled contributing nothing. 1110b

10 Everything that is done by reason of ignorance is non-voluntary. Such actions that eventuate from action done by reason of ignorance should therefore not be considered regretful, because the person did not know what they were doing. (1110b20). Now, every wicked man is ignorant of what he ought to do and what he ought to abstain from, and error of this kind makes men unjust and in general bad; but the term involuntary tends to be used not if a man is ignorant of what is to his advantage for it is not ignorance in choice that makes action involuntary (it makes men wicked), nor ignorance of the universal (for that men are blamed), but ignorance of particular circumstances of the action and the objects with which it is concerned. For it is on these that both pity and forgiveness depend, since the person who is ignorant of any of these acts involuntarily. Responsibility is only for the voluntary. If I involuntarily do something, it cannot be held against me; I cannot be blamed.] That which is excused as involuntary can be restricted to a very narrow sphere: it includes only1) those actions which are done strictly under compulsion and do not originate in the agent at all, and 2) those which are done in a state of ignorance, which could have been avoided, about the particular circumstances of the action. If someone acts in a state of ignorance which is the result of something he has done, say getting drunk, he can be justifiably held responsible for the action which results. After all, that person voluntarily drank the liquor that resulted in the state of ignorance. It all began within the agent.] Voluntary action, in contrast, can be assumed to cover a very broad range: they include not only those resulting from rational deliberation, but also those resulting from irrational passions, like anger or desire, as long as they originate in us and we are aware of the circumstances in which we act. Now, some people may think that even if it is in our power to choose and act, what we choose, and thus what we do, is motivated by an end which appears best to us, and this appearance is something which is not in our control or up to us. Perhaps the appearance of the good is even a matter of good fortune and one either is or is not born with a natural capacity to discern what is really good. Even if the law cannot entertain this possibility otherwise it would never be right to punish anyone this is actually a difficult objection to overturn with any confidence. This much, at least, is clear: if we want to take credit for our virtues since we are at least partly responsible for the kind of character we have then we must equally take blame for our vices. Our character is determined by our choices, not by our opinions. This is so because choice seems to the things that are in our own power. 2 10

11 Now we come to the issue of choice. Choice, then seems to be voluntary, but not the same thing as the voluntary; the latter extends more widely. For both children and the other animals share in voluntary action; but not in choice, and acts done on the spur of the moment we describe as voluntary, but not as chosen. Virtue is a state we praise, vice a state we blame, assuming the responsibility of the person for his character. But virtue is, more specifically, a disposition to choose, and choice is not as extensive as the whole sphere of the voluntary. It is not the same thing as desire or the passion of anger, for animals have these but no choice. And it is possible for a person to choose the right thing but not really desire it. Nor is choice quite the same thing as wish; for we can wish for something impossible but we cannot choose it. Now if choice is voluntary, we must have the power to choose. After all, it is something within us, and remember, choice seems to relate to the things that are in our own power. 1111b30 We choose what we best know to be good. 3 Choice is the result of a process of deliberation. What we deliberate about are neither things which are the same always, like a mathematical proposition (it is pointless to wish that a right triangle have at least one 90 degree angle). Neither do we deliberate about something we can get only by chance say winning the Virginia lottery. We deliberate about things which are in our power and which could be done in one way or another in order to achieve a given end. Within freedom we have the power to deliberate about choices that are open to us. When we reach the end of the process of deliberation we arrive at our choice. 4 Wish, furthermore, can be for an end we wish to be happy; but what we choose is the means to a given end. [This account of choice assumes that desire is itself irrational (or at least arational), and reasoning a matter of calculating means to an end; it does not account for our orientation to the end which motivates us. A very different understanding of choice eventually emerges in the argument, under different assumptions about the nature of desire and rationality and the relation between them: insofar as desire can be informed by reason and reason oriented toward an end, choice would have to be understood as the inseparable union of one modified by the other, either rational desire or desiring reason, and it would be the motivating principle of human action.] 5 11

