Defining Moral Virtue: A Habit of Choosing the Mean, and the Virtues Between Their Extremes

Orientation #

He opens: “Before we look at a little text of Aristotle from the Ethics, let’s talk about the definition of moral virtue,” and recalls that “last time” they mentioned the particular moral virtues and the end of man as the act with reason done well (prev. lecture). He ends by handing out Aristotle’s proemium to the Ethics, to be read after the break, “before we go on to maybe wisdom.” The previous class divided the intellectual and moral virtues and compared Aristotle’s and Thomas’s orderings; the next opens the proemium of the Nicomachean Ethics.

The class, in order #

1. The genus of moral virtue: a habit or disposition (“what is the genus of moral virtue”) #

Point: a definition begins with a genus and adds differences; moral virtue’s genus is the kind of quality called habit or disposition.

• Recap: the end of man is the act with reason done well; at the end of Ethics I Aristotle divides human virtue into moral virtue and the virtues of reason. Virtues of reason perfect reason itself; moral virtues perfect the will and emotions “to obey and follow right reason.” Books II–V treat moral virtue (II in general, from the middle of III in particular), VI the virtues of reason.
• Definition = “speech making known what it is.” First part: genus (same root as “general”): students asked “what is a dog?” say “an animal,” then add “four-footed… that barks.”
• Not a substance, not a quantity, so a quality. Four kinds of quality from the Categories, put on the board: (1) habit or disposition; (2) ability or power; (3) sense quality, “sometimes they call it an undergoing quality”; (4) shape or figure.
• Elimination: shape most obviously not, since not a source of action. Narrowing to the best-known virtues (courage, moderation, mildness), which involve emotions: the virtue is not the ability to feel fear or boldness (that is presupposed), nor the emotion itself; both are “as such neither good nor bad.” Virtue or vice means being disposed to feel the emotion reasonably or unreasonably. So genus = habit or disposition.
• Courage: disposed, when danger comes, to feel fear and boldness as he should. Moderation: when food or bottle is before you, to eat and drink as a reasonable man would. Mildness: when insulted, to be angry “in a way that’s reasonable in these circumstances.”

2. A habit with choice (“a habit with choice in some way”) #

Point: since we are praised for moral virtues and blamed for vices, choice must be involved.

• Hence Aristotle, having defined virtue in Book II, takes up choice at the start of Book III, defends free choice, and asks what choice is.
• “Perhaps you could even say it’s a habit of choosing”: the moderate and intemperate man before the same bottle each choose a different amount.

3. In the middle: the comparison to art (“he makes a comparison to human art”) #

Point: as in the arts the good lies between too much and too little, so in moral virtue.

• Practical arts: carpenter replacing a chair leg cuts one right length, others too long or too short; a steak cooked too much or too little (cousin wanted it so rare it would “say moo”); Daddy’s soup with too much pepper.
• Fine arts: Mozart’s letters on the golden mean; Emperor: “Too many notes, Mozart” — “Just as many as are needed”; Mozart “knows when to stop.” Sherlock Holmes, the Norwood Builder: the clever framer “lacked the supreme gift of the artist, knowing when to stop.” A book on Venice on Titian: “above all, he knew when to stop.”
• Applied: I can get angry too much, or too little “if you’re using my little grandchildren for target practice.” Third part: habit with choice, in the middle.

4. The middle towards us, as determined by right reason (“the middle of the thing, or the middle towards us”) #

Point: the middle is not the middle of the thing but what is neither too much nor too little for me in these circumstances, which reason must determine.

• Middle of the thing (rejected): drinking half the bottle of whiskey, eating half the Thanksgiving turkey. Middle towards us varies by man and circumstance: no whiskey before operating or driving tonight, more if relaxing before bed.
• Fifth and last part: “as determined by right reason.” Right reason here = prudence, “in English foresight,” treated among the virtues of reason; it takes into account yourself and all circumstances. Anger itself does not know whether a bump in the hall was accidental, careless or a kid deliberately whacking everyone; reason decides whether and how much anger is appropriate. Food: a working man or big man may need more; eating more at Grandma’s Thanksgiving need not be vicious.
• Full definition: “a habit with choice in the middle towards us, as determined by right reason,” or “a habit of choosing what is in the middle towards us, as determined by right reason.”
• Programme: Aristotle checks the definition against each virtue, and also finds the virtue is “usually not equidistant” between its two vices — sometimes closer to excess, sometimes to defect.

