Ethics
9. Defining Moral Virtue: A Habit of Choosing the Mean, and the Virtues Between Their Extremes
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[0:02] So we'll stop here, but we'll come back and talk a little more about the moral virtues. So we begin. I've got a little cold as always. my voice will sound too bad. In the. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment. Guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more quickly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, pray for us and help us to understand all that you have written.

[0:37] In the. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Before we look at a little text of Aristotle from the Ethics,

[0:49] let's talk about the definition of moral virtue. Okay. If you recall, we talked about the end of man, which is the act with reason, right? Done well or according to human virtue throughout life. And then Aristotle, at the end of the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, he divides human virtue into moral virtue and the virtues of what? Reason.

[1:24] And you can see the connection between that and the act with reason done well, because the virtues of reason, of course, are perfecting reason itself. But the moral virtues are perfecting the will and the emotions to obey and follow right reason. Okay.

[1:46] Aristotle takes up moral virtue in books two through five, and in book six, the virtues of reason. But in book two, he takes up moral virtue in general, and then at the middle of book three, he goes into the moral virtues in particular that he mentioned last time.

[2:09] But in the second book, he will define moral virtue. He will give a definition, right? Speech making known what it is. Now, when you define something, what's the first thing you do? What's the first part of a definition called? Do you remember that, some of you? Genus. Genus, yeah. In other words, you begin by saying in a very general way what it is, right? And then you add differences to bring out distinctly and in particular what it is.

[2:54] And this is natural. If I ask a student class, an assumption, what is a dog? They'll begin usually by saying, "Well, it's an animal, right? An animal is saying what a dog is, but in a very general way, and it's said not only of dog but of cat and horse and other things. So they call that general name, that name that's saying in general what it is, the genus in logic, and has the same root.

[3:31] Genus is our word general. And then you have to add differences, right? Well, he's a four-footed animal, right? Four-footed animal that barks and so on, right? So, what is the genus of

[3:48] moral virtue? Is it a substance like a man or a dog or a tree? No. Is it a quantity? Is it the size of something? No. Or is it a what quality? Yeah. Okay. Now, quality has in general four different kinds that Aristotle distinguished in the book called Categories.

[4:20] Let me just put those on the board for a second. One kind of quality is what we call a habit or disposition. Another kind of quality is an ability or a power, an actual ability. Another kind of

[4:57] quality is a sense quality, right? Okay. Sometimes they call it an undergoing quality. And then a fourth kind of quality is shape or figure.

[5:23] Now, these four kinds of quality, which one is moral virtue? Which one most obviously is it not? Shape. Yeah. Okay. So we can eliminate that. But not a shape or a figure is not the source of any action or operation, right? While a habit or disposition can be, right? Mm-hmm. A ability of power, and even the what sense qualities, the movie in some sense, huh? The emotions, huh?

[6:03] Let's narrow that in a little bit to the most known moral virtues, the ones where. It involves the emotions, right? Like courage and moderation and mildness and so on. Well, is the virtue the ability to feel that emotion? No. No. It's supposed to have the ability to feel those emotions, right? But is my ability to feel fear and feel boldness, right? Is that going to be courage?

[6:37] Or is fear itself going to be, or boldness itself, is the emotion itself going to be the virtue? No. And in a sense, the emotion as such is neither good nor bad. The ability to feel that emotion as such is neither good nor bad, right? But virtue or vice means that you are what? Disposed right? Habituated to feel this emotion in a reasonable way, right? Or in a what?

[7:16] Unreasonable way, right? Okay. So habit or disposition is going to be the genus of moral virtue, huh? Okay. That the man who is courageous has a certain habit or disposition, right?

[7:42] Whereby, when dangerous things come up, right, he is disposed to feel anger as he should, right? And boldness as he should, right? Okay. And moderation is another virtue, right? Whereby, when the food or the bottle is put in front of you, right, you're disposed habitually, right, to eat and drink as a reasonable man would, right? Okay. In the same way, mildness, right, is a virtue whereby, when some insult or some thing that's an object of anger is presented to you, right, you get angry or not angry or anger in a way that's reasonable in these circumstances.

[8:31] Okay. Now, Aristotle is going to add. We perhaps could distinguish four more parts to the definition of moral virtue, right? He just begins by saying to habit or disposition, right? But notice how we are praised for having the moral virtues, right? And we're criticized or blamed for having the moral vices, right? And therefore, somehow, in moral virtue. Must be involved something called choice.

