Hearing about virtue as a mean between two vices was pretty insane to me (in that it blew my mind). It's something that I could see the shadow of but never really had the words to say it. I also love that Aristotle says, "Hey, don't just think about this stuff, actually live it." Here's to trying to grow in virtue!
For those of us with the goal of becoming better people, the end of Book 2 leaves us with an important call to evaluate our own tendencies.
“But one must examine what we ourselves readily incline toward, for some of us naturally incline to some things, others to others.”
By identifying the pleasures and pains associated with particular activities, we can recognize the direction in which we lean and over correct in the opposite direction, therefore finding the mean more easily.
Overall I find Book 2 to be a bit more straightforward in terms of my ability to follow from point to point with less need to pause, re-read, etc. Looking forward to Book 3 and beyond!
That's a crucial point for Aristotle. At one point he uses the example of an archer: some archers tend toward the left, some the right, some aim too high, etc., and so a good archery instructor must teach the student to overcorrect at first in order to recalibrate his aim.
Yes, I found this to be a helpful bit of advice as well, and combined with the notion that the virtue is closer to one of the extremes, Aristotle gives a couple of ways to help one hone in on the "golden mean" as Jared put it.
I find it especially pertinent at this stage to ask the question you also asked: why are we doing this? For modern readers interested in meta-ethics, the conclusions of Book I can be so alienating that the rest of the work might only seem to offer an anthropological study. But is that it or is there something of real ethical substance for us to salvage? I think it can go two ways and I'm pulled by both.
One path is to reject the argument Aristotle gives for his teleology but to try to substantiate a teleology by some other means (as many philosophers have tried to do in the past few decades). I suspect that this would in the end entail a quite different moral logic from the one he lays out, in which case his discussion can only really be taken for an example of the effort, rather than as a lasting ethics in itself, and the details all become a bit academic.
A second path is to reject the need for a moral foundation at all and to find in Aristotle a way out of relativism. The way it strikes me to do this is kind of Wittgensteinian. Whereas modern readers are primed to demand of Aristotle, "tell me what 'temperance' is by definition and prove to me that the pursuit of it is good," the reply could be, "it's not sensible to ask what temperance is abstractly or to demand proof that it constitutes well-being; 'temperance' is just a way of talking we have for something we all strive for and our project here is to understand how to get our behaviour in alignment with our strivings."
Although Wittgenstein's skepticism is not fully compatible with Aristotle's foundations, there is some resonance with Aristotle's focus on practice rather than theory. Particularly where he says that "we are inquiring not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good," I don't think he's saying that knowing what virtue is should only be a preliminary to its application, I think he's saying that we won't examine the nature of virtue at all because it has no practical value. Though this sounds strange, what I take it to mean is that the proper flow of argument is not to work towards a definition of (e.g.) temperance as abstention from indulgence with subsequent discussion of how to achieve it, but rather to take some intuitive idea of temperance for granted and to use abstention from indulgence as just one of many possible examples through which we can hone our intuitions.
So, I think what Aristotle gives us in these chapters is the start of an analysis of what we mean when we use moral language, rather than a foundation for a moral system, but it takes some practice to think in these terms when you come from a culture of Christianity and utilitarianism.
This is my first time reading Aristotle, so I'm withholding judgment on the Nicomachean Ethics as the foundation of a moral system, but I will say that so far I can at least see some value here already as an example of a type of framework for living an examined life, particularly for those who are new to the idea.
I don't think I will need to fully agree with all of Aristotle's definitions of the virtues (and I almost certainly will not) to see the benefit in approaching one's life in the manner he seems to be promoting (e.g. cultivate both an appreciation for and a habit of doing "the right thing" as often as possible, and the result is likely to be a happier and more fulfilling life).
Even for those of us who have already given much thought and consideration as to how we approach our lives, I think exploring frameworks like the one I see emerging from Aristotle here is worthwhile, if only by helping us to organize and clarify our own thoughts or approaches, even if we ultimately insert our own virtues or definitions thereof in place of Aristotle's.