5. Courage, between cowardice and foolhardiness (“closer to foolhardiness”) #

Point: courage is the most honored virtue and lies nearer the excess.

• Latin virtus = manhood; Greek arete linked to the god of war [ed.: Ares]; the Medal of Honor is given only for courage, not for lifelong justice or moderation.
• Coward: too little, doesn’t risk his life when he should. Foolhardy: risks it unnecessarily (“fools rush in”). Board: short line courage–foolhardiness, long line courage–cowardice; we think the courageous man the opposite of the coward.
• Argument that foolhardiness is nearer: a hot-blooded foolhardy youth, growing older and seeing dangers, more easily becomes courageous than a coward does (if a coward while young, what when old?). Washington’s early letters on the “sweet sound” of bullets, later: “I was young then”; Churchill: few things more exhilarating than being shot at and missed.
• Paradox he notes: the foolhardy man is “named from folly,” seems to lack reason, while the coward seems to be “using his head” — yet foolhardiness is closer to the virtue.

6. Moderation, nearest the nameless defect (“we’ll have to invent a name”) #

Point: moderation concerns food and sex (preserving body and species), has named excesses but no named defect, and lies nearer the defect.

• Distinguished from courage: courage concerns emotions about what threatens the body’s life (fear, boldness); moderation concerns what preserves it. He prefers “moderation” to “temperance.”
• Aristotle says the defect is so rare (pursuing what pleases the senses is natural — you worry a child eats too much candy, never too little) that he coins a word from “sense” with a negation, “without sense” [ed.: anaisthētos]. Our tradition: “puritan” — arrested for kissing a girl, thinking any alcohol wrong. Charlie Swisher at the Seventh Day Adventist college store: “We don’t have any cigarettes. We’re all good people here.”
• Excess names: gluttony, the drunkard, Don Juan; general name intemperance. Board: short line to the puritan, long line to gluttony. Note: “intemperance,” the negation of temperance, is applied to the excess, as if it were far more opposed to temperance than the man who enjoys nothing.
• Who is the fool: the man who drinks too much, not the abstainer; the designated driver is “a sober man among drunk men.” So courage is nearer the foolish extreme, moderation more opposed to it. Etymology: “fond” originally = foolish (still in Shakespeare); to be fond of a girl = to act foolishly over her.
• Plato, Protagoras (recounted briefly: young man at Socrates’ door at five a.m.; Socrates asks what he knows of Protagoras): Socrates lists five virtues (prudence/foresight, justice, courage, moderation, piety) and asks whether they are one thing. Protagoras: different, like nose and ear. Socrates argues moderation and wisdom are the same: each thing has one opposite; folly is the opposite of wisdom and also of moderation; therefore they are the same. He does not so argue for courage, since folly does not seem to be its opposite in the same way. “All the great thinkers see this connection between wisdom and moderation.” Heraclitus fragment: moderation is the greatest virtue (he adds: certainly not the greatest moral virtue) and wisdom is to speak the truth and act in accord with nature.
• Ordering aside: courage and moderation occupy the second half of Book III after choice; all of Book V is justice; Book IV has the “somewhat lesser virtues.”

7. Liberality and munificence (“liberal is the opposite of what”) #

Point: generosity concerns possessions (close to the body since they support it) and lies nearer extravagance.