[9:12] Okay, so moral virtue and moral vice, for that matter, has to be a habit with choice in some way, and that's where Aristotle, after he he defines moral virtue in Book Two, he takes up in the beginning of Book Three choice, right? Okay, and he defends the man is free choice, but he wants to know what choice exactly is, right? So

[9:42] it's a habit with choice. Perhaps you could even say perhaps it's a habit of choosing, right? Okay. So when the bottle is put in front of the moderate man and the intemperate man, the one man will choose to drink a certain amount. and the other man will choose to drink a certain amount And the other man would choose another mouth right? Virtually inclined to do this, right?

[10:19] Now, for the next part of the definition of moral virtue, Aristotle makes an interesting comparison of moral virtue to human art. Any comparison we could make to science later on, too, but he makes a comparison to human art.

[10:47] Let's take some very simple example of human art. If the leg of this table here, or the leg of one of these chairs, got broken, right?

[11:00] And the carpenter is going to, by the art of carpentry, replace that leg, right? And so he cuts a piece of wood, right? Now, if he cuts it too long, it's not going to work well, is it? He cuts it too short, it's not going to work. So he's got to cut it just the right length, right? There's one length that's just right, and then other lengths that are too much, or other ones that are too what?

[11:32] Little, right? Okay. Or suppose you're going to cook a steak on the grill, huh? I hope you know a steak has to be still pink. Okay, bloody red. But should be, you know, you can cook a piece of meat too much, right? Or too little, right? Still quivering. Yeah. My cousin used to say, yeah, he wants the steak so rare that when he sticks the fork in, he'll say moo.

[12:03] That was his way of emphasizing the way he wanted. The same way when you put salt and pepper or some other seasoning on there. Now they still talk about the time when Daddy put too much pepper in the soup and no one could take it, huh? Um. So there can be too much or too little salt or pepper or some other seasoning, huh?

[12:28] So you can see this in the practical arts, right? That the good is in the middle between two extremes, one of which is bad because it's too much, and the other is too little, right? Now is the same thing true about the fine arts?

[12:46] And we have letters of Mozart where he talks about the golden mean. In the famous conversation between the emperor there and Mozart, and Emperor says, "Too many notes, Mozart." And Mozart said, "Just as many as are needed." Of course, you often see about Mozart, he knows when to what. Stop. Stop. Yeah, yeah.

[13:11] There's a good Sherlock Holmes story there, the Norwood Builder, and if you ever read that story, but a man has got an in for a woman, and he's trying to make it appear as if her son has committed a murder, and he makes it look very convincing, huh? And even Sherlock Holmes, for a little bit of while, is deceived by this man, huh? But then he goes too far, right?

[13:35] And Holmes discovers it, right? But towards the end of the story, when Holmes is recounting, you know, and so on, said he lacked. He was pretty clever guy, this guy. He had to be fooled for a while, but he lacked the supreme gift of the artist, knowing when to stop.

[13:53] I have a book on Venice there, and he's talking about the excellence of Titian's paintings, right? I was kind of struck by the fact that he says, above all, he knew when to stop.

[14:09] So, is this true about moral virtue as well? That it's in the middle between something that is too much and something that is too what? Little, okay. So that's the third part that Aristotle from the definition. It's a habit with choice, but in the middle.

[14:41] Okay, that's the third part. You might say the definition. Okay. So I can get angry too much, right? Or if you're using my little grandchildren there for target practice, I can get angry too little, right? You see, so that the virtue lies in the middle, right? But then Aristotle sees a distinction here. What do you mean by the middle? Do you mean the middle of the thing,

[15:27] or do you mean the middle towards us? If you put the bottle of whiskey on the table, right, is a virtuous thing for me to do is drink half the bottle because that's the middle of. Or you put the turkey on the table for Thanksgiving and cut it in half, and I eat half the turkey, right? Is the middle of the thing? No, no, it's the middle towards us, right?

[15:58] Okay. So that's the fourth part of the definition, huh? It's a habit with choice in the middle. But the middle towards us, what is neither too much nor too little for me, right? In these circumstances, huh? And of course, that's not the same for every man, right?

[16:23] And it's not the same in all circumstances, right? If I'm going to operate on you today, huh? Maybe I shouldn't have any whiskey at all. You see, if I'm going to drive tonight, you know, maybe I shouldn't have whiskey or very little, right? If I'm going to relax at home and go down the hall and go to bed after a bit of whiskey, I want to relax.