This may be what you are getting at by calling it an "analysis of what we mean when we use moral language," but to my mind that undersells its value as a framework for evaluating our lives and working towards a higher degree of happiness/flourishing.
I think that's largely fair (and although I like trying to systematise things, my impulse to engage with Aristotle arises out of personal practice rather than philosophical theory), but I think perhaps we need to be careful to not undersell him in another way. I think it's important that, as much as he talks about individual action and the contemplative life, he still sees politics as the highest art, and his ethics as rooted in a universal human character.
If we take him too much as inspiration just for our own personal story of well-being, I think there is a danger of that becoming too self-interested, such that we might not engage in full sincerity with his ideas when some of the virtues happen to be less aligned with contemporary individualism (I'm not suspecting you in particular of this - I'm just stating the risk). So, when I suggest that Aristotle might provide an analysis of what we mean when we use moral language, I would put a very heavy emphasis on the 'we', and the idea that anything we have to say about the virtues should ultimately be universal and useful to society.
Clearly, I have my own preferences about what ethical analysis should be for, and far be it from me to police how other people should read him, but I do think that, at a purely textual level, it would take a great deal of cherry-picking to fit Aristotle into the modern, Western self-improvement chic that has been developed around Stoicism, Epicureanism, Buddhism etc.
I completely agree with you here. There is a definite tendency to strip the importance of politics and community from ancient philosophy when applying it to our modern pursuits of self-improvement, and we should be careful of this.
While I do think it's understandable in a way for a person living in our modern global society to despair of actually being able to make any meaningful difference in politics/society and therefore tend toward focusing on oneself, I believe it is nevertheless incumbent on all of us to be cognizant of that impulse and try to consider how we live our lives in the context of being a part of a larger community.
If we are careful to view ourselves as intrinsically part of a larger whole, I think there is less risk that a focus on personal improvement will ignore the well-being of society in the process.
It seems to me that there is a third class of human virtue as well, besides intellectual and moral: aesthetic virtues, such as having good taste. Like the intellectual and moral virtues, good taste has too be cultivated as well. You have to read good books in order to develop a taste for good books, drink good wine in order to develop a taste for good wine, and listen to good music in order to develop a taste for good music.
Recently I have been putting into practice a long-term plan to drastically reduce my social media usage (Twitter and YouTube being the main culprits). One thought that has been reeking havoc in the back of my mind is the fear that I am overcorrecting. After all there is a lot of value to be found on YouTube (like Jared's channel!) But after years of not doing the amount of reading, writing and other meaningful things in my life I would like to be doing, I really want to get on top of this problem. Reading the very end of Book II felt therapeutic to me in the way it resolved my fear of overcorrection.
"This is enough, then, to make it clear that in every case the intermediate state is praised, but we must sometimes incline towards the excess, sometimes towards the deficiency; for that is the easiest way to hit the intermediate and good condition."
I know I have been too far in excess with social media, so perhaps the only way to find the intermediate state is to keep moving towards deficiency until it becomes clear I have crossed out of the golden intermediate zone into deficiency. That's the hope anyways!
I also find this useful. Try and limit as much as possibile the usage, replace It with something else, something more valuable. You wil then start to lose more and more interest in using social media, and maybe after a while restart using them in a more moderate way while enjoying their usage more.
(Sorry of my english isnt perfect, It isnt my First language)
Since studying Aristotle is being done with the aim to better ourselves I found it pretty interesting to think on how it contrasts with modern self help books (whose claim can loosely be said to be the same). There was a point in Book 2 (a couple of chapters before the end) where I felt like I grasped his definition of virtue and how it lies between the middle of two vices. Now, whereas a lot of modern self help would leave it once the point was stated, and comprehension seemingly acquired, Aristotle puts in the effort to prove what he believes.
To me this attention to detail makes all of the difference. I actually feel that what I am reading has been THOROUGHLY thought out and forces me to not just absorb what is being said but to actually analyze how I feel about it. It is invigorating knowing that we are going to get even more of this level of substance.
Book 2 was a lot easier for me to comprehend. I felt at certain times that things were clicking into place, and I was able to glide through the text a little easier than with Book 1.