• Logical rule: find a word’s senses by its opposites: liberal vs. conservative (politics), liberal arts vs. servile, and here liberal vs. stingy.
• Extravagance (spending more than you can or the circumstances call for) vs. stinginess. Maharaja’s $25 donation on his child’s wedding: too little for him. 25th anniversary dinner at McDonald’s: fine only if that is all you can afford.
• Liberality is closer to extravagance (short line), farther from stinginess; extravagance is the more foolish-looking extreme, so like courage, unlike moderation. Aristotle is “nuanced”: middle towards us is neither middle of the thing nor equidistant.
• Shakespeare’s sonnet metaphor calls truth stingy: we praise a hostess’s cooking beyond its desert. Brother Richard, an actor, praised his future in-laws’ meal and got it every visit.
• Munificence: like liberality but with large sums affecting the common good (endowing a chair, paying for a museum). Excess: wealthy men giving to foolish causes (e.g. the United Nations “for their moral practices”); defect: the maharaja again.

8. Magnanimity and philotimia (“it means great soul”) #

Point: the great-souled man desires and is capable of great things; he lies between two extremes.

• Order note: Aristotle takes magnanimity next, then philotimia (“love of honor,” concerned with little honors); he presents them in reverse of Aristotle’s order. Philotimia: seeking more or less honor than fitting.
• Small-souled man thinks himself incapable of what he can do; the proud, “blown up” man thinks himself capable of more than he can. Student: small-souled is also written “mean-spirited” — he agrees, not meaning a nasty person; spiritual books use it.
• Aside: a friend’s doctoral thesis compared Aristotle’s magnanimous man with men called magnanimous; “Christ seemed to be the only person who was magnanimous.”

9. Mildness, and why it belongs with moderation (“Is mildness more like courage”) #

Point: mildness lies between irascibility and the milquetoast, and resembles moderation, not courage.

• Excess: angry too much, too often (irascibility). Defect: trampled on, not standing up for one’s rights, no anger when there should be some; even our Lord shows anger with the Pharisees’ hardness of heart.
• Class answers: more like moderation. Hence in the Secunda Secundae Thomas attaches lesser virtues to a cardinal virtue by likeness and treats mildness under moderation. Anger, like sexual desire and love (“the very wrath of love,” recalled from the love and friendship class), is a strong emotion needing chiefly to be moderated.
• Aristotle’s education: gymnastic relates to courage, music and fine arts to moderating the passions. In courage you tend to run from what you should approach, so must be strengthened (hence “fortitude”); in moderation and anger you tend to go for what you shouldn’t, so must be restrained, pulled back.

10. The three social virtues (“can you be too friendly”) #

Point: the virtues of daily social life — friendliness (serious things), wit (the laughable), truthfulness — also have excess and defect.

• Laughter: Love’s Labour’s Lost — some won’t laugh though Nestor (old, reverent, three lifetimes) says the joke is funny; others, like an uncontrollable high-school class, laugh at everything. Jokes unsuitable in mixed company or at a wake, suitable elsewhere.
• Friendliness: Americans understand too little; too much = the neighbor always dropping in (his mother’s neighborhood: help when in need, but always at your door), the salesman who says every customer’s wife’s name is his wife’s.
• Truthfulness: presenting yourself in word and deed as you are, neither more nor less. Question raised: Socrates’ irony (always “I don’t know”) — was it a vice? Kierkegaard’s master’s thesis on it. St. Teresa of Avila: humility is the truth. Padre Pio and the psychologist who said he thought too much about Christ’s wounds; Pio’s retort about a man turning into a cow by thinking of horns. Not lacking humility: false humility would be pretending to be less than you are, and he does not say “maybe I’m a nut.” Question about Socrates left open.

11. A middle even in the truth (“more or less than the truth”) #

Point: the good as a middle appears also in the theoretical sciences aiming at truth, so moral virtue, art and science are alike here.

• Shakespeare, King Lear, Kent: reports “go with the modest truth, nor more, nor clipped, but so”; and (attributed later to Falstaff, “a big liar himself”) “if they say more or less than the truth, they are villains and sons of darkness.”
• Two ways of being mistaken: saying what is is not (subtracting from truth) and saying what is not is (adding). Student example: 3 + 4 answered six or eight.
• Courtroom oath: “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is not mere repetition: “the whole truth” excludes saying what is is not; “nothing but” excludes saying what is not is. Bartender example: John and Thomas were at the bar; adding Paul or reporting only John are both false.
• Theology: Thomas contrasts Arius (three persons, so three natures: adding two natures) with Sabellius (one nature, so one person under different names: subtracting) [transcript’s “Titus” read as Sabellius]; on Christ, two natures so two persons (adding a person) [ed.: Nestorius, not named] vs. Eutyches and the Monophysites (one person, so one nature: subtracting the second nature). Thomas says we must speak “temperately” between Arius and Sabellius — “notice the word he uses, temperate.”
• Conclusion: a likeness among moral action, practical arts (steak), fine arts (Titian, Mozart) and the “looking sciences”: the good is a middle between two extremes. Shakespeare’s phrasing is clearer than the courtroom formula.
• Aside: someone explained the oath formula to them while getting off jury duty [unclear in recording].