[16:50] Maybe I can have more whiskey, right? But you need your reason to determine. Yeah, yeah. So that's the next part and the last part, the definition, right? It's a habit with choice in the middle towards us, as determined

[17:12] by right reason. Okay. When he gets to the virtues of reason, he'll talk about what he means by right reason, huh? It's what they call prudence, or what they call in English foresight, huh? Okay. But it's the virtue that takes into account yourself and all the circumstances, huh? So if you bump me in the hall, I get angry. Not very. Well, you see, anger doesn't know whether it was an accident that you bumped me, right?

[17:44] Oh. Or whether it was intentional, right? Or whether you're simply being careless, right? Or if one of these kids, like in high school, you know, goes down the hall bumping everybody. See, but reason has to take into account, you know, whether any anger or how much anger is what appropriate. Appropriate when somebody bumps you in the hall, maybe no anger at all if it's purely accident, right?

[18:09] If somebody scares me, I say, "Well, watch where you're going," you know. But if somebody's, you know, and purposeful going on and and whacking people and trying to give them a sore arm and so on, then that might require a little more anger, right, to rectify things, huh? Okay.

[18:26] And again, how much food you eat would depend upon what circumstances, right? If you're a working man, you might need more food, right? If you're a big man, you might need more food, right? Or if the day is Thanksgiving and Grandma's gone all out, and you may have to eat more than you normally would eat, right? So it might not be vicious to eat more on Thanksgiving than you would normally eat for a dinner, huh?

[18:54] Although some people I know as they go around the table, it's very uncomfortable, right? Okay. So this is a definition that Aristotle works out. It's a habit with choice in the middle towards us, as determined by right reason. Perhaps you could say it's even a habit of choosing what is in the middle towards us, right, as determined by right reason.

[19:26] Aristotle goes through the all of moral virtues we mentioned last time to see if this is correct, right? Okay. To see if each of the moral virtues is in between what two vices, right? One of which is too much, and the other is too little, right? Okay. And so let's go through them a little bit and to see, kind of more concretely, that moral virtue is in fact a habit in the middle between two extremes that are bad, right? One being too much and one being too little,

[20:15] and not only will Aristotle show that, going to each of them, but he also consider that the virtue is usually not equidistant between the two vices. It's closer to one than to the other, right? But in the case of some virtues, it's closer to too much. Other cases, it's closer to too little. Okay. Now, the first virtue the Greeks talk about always is courage, right? I think I mentioned how both the Latin word virtue, which means manhood in Latin, or the Greek word arete, which today is the god of war, right?

[21:08] This is the most honored of the virtues. The medal of honor is the greatest honor, right? And that's given only for the virtue of what? Courage, right? It's not given for being just all your life or being moderate in eating and drinking and so on, right? But it's given for courage. So he begins with that virtue, right? Now,

[21:39] cowardice or cowardliness, right, is one vice opposed to courage, right? Or the coward is opposed to the courageous man, right? Now, there's another vice which in English is called foolhardiness.

[22:12] Okay. And the coward is what too little, right? He doesn't risk his life when he should, right? The foolhardy man risks his life unnecessarily. Okay, not for a sufficient reason. Fools rush in, right? Um.

[22:40] Now, is courage equally distant from these two? Or is it closer to one than the other? Closer to one. What? It's closer to foolhardiness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So maybe we can represent that truth by a short line between foolhardiness and courage, and. A longer line, right? Okay. So we think of the courageous man as more the opposite of the coward than of the foolhardy man, right? Okay.

[23:25] But now a foolhardy man, as he gets a little bit older, a little more experienced, a foolhardy man can more easily become a courageous man than a coward becomes what? A courageous man, right?

[23:44] Because the young are more hot blooded than the old, right? So if in my hot blooded age I'm a coward, what happens to be an old man, right? See. But if I'm foolhardy because I'm a hot headed young man, and as he get a little bit older and smarter and see the dangers involved in things, right? Then I might what? Stop courageous. Yeah. Okay. So they have the early letters of Washington, you know, where the bullets are going by him, you know, and what a sweet sound it is, you know, and so on.

[24:20] And of course later in life they asked him about this, and he said, "Well, I was, I was young then." Or, like Winston Churchill said, you know, there are a few things more exhilarating than being shot at and missed.