I liked towards the end his reflection on “overshooting” and “undershooting” the mean. Sometimes we tend towards one over the other, and there can be different reasons behind that. Same with the practical question of when aiming for this mean, if it’s better to lean toward “undershooting” or “overshooting”. And, of course, if we tend to “undershoot” that doesn’t mean we should.
It’s definitely an athletic mindset. An interesting question is how “virtues” can interact with the application of other moral systems. We can have a group of utilitarians advocate for drastically different actions given the same scenario, and this could be because of different personalities, experiences, and problem solving capability. They could have valid arguments for their reasoning, but would they all be sound? If you can’t see the outcome of each action, you’d probably want to stick with the most “virtuous” utilitarian of the lot.
The young folk at my church like to read the hip new "theological" books, and I like to tell them, regardless of author, that the greatest part of any new "theology" work is the bibliography. Always be ready to "read upstream". That's why I am finally reading Aristotle, at age 46: to wade around in a few key, still pertinent ideas in their most original, naked expression. Does this fall under your "want to feel smart and well-read" ambition above? Perhaps. But my hope in reading Aristotle, especially alongside your community, is to know Aristotle well-enough to invite him into future readings and considerations--not so much to have read Aristotle. Thanks for this journey. You're doing good work.
I’m intrigued by the introduction of the “middle way” concept, which has existed in eastern thought for about 8 centuries prior to Aristotle. Yes…I went in a little timeline research. I have wondered for many years if these concepts were introduced to the west by traveling monks who ventured out in other directions. Similar to Bodhidharma, who brought Buddhism from India to China and collided with Taoism.
It seems so appropriate that Aristotle would introduce the idea of a middle way in the form of a mathematical equation. Was this a normal form or simply a more digestible format for other thinkers of the time. (This is the first full work of Aristotle I’ve read.) He leaves room for some flex here as a virtuous person might not be rigidly in the middle and that some situations might tend toward one extreme and still be considered praiseworthy.
There were times in chapter two that I had to remind myself that Aristotle is right in order to accept his logical assertions of three things present in the soul - passions, capacities, and characteristics. A helpful technique for me to travel along when, at times, I want to poke holes in these as the only options worth consideration.
To human is to temper your passions - you're not a damned wild animal!
I think some key words from Book I need to get brought into this discussion. To be virtuous is a serious and rational undertaking, is a perfection of the soul, and is what makes us uniquely human as opposed to other entities (like wild animals).
And so, to live only at the extremes, by the base passions, would be to live primordially, like animals. The human essence is the ability and desire to temper said passions. Why? *Because we are the only ones who can, it is thus in our nature to.* (1103a, 29)
I'm sure this could deviate into grandiose claims like this is why we build cities and wear clothes and stuff - which then gets into all sorts of questions about the nature of "nature" and is wearing clothes unnatural or is everything we do that is otherwise an anomaly among all animals of the earth the nature of our being human?
BUT THEN, consider that Aristotle seems to be a firm believer in nurture over nature. Which would pose a sort of conundrum in the human condition - our nature is that we are the only ones who can overcome nature but that must be nurtured otherwise we will be stuck in a state of vice-passion nature.
"Further, it is possible to create a beautiful artistic work by chance."
Could you give me an example?
I also found these lines from chapter 9 particularly interesting:
"But one must examine what we ourselves readily incline toward, for some of us naturally incline to some things, others to other things. This will be recognizable from the pleasure and the pain that occur in our case."
It’s hard to know oneself. It requires an ever watchful eye which, like the falcon flying in circles above the field, is ready to hunt its prey.
Yes, so since we're judging art by the artifact produced (as Aristotle puts it), sometimes a beautiful artifact is created by unskilled hands or even through a random process. If you've ever trained as an artist, you'll see it early on. Every once in awhile, you'll make something beautiful, but you lack the capacity to replicate it.
Hearing about virtue as a mean between two vices was pretty insane to me (in that it blew my mind). It's something that I could see the shadow of but never really had the words to say it. I also love that Aristotle says, "Hey, don't just think about this stuff, actually live it." Here's to trying to grow in virtue!