His words #

• act with reason done well — the end of man (recap).
• speech making known what it is — definition.
• genus — the general first part of a definition; same root as “general.”
• habit or disposition; ability or power; sense quality (“undergoing quality”); shape or figure — the four kinds of quality [ed.: habitus/dispositio, potentia, passio/passibilis qualitas, forma/figura].
• habit with choice / habit of choosing — second part of the definition.
• middle towards us vs. middle of the thing — fourth part.
• right reason — prudence, “in English foresight.”
• arete — Greek for virtue, connected to the god of war; virtus = manhood.
• foolhardiness — excess opposed to courage, “named from folly.”
• moderation — his preferred rendering of temperance.
• “without sense” — Aristotle’s coined name for the defect of moderation; his equivalent “puritan.”
• fond — originally “foolish.”
• liberality / generosity — opposite of stingy; excess extravagance.
• munificence — liberality with large sums for the common good.
• magnanimity — great soul; small-souled = “mean-spirited.”
• philotimia — love of honor, concerning little honors.
• mildness — between irascibility and the milquetoast.
• fortitude — courage as needing strengthening; moderation as restraint.
• saying what is is not / what is not is — subtracting from / adding to the truth.
• temperate — Thomas’s word for speech between Arius and Sabellius.
• looking sciences — theoretical sciences.

Texts #

Read in class

• None read verbatim; the handout of Aristotle’s proemium to the Ethics is distributed for after the break.
• [ed.: the automated source match to Metaphysics VI, lectio 4 and its handout is not borne out by anything in this transcript.]

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics: end of Book I (division of virtue); Book II (definition of moral virtue); Book III beginning (choice) and second half (courage, moderation); Book IV (lesser virtues); Book V (justice); Book VI (virtues of reason).
• Aristotle, Categories (four kinds of quality).
• Plato, Protagoras.
• Heraclitus, fragment on moderation and wisdom.
• Mozart’s letters; the Emperor–Mozart exchange.
• Conan Doyle, “The Norwood Builder.”
• Shakespeare: Sonnets (truth called stingy), Love’s Labour’s Lost (Nestor), King Lear (Kent).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Secunda Secundae (mildness under temperance); Thomas on speaking temperately between Arius and Sabellius (locus not given).
• Kierkegaard’s master’s thesis on Socratic irony; St. Teresa of Avila on humility.

His questions #

• What’s the first part of a definition called? Genus.
• Is moral virtue a substance, a quantity, or a quality? Which kind of quality most obviously is it not? A quality; not shape or figure; it is a habit or disposition.
• Is the virtue the ability to feel the emotion, or the emotion itself? Neither; both as such are neither good nor bad; virtue is the disposition to feel it reasonably.
• Is the middle the middle of the thing or the middle towards us? Towards us: half the whiskey bottle is not virtue.
• Is courage equidistant from cowardice and foolhardiness? No, closer to foolhardiness.
• Which is moderation closer to, gluttony or the puritan? Who seems the fool? The puritan; the fool is the man who drinks too much.
• Is liberality closer to extravagance or stinginess? Extravagance.
• Is mildness more like courage or moderation? Moderation; so Thomas attaches it to temperance.
• Can you be too friendly? Yes: the neighbor always dropping in, the over-friendly salesman.
• Was Socrates’ irony a vice? Left open.
• What does it mean to say more or less than the truth? Saying what is not is (adding) or what is is not (subtracting), as in the courtroom oath.