[24:35] So that's the, you know, the bravado of the young man. See, but Washington was not going to, you know, risk his life. I mean, risk his life unnecessarily later on, right? But

[24:50] okay, so courage is in fact a habit in the middle, right? Between two vices, but not exactly in the middle, but closer to one than the other, right? Okay. And notice how the foolhardy man seems to be lacking in reason, right? The coward seems to using his head, right? I'm going to get out here. It's a dangerous place to be. The coward seems more thoughtful than the foolhardy man, right?

[25:27] So it's interesting. The foolhardy man is named from folly, right? Even though he's closer to the what? Virtue. Now the second virtue we take up is also concerned in a way with our body, right? But courage is concerned with the emotions about what threatens the very life of our body, right? A fear and then boldness, right? But moderation is concerned with the emotions about food and sex that are concerned with things that preserve the body, right, or preserve the species, huh?

[26:06] Now sometimes we use the term moderation. Sometimes you see the word temperance. I think maybe the word moderation is a better word. Now Aristotle says here we have names for the what excess, right?

[26:33] We don't seem to have names for the defect. He says the reason for that, he says, is that it's so rare. In other words, it's so natural to pursue what is pleasing to your senses.

[26:53] Um, you have to worry about a child eating too much candy or too much ice cream or something of this sort, and you don't have to worry about them not eating enough. Okay, so Aristotle says we'll have to invent a name for the vice. here's one one, right? In defect, and he actually coins a word made out of what sense and negation of sense, right? Without sense, okay, as if they you know didn't sense the delightfulness of candy or food or whatever it is, right?

[27:29] Okay. Um, in our tradition, you know, we might speak of maybe a what puritan or something, right? Okay. We get arrested for kissing a girl or something, right? Okay, or you know, people who

[27:49] think it's wrong to drink, right? You know, any alcoholic beverages, huh? Okay. I told you the story of the guy I used to work with in the package store there, Charlie Swisher, and Charlie, you know, was a smoker, right? And he was up there at the Lancaster there at the Seventh Day Adventist, I guess, is, and he ran out of cigarettes. So he went into the kind of the college store there, right?

[28:15] He took some cigarettes, and the woman says, "We don't have any cigarettes. We're all good people here." So let's call it puritanism, right? Or Aristotle, but you're inventing a word for it, right? Okay. Um, now over here you have different names, right? Like you have gluttony, right, for in one case and the drunkard and so on, and okay, Don Juan, what to call him? Okay.

[28:51] Now, which is moderation closer to? Is it equidistant from these two? No, it's more like what? The puritan. Yeah, yeah. So make a short line between that and the puritan, huh? Okay.

[29:15] And we'll make a long line between gluttony and what? Fornicness and so on in moderation, right? They're more opposed to it, right? So he says in the middle, we don't mean equidistant from the extremes, right? But it's in between something that is too much and something that is too what? Too little, huh? I'm going to use a general name here. It's intemperance, right?

[29:54] But notice, when you use the word intemperance, renaming it from the negation of temperance, aren't we? But we're applying temperance to the man who eats too much, or drinks too much, or wenches too much, right? Okay. As if that is much more opposed to temperance than the man who doesn't enjoy these things at all, right? Okay. So it's more opposed to that, right?

[30:25] Now, who seems to be the fool more? The man doesn't drink at all. The man drinks too much. Too much, too much. Yeah, yeah. The same way I mentioned how the the word "fond," you know, say I'm fond of the girl, but originally the word "fond" f o n d means foolish. You can still see that meaning in Shakespeare, right? When you're acting stupid or foolish, not about a girl, you know, that's you're fond, right?

[31:01] You're foolish. So the original meaning of "fond" to be fond of a girl is to be acting foolishly over the girl. That's interesting, right?

[31:18] So courage is more like the foolish extreme, right? And moderation is more what opposed to the foolish, right? Okay. Do you see that? Okay.

[31:38] So the man who's drinking too much is the one who's acting like a fool. The designated driver, whoever he is, doesn't act like the fool. He's acting like a sober man among drunk men, right? You see.

[31:53] That's interesting because if you read Plato's dialogue, the Protagoras, beautiful dialogue, and it's very interesting for a lot of reasons. Dialogue. But Protagoras, the famous Protagoras, has come to town, right? And the dialogue begins with a young man knocking on the door of Socrates. Socrates, Socrates, Protagoras is in town. Oh, he is, Socrates. Yes, yes. Introduce me to him, Socrates, will you? Well, it's you know five o'clock in the morning.

