Aristotle

Lecture Notes: Aristotle

7. Nicomachean Ethics I.13, II.1-7: Virtue and the Golden Mean

Having defined the human good as “activity of the soul in accordance with virtue,” the logical next step is to try to clarify the nature of virtue. Chapter I.13 begins this process. Aristotle first notes that since virtue is excellence of the soul, we need a rough account of the soul.
He divides the soul into the following aspects or parts:
1. Nutritive soul – This is the part responsible for nutrition and growth. It has no share in reason and is therefore not directly relevant to the virtues.
2. Rational soul – This is the part responsible for reason (logos). Its virtues include theoretical wisdom (sophia), understanding (sunesis), and practical wisdom (phronesis). They are discussed in Book VI.
3. Appetitive soul – This is the part that governs desire. It “partakes of reason insofar as it complies with reason and accepts its leadership” (1102b31). It is partly rational (because it can be trained to follow reason) and partly irrational (because it is not itself a faculty of thought). Its virtues are the “moral” virtues such as temperance, courage, truthfulness, and so on. They are the subject of Book II.
Note that this account is merely a provisional one. Aristotle explicitly sets aside the question of whether the parts he is distinguishing are inseparable from one another (so that we should properly call them “aspects” of the soul, the way convexity and concavity are aspects of a curve) or could in principle be separated (“parts” in the proper sense). There are also further aspects or parts of the soul that he could distinguish but does not. For Aristotle’s fuller account of the soul, see his De Anima.
Chapter II.1 discusses the question of how one acquires the moral virtues. The answer may seem paradoxical: “the virtues . . . we acquire by having first put them into action” (1103a30). How can someone exercise a quality he does not yet possess? Aristotle’s answer is that the capacity for virtue is innate, but (like many other capacities) it has to be brought to a full and developed state by practice. For example, it is by repeatedly telling the truth that one develops the virtue of truthfulness; it is by repeatedly refusing to indulge one’s appetite that one develops the virtue of temperance.
An analogy is the development of a skill. We all have the capacity to learn to play the harp, but only some people practice and thereby develop the skill. A virtue is like a skill: it is a developed, habitual tendency to act in an appropriate way. (What “appropriate” means will depend on the virtue or skill in question.) As we will see in a moment, however, a virtue is also the habitual tendency to feel or react in an appropriate way. That is where the analogy with skill breaks down.
A developed, habitual tendency to act or feel in an inappropriate way is a vice. As Aristotle sees it, every action one takes contributes to the development of either a virtue (if it is a good action) or a vice (if it is an evil action). We are the authors of our characters by the choices we make. Cf. the farmhand in “An Enduring Chill” by Flannery O’Connor: “What he does is him, what I do is me.”
Since virtues come about by performing virtuous acts, it follows that one can perform a virtuous act without having the corresponding virtue. Chapter 4 explains what, besides the act itself, is needed for a virtuous act to be performed virtuously. “First of all, he [the person acting] must know what he is doing; secondly, he must choose to act the way he does, and choose it for its own sake; and in the third place, the act must spring from a firm and unchangeable character” (1105a31-34).
Thus, a schoolboy who does something wrong and apologizes because his mother makes him does not thereby exhibit the virtue of justice. This is not to deny that it is good that he is forced to apologize. Doing just acts without actually being just is better than not doing them at all; furthermore, performing the act is a kind of “practice” that, if repeated, will eventually form the virtue.
Chapters 5 and 6 offer a formal definition of “virtue.” Aristotle first attempts to determine its genus (the general type to which it belongs). There are, he says, three kinds of condition present in the soul:
1. emotions (pathe, lit. “passions”) – states of soul accompanied by pleasure or pain, such as anger, fear, envy, pity, etc.
2. capacities (dunameis) – states of soul by which one is capable of experiencing an emotion, e.g., the capacity for anger.
3. characteristics (hexeis) – states of soul which determine when one feels an emotion, e.g., the tendency a person has to grow angry under certain conditions and not others.
Of these three, which type of state of soul is a virtue? It is not an emotion or a capacity, for emotions and capacities are not subject to moral evaluation and are not formed by choice. The remaining possibility is that it is a kind of “characteristic” (in the sense defined above).
What is its differentia? Here Aristotle returns to the analogy with crafts or skills. A good craftsman aims at a sort of mean—not the absolute mean (i.e., average value) but the mean “relative to us” (i.e., what the person or material the craftsman is dealing with actually needs). A virtue is likewise a tendency to hit the mean “relative to us.” “To experience [a given emotion] at the right time, toward the right objects, toward the right people, for the right reason, and in the right manner—that is the median and the best course, the course that is a mark of virtue” (1106b21-23). Of course, virtue is concerned with actions as well as emotions, so in general a virtue is a tendency to hit the mean “relative to us” of both some emotion and the corresponding type of action.
Since a virtue is a tendency to hit the mean, each virtue is itself a mean between opposing vices—one of excess and one of defect. Chapter 7 offers these examples:

VICE (defect)	VIRTUE (mean)	VICE (excess)	PERTAINING TO
cowardice	courage	recklessness	fear & confidence
insensibility	self-control	self-indulgence	pleasure & pain
stinginess	generosity	extravagance	small amounts of $
niggardliness	magnificence	gaudiness	large amounts of $
small-mindedness	high-mindedness	vanity	honor & dishonor
apathy	gentleness	short temper	anger
self-depreciation	truthfulness	boastfulness	truth about oneself
boorishness	wittiness	buffoonery	pleasantness (in amusement)
grouchiness	friendliness	obsequiousness, flattery	pleasantness (in daily life)
shamelessness	modesty	“abashed at everything”	sense of shame
spite	righteous indignation	envy	pleasure & pain at fortunes of others

Books III.6-IV.9 of the Ethics are a systematic discussion of these virtues and vices.

7. Nicomachean Ethics X.6-8: Contemplation

Chapter X.6 returns to the subject of happiness (eudaimonia). After summarizing the results of Book I, it adds some arguments against a possibility not yet considered: that happiness consists in amusement. Aristotle thinks that “it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves . . . . Anacharsis seems to be right when he advises to play in order to be serious; for amusement is a form of rest, and . . . rest is not an end, for we take it for the sake of [further] activity” (1176b28-35).
This chapter also makes an important point about the idea that virtuous acts are pleasant by nature. One might ask how we can know which acts fit this description, given that most of us are not virtuous--and even if we were virtuous, we might not be in a position to know it. Aristotle’s answer is that “what is valuable and pleasant to a morally good man actually is valuable and pleasant” (1176b25). In other words, the acts which are pleasant by nature are those which morally good people find to be pleasant!
This account would be circular if the only way to recognize morally good people were by their taking pleasure in virtuous acts. Fortunately, there are other ways as well. One is the presence of signs of “human flourishing” such as are discussed in Book I. Another (presumably) is the consensus of the community. Granted, this is not a rigid deductive procedure, and whether a given person truly is virtuous will often be unclear. Aristotle would not be troubled by that fact. He has emphasized from the beginning that ethics is not an exact science.
Chapter 7 returns to a question left hanging by the definition of the human good in Book I. Recall that the human good is “activity of the soul in conformity with excellence or virtue, and if there are several virtues, in conformity with the best and most complete” (I.7, 1098a16). Is any one virtue “best and most complete”?
Aristotle’s answer is yes. Chapter X.7 reveals what that virtue is: the activity of theoria, contemplation of timeless truths (not “study”!). There are several reasons why Aristotle thinks that this is the highest virtue:
It is the activity of “the best part of us,” intelligence (nous).
We can do it more continuously than anything else. (Note, incidentally, that this shows that theoria is not a form of discursive thought.)
It is highly pleasant, since to possess knowledge is more pleasant than to seek it.
It is (relatively) self-sufficient, since it requires a minimum of external goods.
It is the only virtuous activity pursued in leisure and purely for its own sake, as may be shown by comparison to military and political actions (1177b1-24).
Aristotle is aware that this conclusion seems at odds with his earlier claim that the human function (ergon) is “an active life of the rational element” (praktike tis tou logon echontos, 1098a2). At the end of chapter 7 he suggests that, in a way, contemplation is not a human good at all. Yet it is still one that human beings should strive to attain. He writes: “Such a life [of contemplation] would be more than human. A man who would live it would do so not insofar as he is human, but because there is a divine element [i.e., nous] within him . . . . We must not follow those who advise us to have human thoughts, since we are [only] men, and mortal thoughts, as mortals should; on the contrary, we should try to become immortal as far as that is possible and do our utmost to live in accordance with what is highest in us. For though this is a small portion [of our nature], it far surpasses everything else in power and value. One might even regard it as each man’s true self, since it is the controlling and better part. It would, therefore, be strange if a man chose not to live his own life but someone else’s” (1177b26-1178a3).
Chapter 8 adds that contemplation is divine, not only in the sense that it is the activity of the divine element in us (i.e., nous), but also in the sense that it is the activity engaged in by the gods (1178b9-23). The “contemplation” of Ethics X thus turns out to be much like the “wisdom” of Metaphysics I.1-2. Of course, in the Metaphysics God not only possesses wisdom; he is also part of what wisdom is about. Putting the two accounts together, it is clear that the objects of contemplation are the “first causes and principles of things,” and that among these is God himself.