12 So, if we wish for the end but always choose the requisite means to reach that end, actions according to choosing must be according to choice and voluntary. Then he clinches it: Now the exercise of the excellences is concerned with these. (1113b6) 6 This is a discussion of courage, understood as a mean with regard to fear and confidence. Some things one should be rightfully fearful of disgrace, etc. Properly then, he will be called brave who is fearless in face of a noble death, and of all emergencies that involve death 7 Discussion of cowardice. The coward fears everything. The brace man, on the other hand, has the opposite disposition; for confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition. The coward, the rash man, and the brave man, then, are concerned with the same objects but are differently disposed towards them; 8 There are various types and presumed manifestations of courage, some rightly, some incorrectly. Political courage appears to pass muster. Other presumed kinds of courage are more dubious, say the type of courage that depends upon the facts : when the facts change, as say when facts on the battlefield change then soldiers presumed courage falters. Thirdly, passionate people only appear to have courage. 4. Sanguine people whose experience has taught them to be optimistic and brave. And finally, in the fifth place are people who are ignorant also appear to be brave Temperance. This is, of course, the mean between the bodily pleasures, particularly those on the level of self-indulgence. To delight in such things, then, and to love them above all others, is brutish. (1118b4). 11 The self-indulgent man, then, craves for all pleasant things or those that are most pleasant, and is led by his appetite to choose these at the cost of everything else; hence he is pained both when he fails to get them and when he is craving for them (for appetite involves pain); but listen to this! it seems absurd to be pained for the sake of pleasure. (1119a6) 12

13 The temperate man is described a little later on in lines In the temperate man reason guides appetites. 12 Now, we must conclude that self-indulgence is a result of one s choice, and hence voluntary. Book IV Chapter 1 In this chapter and book Aristotle begins to tackle the issue of liberality. The search for this virtue seems to be couched in the sphere of wealth and one s material substance; it seems to be a mean between the giving and taking of wealth, or of prodigality (or wastefulness) on one hand and meanness or stinginess on the other. We erroneously assign the notion of prodigality to those who are unrestrained and lead dissolute lives on debauchery, etc. They are therefore guilty of many vices. But prodigality is understood by Aristotle in a more limited sense; it applies only to one vice the inability to give (primarily) rightly and receive (secondarily). The wasteful person has one major character defect: he does not know how to give and receive rightly. Why do I add or say secondarily for receiving. Well, evidently as we will see, Aristotle will put more value or the ability to give than to receive. It may very well be that we can assert here that the norm that will undergird all that he has to say in this Book is the norm of self-sufficiency. Only the self-sufficient person will be able to put more effort on giving than receiving. Having earlier calculated that the good will always be associated with the noble, the liberal man will give for the sake of the noble, and rightly. (1120a23) He also will give rightly and not take wrongly. Riches are useful things and can be used well or badly. It is better to give than to have goods given unto one. (1120a12). The noble man seems ready to help others from his own store of goods. Thus, he will not be a ready asker; for it is not characteristic of a man who confers benefits to accept them lightly. If he does take from any source, it will be from his own possessions, not as something noble but as a necessity, that he may have something to give. (1120b2); evidently he is self-sufficient. He will not neglect his own storehouse of goods, since he always wants to have something to give to others. And he will refrain from giving to anybody and everybody, that he may have something to give to the right people, at the right time, and where it is noble to do so, (where it will do the most good!). 13

14 Now, of course, the level of one s liberality is always relative to the possessions of the giver. There is nothing to prevent the man who gives less from being the more liberal man, if he has less to give. 1120b This issue of taking wrongly has serious moral consequences. Bereft of the selfsufficiency of the virtuous person, the prodigal is likely to steal or gamble egregious forms of taking wrongly. 2 Magnificence has to do with a greater scale of liberality. The magnificent man is liberal, but the liberal man is not necessarily magnificent. He avoids showy, ostentatious displays of his liberality. He is like an artist; for he can see what is fitting and spend large sums tastefully. (1122b1). This man can see what is fitting and spend large sums tastefully. The magnanimous man exceeds liberality, but does so with style and grace. The magnificent man spends lavishly on others, not so much himself; examples are public entertainments in the city, even private weddings in his family; even on his house, (for even a house is a sort of public ornament) 1123a7). Now, the petty man will fall short in all respects. His states of character are vulgarity and niggardliness and these of course are vices for Aristotle. 3 Pride, viewed in a morally acceptable way, is the virtue of the nobly proud man. Who is he? The proud man, then, is an extreme in respect of the greatness of his claims, but a mean in respect of the rightness of them; for he claims what is in accordance with his merits, while the others go to excess or fall short. Desert (of honor) is always relative to external goods, the highest of which we impute to the gods. Duly proud men deserve to be so considered, for the better man always deserves more, and the best man most. Therefore the truly proud man must be good. 1123b30. It is very hard, therefore, to be truly proud; for it is impossible without nobility and goodness of character. 1124a5. The nobly proud man steers between being overly humble or overly vain. From his proud perch, he prefers to give rather than receive, is disdainful of honors bestowed on him by others, nor is he given to admiration, for nothing to him is great. 1125a4. Unduly humble people are not evil-doers per se; they are mistaken about themselves and don t really know themselves, for they rob themselves of what they deserve. 1125a20. 14