[32:31] Yeah, go there. You know, let's wait a little bit. You know. And Socrates has a little conversation with the, young man. Before they go to the house, he says, "What do you know about Protagoras? " Well, he doesn't even know anything about Protagoras except everybody's talking about Protagoras. And so Socrates goes to the house where Protagoras is staying, and he engages in a conversation with Protagoras.

[32:54] It's very interesting, right? Among other things, to see should one take Protagoras as a teacher? But I can't go into the dialogue now. But one thing that comes up. They get into a conversation about what you and I might call the the four cardinal virtues, but Socrates has five virtues there actually. He has prudence or foresight, which is kind of like a wisdom, and he has justice and courage and moderation, but also piety, right?

[33:30] Okay. And Socrates asks, Protagoras, are these five really different things, or are they just names of the same thing? You know. And Protagoras says, "Well, their names are different things, like the nose and the ear, and all these different parts of virtue." Then Socrates starts to develop an argument, and he develops an argument that moderation and wisdom are the same thing.

[34:11] And the way he develops the argument is that each thing has only one opposite. No, the opposite of wisdom is what foolishness, yeah, folly.

[34:28] But moderation is also opposed to what foolishness, right? So if you have only one opposite, right, then foolishness can only have one opposite, right, and therefore moderation, wisdom, must be the same thing. But Socrates doesn't try to argue that way that courage and wisdom are the same thing, right? Because folly or foolishness doesn't seem to be the opposite of courage in the way in which what it does seem to be the opposite of moderation.

[35:09] It's interesting how all the great thinkers see this connection between wisdom and what moderation. So I just mentioned that right that Socrates understands that difference right between courage and moderation that moderation is more like wisdom than what courage, right? In the in the royal fragment of Heraclitus, you know, he says moderation is the greatest virtue. Well, it certainly isn't the greatest moral virtue, but then he says, "And wisdom is to speak the truth and to act in accord with nature, giving here there too."

[35:52] He sees a connection between moderation and what wisdom, right? Now the next virtues that Aristotle takes up, courage and moderation are taken up in the second half of Book Three after he discusses what choice is, right? And they're very great virtues. The whole Book Five is devoted to justice, right? But then in Book Four, there's these somewhat lesser virtues, huh? And the first one he takes up is liberality, is called in Latin or in Greek, or generosity, we could call it English, right?

[36:37] And this is concerned now not with your own body, but with your possessions, right? But this is close to your body because you need these things to support your body, right? So liberty or generosity,

[36:55] not to be confused with liberal politics, right? There's a rule there in logic, you know, that one way to think out the senses of a word is to look at the opposite of the word, right?

[37:12] And of course, in politics, liberal is the opposite of what conservative, right? In science, the liberal arts are the opposite of the servile, right? Okay. And here, liberal is the opposite of what being stingy, especially, right? Okay. So you have in a kind of excess here, you have extravagance,

[37:41] and then you have stinginess. Okay. So I can spend too much money for me in the circumstances, right? Or what? Too little, right? I remember seeing reading news at one time. It was in India, you know, one of these maharajas, his son or his daughter was getting married, right? So he decided, you know, to give a donation to some hospital or some charitable organization, right? And of course, this guy is you know, famously wealthy, right?

[38:19] And the donation was something like twenty-five dollars or something like that. No. Well, this I would say was you know, too little for him, right?

[38:30] Well, let's say it's our our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, you know. We're going out tonight to dinner today, right? Where are we going? Oh, McDonald's. Well, if that's all I can afford, that'll be okay, right? I can probably afford more than that, right? So you can spend too little, but you can also spend right more than you can what? Yeah. Or the or in the circumstances calls for, right?

[38:57] Okay. Now is liberality or generosity equidistant from extravagance? The man who spends more than he should, or the stingy man who spends less than he should. No, he's closer to which one? Extravagance. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting, right? Yeah.

[39:24] So we draw a sharp line here, right? And a long line, stinginess, right? That's interesting, right? Now, which of the extremes seems to be more like folly? Extreme. Yeah, it's interesting, right? The same thing we saw here with courage, right?

[39:51] So the virtue of courage and the virtue of liberality is closer to the extreme that seems more foolish. But moderation is what closer to the what? Yeah, the one doesn't seem to be foolish, right? And and further opposed to that. So Aristotle is nuanced, right, in the sense he realizes that when you say that virtue or moral virtue is a habit in the middle towards us, right? It doesn't mean the middle of the thing.