For those of us with the goal of becoming better people, the end of Book 2 leaves us with an important call to evaluate our own tendencies.
“But one must examine what we ourselves readily incline toward, for some of us naturally incline to some things, others to others.”
By identifying the pleasures and pains associated with particular activities, we can recognize the direction in which we lean and over correct in the opposite direction, therefore finding the mean more easily.
Overall I find Book 2 to be a bit more straightforward in terms of my ability to follow from point to point with less need to pause, re-read, etc. Looking forward to Book 3 and beyond!
That's a crucial point for Aristotle. At one point he uses the example of an archer: some archers tend toward the left, some the right, some aim too high, etc., and so a good archery instructor must teach the student to overcorrect at first in order to recalibrate his aim.
Yes, I found this to be a helpful bit of advice as well, and combined with the notion that the virtue is closer to one of the extremes, Aristotle gives a couple of ways to help one hone in on the "golden mean" as Jared put it.
I find it especially pertinent at this stage to ask the question you also asked: why are we doing this? For modern readers interested in meta-ethics, the conclusions of Book I can be so alienating that the rest of the work might only seem to offer an anthropological study. But is that it or is there something of real ethical substance for us to salvage? I think it can go two ways and I'm pulled by both.
One path is to reject the argument Aristotle gives for his teleology but to try to substantiate a teleology by some other means (as many philosophers have tried to do in the past few decades). I suspect that this would in the end entail a quite different moral logic from the one he lays out, in which case his discussion can only really be taken for an example of the effort, rather than as a lasting ethics in itself, and the details all become a bit academic.
A second path is to reject the need for a moral foundation at all and to find in Aristotle a way out of relativism. The way it strikes me to do this is kind of Wittgensteinian. Whereas modern readers are primed to demand of Aristotle, "tell me what 'temperance' is by definition and prove to me that the pursuit of it is good," the reply could be, "it's not sensible to ask what temperance is abstractly or to demand proof that it constitutes well-being; 'temperance' is just a way of talking we have for something we all strive for and our project here is to understand how to get our behaviour in alignment with our strivings."
Although Wittgenstein's skepticism is not fully compatible with Aristotle's foundations, there is some resonance with Aristotle's focus on practice rather than theory. Particularly where he says that "we are inquiring not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good," I don't think he's saying that knowing what virtue is should only be a preliminary to its application, I think he's saying that we won't examine the nature of virtue at all because it has no practical value. Though this sounds strange, what I take it to mean is that the proper flow of argument is not to work towards a definition of (e.g.) temperance as abstention from indulgence with subsequent discussion of how to achieve it, but rather to take some intuitive idea of temperance for granted and to use abstention from indulgence as just one of many possible examples through which we can hone our intuitions.
So, I think what Aristotle gives us in these chapters is the start of an analysis of what we mean when we use moral language, rather than a foundation for a moral system, but it takes some practice to think in these terms when you come from a culture of Christianity and utilitarianism.
This is my first time reading Aristotle, so I'm withholding judgment on the Nicomachean Ethics as the foundation of a moral system, but I will say that so far I can at least see some value here already as an example of a type of framework for living an examined life, particularly for those who are new to the idea.
I don't think I will need to fully agree with all of Aristotle's definitions of the virtues (and I almost certainly will not) to see the benefit in approaching one's life in the manner he seems to be promoting (e.g. cultivate both an appreciation for and a habit of doing "the right thing" as often as possible, and the result is likely to be a happier and more fulfilling life).
Even for those of us who have already given much thought and consideration as to how we approach our lives, I think exploring frameworks like the one I see emerging from Aristotle here is worthwhile, if only by helping us to organize and clarify our own thoughts or approaches, even if we ultimately insert our own virtues or definitions thereof in place of Aristotle's.
This may be what you are getting at by calling it an "analysis of what we mean when we use moral language," but to my mind that undersells its value as a framework for evaluating our lives and working towards a higher degree of happiness/flourishing.