15 4 Honor can be assessed to the extent that its quest violates a notion of a mean. We blame both the ambitious man as aiming at honor more than is right and from wrong sources, and the unambitious man as not choosing to be honored even for noble reasons. 1125b11 5 The discussion moves to temperament. Good temper is a mean with respect to anger, but the middle state being unnamed and the extreme states equally unnamed. Good temper is simply somewhere in the middle. Aristotle admits that making the call as to when anger is justified is difficult; for the decision depends on the particular facts and on perception. 1126b5. But so much at least is plain, that the middle state is praiseworthy that in virtue of which we are angry with the right people, at the right things, in the right way, and so on, while the excesses and defects are blameworthy slightly so if they are present in a low degree, more if in a higher degree, and very much if in a high degree. 6 In the realm of social relations there are people who are obsequious and those who are churlish. There is virtuous mean between obsequiousness and contentiousness. One is a yes-man; the other is churlish jerk. This mean resembles friendship but friendship implies a level of passion that Aristotle does not have in mind with this mean. The virtuous man is even-handed with strangers as well as with acquaintances. For he will behave so alike towards those he knows and those he does not know, towards intimates and those who are not so, except that in each of these cases too he wil behave as is befitting. 1126b The mean between boastfulness and mock-modesty. Since falsehood is in itself mean and culpable, and truth noble and worthy of praise, then it stands to reason why these two kinds of men cannot be considered praiseworthy. 8 What we do in our leisure also has some ethical import as well. Joking in the right way is to be desired, whereas those who carry humor to excess are thought to be vulgar buffoons, striving after humor at all costs, and aiming rather at raising a laugh than at saying what is becoming and at avoiding pain to the object of their fun [the butt of a joke]. 1128a7. 15

16 Joking in a virtuous way is quick-wittedness and using tact. The well-bred man, the virtuous man will act as a law unto himself. Such, then, is the man who observes the mean, whether he be called tactful or ready-witted. The buffoon, on the other hand, is the slave of his sense of humor, and spares neither himself nor others if he can raise a laugh, and says things none of which a man of refinement would say, 1128b1 9 Shame is really more like a passion than a state, the category into which we must fit virtues. Of all the age categories, the passion of shame is most appropriate for youth, because they [the youth] live by passion and therefore commit many errors, but are restrained by shame. 1128b19 Book V Book VII Weakness of the Will, Pleasure, and the Return to Nature Incontinence or Weakness of Will (Akrasia) The incontinent man, knowing that what he does is bad, does it as a result of passion, whle the continent man, knowing that his appetites are bad, does not follow them because of his reason. (1145b10). Although opposites, virtue and vice both presuppose that the desires are in accordance with choice, either the right choice or the wrong one. Is it possible, though, to know the right thing to do and yet not desire it and thus act contrary to what one knows to be right? Socrates, according to Aristotle, denied this possibility: in his understanding of human action, we always desire what we believe to be good for us, and would, therefore, never act contrary to such a belief. We can, of course, hold false beliefs about our own good; this is precisely what makes us go wrong in action. But we cannot fully realize what would make us happy and fail to act in accordance with that realization. This seems, Aristotle admits, to conflict with the way we see human being acting; at least it is often said that someone knows what is good but does not do it, being controlled, rather, by his passion. This internal conflict is the condition of akrasia, incontinence or weakness of will or lack of self-restraint. Its primary form is a conflict instigated by the desire for pleasure, which actually affects the body and seems to have the power to overcome our reasoning about the right course to follow. In this primary form, akrasia occupies the same territory as the vice of indulgence, which involves excessive desire for bodily pleasures. They differ, however, because in the case of a vice, that is, reason has been completely taken over, so that whatever one is led by passion to desire is thought and said to be the right 16