[40:25] It doesn't mean equidistant from the extremes, right? But it is in between two extremes. But sometimes it's closer to the excess. Sometimes to the what defect, right?

[40:43] Shakespeare has an interesting metaphor there in the sonnets where he calls truth stingy. Now you go to somebody's house and you praise this and the that that they cooked, right? And usually more than it deserves, right? To be polite and to be agreeable and so on, and to be invited back again and so on. My

[41:12] brother Richard, there when he first went to eat at his in-laws, you know, before getting married, he you know being an actor, he praised the meal, right? So his mother-in-law got the idea that this was his favorite meal. So every time he comes, he gets the same meal.

[41:30] Punishment of that case. But he calls truth stingy, right? Kind of interesting. So it's it's it's like this to stinginess. Now there's another virtue which we mentioned, which is like liberality, except is concerned with large sums, right? That affect the common good, right? And that virtue is called munificence, huh?

[42:10] So the man might give, you know, endow a chair at the university, right? Or you might, you know, pay for a huge museum or something, right? Or a collection of a museum, right? Okay, large sums of money, right? Again, you have an excess there, right? Where you see sometimes, you know, these wealthy men give their money to very foolish causes, right?

[42:44] Um, as you get one, give a lot of money to United Nations, you know, for their moral practices and so on. But again, it could be like this this Maharaj, right? Who doesn't come up to the occasion? Who's but the same. Basic principle is that, huh?

[43:08] Then you have the virtue of what? Philotimia. It's called in Greek, "love of honor." Actually, the one he takes up next is magnanimity, and then philotimia reversed in order.

[43:26] Because magnanimity is concerned with great honors, philotimia with the little ones. But just take magnanimity, the principle, in there. It means great soul, right? The magnanimous man does great things, and all the virtues. A friend of mine was directing a doctoral thesis on magnanimity, right? And comparing Aristotle's, you know, account of the magnanimous man with men called magnanimous, right? Doesn't quite match up, you know. Christ seemed to be the only person who was magnanimous.

[44:03] But now, magnanimity, or great soul, is in between what? The small-souled man, right? And then the man who's what? Proud and blown up, right? Beyond his in glory, right? Huh? So magnanimity again is in between two extremes, huh? Okay. The magnanimous man is a man who desires to do great things and is capable of great things. Okay. While the small-souled person, right, thinks himself not capable of what he's really capable of, right?

[44:47] But then you have the opposite extreme, where someone thinks himself capable of greater things, than he is able to. do. And so, again, is in between two what? places. Sometimes you also see the small-souled. Don't you see that sometimes described or written as mean-spirited? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not a nasty person, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Spiritual

[45:24] books use that. And you have that same thing with smaller honors, right? Seeking more or less than that. Now, the next virtue Aristotle takes up is mildness, right?

[45:42] Some people get angry too much, too often. So we might call that irascibility or something, right? Okay. But then it's just kind of a milquetoast that gets trampled on all the time, right? And doesn't stand up, right? So you can get angry. When you shouldn't, or more than you should, right? But it's also possible to be disposed to not what stand up for your rights, as they say, right?

[46:14] And not have anger when you should have some, right? And of course, even our Lord, we see anger in the Gospel accounts, right? When he's dealing with the hardness of heart of the Pharisees and so on.

[46:29] So mildness then is in between two what places, huh? It's interesting, huh? Is mildness more like courage or more like moderation? Moderation. Yeah, that's why in the Summa Theologiae in the Secunda Secundae, when Thomas takes up the cardinal virtues there—justice and courage and temperance and so on—the other virtues he takes up attached to one of the cardinal ones because they have a certain likeness to that, right?

[47:07] So he takes up mildness, actually takes up moderation. Okay. We saw that in the love and friendship there, of course, there the very wrath of love. Okay. But anger, like the sexual desire and so on, love is a very strong emotion, right? That needs principally to be what moderated, right? Okay. Even in Aristotle, we see you know gymnastic and music and the fine arts as both a part of education.

[47:39] Gymnastic is more related to courage, and music and the fine arts to moderating the what passions, huh? Okay. In the case of courage, you're apt to run away from what you should approach, right? While in the case of the matter of moderation, you're apt to go for something you shouldn't go for, or go for it more than you than you should go for it, right? Okay. So in courage, you have to be kind of what strengthened, right?