I think that's largely fair (and although I like trying to systematise things, my impulse to engage with Aristotle arises out of personal practice rather than philosophical theory), but I think perhaps we need to be careful to not undersell him in another way. I think it's important that, as much as he talks about individual action and the contemplative life, he still sees politics as the highest art, and his ethics as rooted in a universal human character.
If we take him too much as inspiration just for our own personal story of well-being, I think there is a danger of that becoming too self-interested, such that we might not engage in full sincerity with his ideas when some of the virtues happen to be less aligned with contemporary individualism (I'm not suspecting you in particular of this - I'm just stating the risk). So, when I suggest that Aristotle might provide an analysis of what we mean when we use moral language, I would put a very heavy emphasis on the 'we', and the idea that anything we have to say about the virtues should ultimately be universal and useful to society.
Clearly, I have my own preferences about what ethical analysis should be for, and far be it from me to police how other people should read him, but I do think that, at a purely textual level, it would take a great deal of cherry-picking to fit Aristotle into the modern, Western self-improvement chic that has been developed around Stoicism, Epicureanism, Buddhism etc.
I completely agree with you here. There is a definite tendency to strip the importance of politics and community from ancient philosophy when applying it to our modern pursuits of self-improvement, and we should be careful of this.
While I do think it's understandable in a way for a person living in our modern global society to despair of actually being able to make any meaningful difference in politics/society and therefore tend toward focusing on oneself, I believe it is nevertheless incumbent on all of us to be cognizant of that impulse and try to consider how we live our lives in the context of being a part of a larger community.
If we are careful to view ourselves as intrinsically part of a larger whole, I think there is less risk that a focus on personal improvement will ignore the well-being of society in the process.
It seems to me that there is a third class of human virtue as well, besides intellectual and moral: aesthetic virtues, such as having good taste. Like the intellectual and moral virtues, good taste has too be cultivated as well. You have to read good books in order to develop a taste for good books, drink good wine in order to develop a taste for good wine, and listen to good music in order to develop a taste for good music.
I was surprised aesthetics or creative arts were not mentioned either
Recently I have been putting into practice a long-term plan to drastically reduce my social media usage (Twitter and YouTube being the main culprits). One thought that has been reeking havoc in the back of my mind is the fear that I am overcorrecting. After all there is a lot of value to be found on YouTube (like Jared's channel!) But after years of not doing the amount of reading, writing and other meaningful things in my life I would like to be doing, I really want to get on top of this problem. Reading the very end of Book II felt therapeutic to me in the way it resolved my fear of overcorrection.
"This is enough, then, to make it clear that in every case the intermediate state is praised, but we must sometimes incline towards the excess, sometimes towards the deficiency; for that is the easiest way to hit the intermediate and good condition."
I know I have been too far in excess with social media, so perhaps the only way to find the intermediate state is to keep moving towards deficiency until it becomes clear I have crossed out of the golden intermediate zone into deficiency. That's the hope anyways!
I also find this useful. Try and limit as much as possibile the usage, replace It with something else, something more valuable. You wil then start to lose more and more interest in using social media, and maybe after a while restart using them in a more moderate way while enjoying their usage more.
(Sorry of my english isnt perfect, It isnt my First language)
Since studying Aristotle is being done with the aim to better ourselves I found it pretty interesting to think on how it contrasts with modern self help books (whose claim can loosely be said to be the same). There was a point in Book 2 (a couple of chapters before the end) where I felt like I grasped his definition of virtue and how it lies between the middle of two vices. Now, whereas a lot of modern self help would leave it once the point was stated, and comprehension seemingly acquired, Aristotle puts in the effort to prove what he believes.
To me this attention to detail makes all of the difference. I actually feel that what I am reading has been THOROUGHLY thought out and forces me to not just absorb what is being said but to actually analyze how I feel about it. It is invigorating knowing that we are going to get even more of this level of substance.
Book 2 was a lot easier for me to comprehend. I felt at certain times that things were clicking into place, and I was able to glide through the text a little easier than with Book 1.