17 thing to do. In the akratic condition, on the other hand, reason has not been completely taken; one possesses correct reasoning about the right thing to do but is unable to carry it out because of the strength of the conflicting desire for pleasure. There are, of course, such conflicts in the case of other passions akrasia in regard to anger, for example which can be thought of as incontinence in a qualified sense. As he says, anger obeys reason in a sense, but appetite does not. (1149b1) For Aristotle, there is a difference between self-indulgence and incontinence. The former is incurable, the latter is curable. Thus, the self-indulgent man has no regrets, but any incontinent man is subject to regrets. 1150b30. If akratic conflict is indeed possible, there should also be the contrary, positive state of continence or self-restraint (enkrateia), in which a person knows the right thing to do but nevertheless desires something else and therefore has to subdue his desire to act in accordance with what he knows is right. This is a greater achievement than akrasia, but it falls short of the ideal of virtue, where the desires have become harmonized with reason. In analyzing the condition of akrasia, Aristotle seems to be rejecting the Socratic position; actually, he shows how difficult it is to reject that position and instead examines what it must mean to know if knowing so influences our desire that we cannot truly know what is good for us and not desire it. Such knowledge cannot be just a matter of saying what should be done, like an actor reciting lines on stage. Nor can it be just a matter of being informed about some universal principle; it must be a realization, fully actualized and applied to the particular circumstances in which one is acting. It is unintelligible to imagine someone not desiring and acting against this sort of realization that a certain course of action will ultimately lead to one s happiness. This kind of knowledge of one s own good, fully actualized and applied to the particular circumstances, is phronesis, prudence or practical wisdom, and the person who has it, Aristotle finally admits, cannot be akratic. Concluding observations about Aristotle s notions of virtue. In contrast to Plato, who sought an ethical vision that could be couched in the immutable, eternal world of abstract forms, a world in which ethics was based on metaphysics, Aristotle s vision was directed toward the empirical world in which human beings sought to live their lives. His world was one of contingent freedom as opposed to metaphysical necessity. Presuming that we all seek happiness or well-being, he affirmed that such had to be the foundation for virtue and the genuine ethical life. But virtue itself had to be defined in terms of rational choice in a concrete situation, where virtue lay in the mean between two extremes. Good is always a balance between two opposite evils, the midpoint between excess and deficiency. Examples we saw were courage being the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness, temperance as a mean between austerity and indulgence, proper pride a mean between arrogance and abasement. But getting the calculation for this mean can be found only in practice, in individual cases relative to their specific conditions. 17

18 But through habitus, we get to the point where we will necessarily do the right thing, thus becoming reliably and dependably good the very essence of virtue. We are pretty certain that virtue or excellence is of a psychic nature. But the question is: is it an emotion, or the capacity to experience an emotion? An emotion is something we feel or undergo and we cannot be held responsible for what we feel or the emotions we have. But it is clear that something that is virtuous is praiseworthy and something that is of vice is blameworthy. Therefore, neither virtue nor vice can be an emotion or the capacity to experience an emotion. Virtue and vice should be understood as dispositions of character, a certain habitual stance we take in regard to our emotions. Someone who is habitually afraid of everything has developed a disposition of cowardice in regard to the emotion of fear, for which he can be blamed; someone who is habitually inclined neither to indulge in pleasures excessively nor to shun them at all costs has developed a disposition of moderation in relation to the desire for pleasure, for which he can be praised. You can see here that there is a clear distinction between our emotions, for which we must not be judged, and how we handle our emotions, for which we can be blamed or praised. Now, these praiseworthy and blameworthy dispositions are not something we are born with; nor, on the other hand, can they be taught theoretically. They are acquired by a process of habituation, which begins with parents training their children 18