[48:15] And therefore, we sometimes call courage fortitude, right? Or in moderation or temperance, you need to be what restrained, to be pulled back, right? Okay. The same with anger. People are more apt to go to excess in anger, to get angry when they shouldn't, or to get more angry than they should. And that's a matter of experience, right? Okay. Now, after these virtues, Aristotle takes up those three that are concerned with something he's called the social virtues, the more daily life, and one virtue was concerned with what.

[49:02] Serious things, friendliness, and another with the what, the laughable, right? Another with what, being truthful, show yourself that you are, right? Okay. Well, now in the matter of laughter, is there excess and defect? See,

[49:25] Shakespeare talks about that in *Love's Labour's Lost Lost*, right? There's some who won't laugh if Nestor says the joke is funny, right? Nestor's a very what, old and reverent man who's lived what, three generations or three lives compared to us, right? And he thinks something is funny. It is funny. See, but then there are people who are, you know, you got a high school classroom and they're laughing at everything, right?

[49:48] And you can't hardly control them, right? They're out of hand. Okay. So people, or we talk a lot of times about how maybe this joke is not suitable in mixed company or something of that sort and so on. So there's there's a virtue concern, right? With joking about what it's appropriate to joke. Joke about and what's not appropriate to joke about are in these circumstances and not in those.

[50:17] That's what I come down to. The wake demonstration, me cracking jokes all the time, or something that sort, right? It might be appropriate on some other occasion for me to be cracking jokes.

[50:33] The same thing true about friendliness. Can you be too friendly? What do you think? So you can be not friendly enough. Americans would understand that, but can you be too friendly?

[50:52] Dropping in your neighbor all the time. You know, know people who've had this problem with the neighbor. Sometimes I haven't had that, but I know people who have had. You know, that neighbor was always dropping in. You know, for a friendly way, but I mean, you know, you've got things to do and so on. What do you? How do you handle this, right? You know.

[51:15] I remember my mother talking about you know the neighborhood, you know, where if someone was in need, people were right there to help you, right? But then always, you know, jumping in your door all the time. So is that true?

[51:34] Sometimes you get a salesman who's over friendly. I remember going in the store all the time to. look this up with my wife, you know, and and so as soon as you hear my wife's name, so oh, that's my wife's name. Maybe maybe she is maybe she isn't, but I suspect he says it to everybody. whether her name is June or Judy or. Elizabeth or what? That's his wife's name, you know.

[51:57] I mean, going kind of you know out of his way to be too too friendly, huh? So actually, friendliness is a virtue in between two what? Extremes, right? Okay.

[52:19] And again, with truthfulness, right? Truthfulness is the virtue whereby, in my words and deeds, I present myself as I am. Right. I don't pretend or try to give the impression that I'm more than I am. Right. Or that I'm what. Less than I am, right? Okay. So we kind of joke about Socrates, right? Because Socrates is famous for irony, right? For presenting himself as being less than maybe he is, right?

[52:50] Because he's always saying, "I don't know this," right? But. Kierkegaard wrote his master's thesis, was it, on the irony of Socrates? Was that a vice in Socrates?

[53:09] What does St. Teresa of Avila says humility is the truth. What's that story about Padre Pio there, and the stigmata, you know, and some nitwit psychologist is saying, you know, he's thought too much about the wounds of Christ. Oh no! Yeah, I think Padre Pio thought too much of this psychologist and his his theory, you know. You know, he told him, told him to think about a cow as if he turned into a cow.

[53:44] Yeah, yeah, get the horns or something. So he's always thinking about, you know, you know, how come they're growing horns, you know, if this is they're thinking about the horns of the bull all the time or something like that. But I mean, that's not a lack of humility on the part of Padre Pio, you see? I mean, there would be false humility, and that would be pretending to be less than you are, right?

[54:09] I mean, he, doesn't say. Well, maybe I'm a nut, you know. No, he's not saying that. So you see what Aristotle is doing there, right? Huh? He's defining moral virtue. He works out a definition of it, right? And then he goes through all the moral virtues in particular and shows how they're in between what two extremes, right? And there's something like that, as he mentions, and makes a comparison to in the arts, right, where the good is in between two.

[54:47] Now, is there something like that even in the the sciences there, where you're trying to know the truth, huh? In spite of it, yeah. And you hear Shakespeare saying this, right, or like in King Lear, there, Kent says, "All my reports go with the modest truth, nor more, nor clipped, but so." You know, there's a false death set, right. If. They say more or less than the truth.