I liked towards the end his reflection on “overshooting” and “undershooting” the mean. Sometimes we tend towards one over the other, and there can be different reasons behind that. Same with the practical question of when aiming for this mean, if it’s better to lean toward “undershooting” or “overshooting”. And, of course, if we tend to “undershoot” that doesn’t mean we should.
It’s definitely an athletic mindset. An interesting question is how “virtues” can interact with the application of other moral systems. We can have a group of utilitarians advocate for drastically different actions given the same scenario, and this could be because of different personalities, experiences, and problem solving capability. They could have valid arguments for their reasoning, but would they all be sound? If you can’t see the outcome of each action, you’d probably want to stick with the most “virtuous” utilitarian of the lot.
Either Book II was intrinsically easier to read than Book I, or else I'm starting to get used to Aristotle's long sentences.
If I had to guess I would say it is a little bit of both
The young folk at my church like to read the hip new "theological" books, and I like to tell them, regardless of author, that the greatest part of any new "theology" work is the bibliography. Always be ready to "read upstream". That's why I am finally reading Aristotle, at age 46: to wade around in a few key, still pertinent ideas in their most original, naked expression. Does this fall under your "want to feel smart and well-read" ambition above? Perhaps. But my hope in reading Aristotle, especially alongside your community, is to know Aristotle well-enough to invite him into future readings and considerations--not so much to have read Aristotle. Thanks for this journey. You're doing good work.
I’m intrigued by the introduction of the “middle way” concept, which has existed in eastern thought for about 8 centuries prior to Aristotle. Yes…I went in a little timeline research. I have wondered for many years if these concepts were introduced to the west by traveling monks who ventured out in other directions. Similar to Bodhidharma, who brought Buddhism from India to China and collided with Taoism.
It seems so appropriate that Aristotle would introduce the idea of a middle way in the form of a mathematical equation. Was this a normal form or simply a more digestible format for other thinkers of the time. (This is the first full work of Aristotle I’ve read.) He leaves room for some flex here as a virtuous person might not be rigidly in the middle and that some situations might tend toward one extreme and still be considered praiseworthy.
There were times in chapter two that I had to remind myself that Aristotle is right in order to accept his logical assertions of three things present in the soul - passions, capacities, and characteristics. A helpful technique for me to travel along when, at times, I want to poke holes in these as the only options worth consideration.
My brain is happy with this study.
To human is to temper your passions - you're not a damned wild animal!
I think some key words from Book I need to get brought into this discussion. To be virtuous is a serious and rational undertaking, is a perfection of the soul, and is what makes us uniquely human as opposed to other entities (like wild animals).
And so, to live only at the extremes, by the base passions, would be to live primordially, like animals. The human essence is the ability and desire to temper said passions. Why? *Because we are the only ones who can, it is thus in our nature to.* (1103a, 29)
I'm sure this could deviate into grandiose claims like this is why we build cities and wear clothes and stuff - which then gets into all sorts of questions about the nature of "nature" and is wearing clothes unnatural or is everything we do that is otherwise an anomaly among all animals of the earth the nature of our being human?
BUT THEN, consider that Aristotle seems to be a firm believer in nurture over nature. Which would pose a sort of conundrum in the human condition - our nature is that we are the only ones who can overcome nature but that must be nurtured otherwise we will be stuck in a state of vice-passion nature.
I am not sure I agree with what you wrote here:
"Further, it is possible to create a beautiful artistic work by chance."
Could you give me an example?
I also found these lines from chapter 9 particularly interesting:
"But one must examine what we ourselves readily incline toward, for some of us naturally incline to some things, others to other things. This will be recognizable from the pleasure and the pain that occur in our case."
It’s hard to know oneself. It requires an ever watchful eye which, like the falcon flying in circles above the field, is ready to hunt its prey.
Yes, so since we're judging art by the artifact produced (as Aristotle puts it), sometimes a beautiful artifact is created by unskilled hands or even through a random process. If you've ever trained as an artist, you'll see it early on. Every once in awhile, you'll make something beautiful, but you lack the capacity to replicate it.
Still need to pass the introduction, but thanks for writing this :)