[55:16] they are villains and the sons of darkness, right? But what does it mean to say more or less than the truth? If I ask you what three plus four is, you could either say six or eight. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or less than the truth, but more generally, huh? There's two ways of being mistaken. One is to say that what is is not, and the other is to say what is not is.

[55:47] So when I say that what is is not, I'm subtracting from the truth. I'm saying less than the truth. If I say that what is not is. I'm adding to the truth, right? Okay. And so, in the courtroom, this is referred to. Most people don't understand that, but it is referred to. I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. To the average person, those second and third phrases just seem to be repeating and emphasizing that I'm going to tell the truth, right?

[56:28] But they're doing more than that. When I say I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, means I'm not going to depart from the truth by saying that what is is not, and nothing but the truth. I'm not going to depart from the truth by saying what is not is. Now, I always give a simple example. Maybe you've seen me use it before, but just use it again.

[56:54] Suppose I want to know who was at the bar. I'm the bartender. Who was at the bar last night, right? And let's say that John

[57:07] and Thomas were at the bar, but nobody else, right? So, if I tell the truth, I will say that John and Thomas were there and nobody else, right? But if I add, let's say, Paul to this, right, then I'm departing from the truth, aren't I? I'm saying who was not there was there, or if I say

[57:37] that just John was there because Thomas is a good customer, we didn't hold. Just John was there. Then I'm departing from the truth too, right?

[57:48] So the truth is that John and Thomas were there. It's false to say John, Thomas, and Paul were there, right? It's false to say just John was there. So I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, which would be opposed to cutting the truth, and nothing but the truth. I neither add to the truth nor subtract from the truth, right? So truth is sometimes compared to what the moral virtue, right?

[58:21] Or the virtues of reason that are concerned with truth, that they're in between two extremes. You see that you know very clearly in theology, you know, where Thomas is always say contrasting, like with the Trinity, contrasting Arius with what Sabellius, right? And Arius is saying that as there are three persons, so there are three natures. He's departing from the truth there. He's saying he's adding to the truth, right?

[58:54] He's adding two natures that aren't there. But Titus is saying, as there's one nature, there's only one person. Called by different names. Yes, sir. In the same way, when they get to the Trinity, right?

[59:14] You know, you depart from the truth by saying it's just the reverse of the Trinity, right? That as there is two natures, so there's two persons there. Now I'm adding to the truth, right? I'm saying what is not the second person is. Or I can go with Eutychus and the Monophysites and say, as there's one person, there's only one nature there.

[59:41] The word was made by, you know, it follows up, and then I'm what saying what is is not the second nature, which is there, is not there. Yes, sir. So if the truth, I was looking at Thomas the other day there, he says, talking about even the language we use has to be very careful, right? He says that we proceed. Temperate, he says, right? In the tres in the Trinity, right?

[1:00:11] Temperate, temperately, right? Moderately between Arius and Sabellius You're talking about the Trinity there, right? If we speak these ways, we're going to, you know, maybe fall into Arius's mistake. And if we use these ways of speaking, we might fall into Sabellius, right? So we have to be very careful how we speak, right? But notice the word he uses, temperate, huh? Stuck with that, huh?

[1:00:45] So there is a likeness between saying that the good in moral virtue and in moral action is in the middle, right? And saying that in human art, whether it be the practical arts like cooking a steak or the fine arts like Titian or Mozart or somebody,

[1:01:07] or even the what theoretical virtues, the theoretical science, the looking sciences, which are aiming at truth, there is a likeness in all of them to the good being a middle between two extremes, right?

[1:01:28] That's more clear, I see, in Shakespeare's way of speaking there, right? Where Falstaff says, "If they say more or less than the truth, They are villains and sons of darkness." He's a big liar himself. It's more clear than the formula we use in the courtroom, right? Buff and Faddie explained that formula as we're getting off jury duties. We are this kind of jury. What are you asking me, me?

[1:02:00] Now, keep the Aristotle here. Pass them down here. That's enough. We got enough there. Enough copies. I don't know how to count, you know. See how ambitious they're, right? Let's take a little break before we look at the Aristotle textures and begin to look at the. This is Aristotle's proemium to ethics and political philosophy, and then a little bit of his text there. He's talking about the the definition of the end or purpose of man, right?

[1:03:09] I mean, a little bit of this before we go on to maybe wisdom, right?