So virtue is a purposive disposition,
lying in a mean that is relative to us and determined by a rational
principle, by that which a prudent man would use to determine it.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Summary
There are two kinds of virtue: intellectual and moral.
We learn intellectual virtues by instruction, and we learn moral
virtues by habit and constant practice. We are all born with the
potential to be morally virtuous, but it is only by behaving in
the right way that we train ourselves to be virtuous. As a musician
learns to play an instrument, we learn virtue by practicing, not
by thinking about it.
Because practical circumstances vary a great deal, there
are no absolute rules of conduct to follow. Instead, we can only
observe that right conduct consists of some sort of mean between
the extremes of deficiency and excess. For instance, courage consists
in finding a mean between the extremes of cowardice and rashness, though
the appropriate amount of courage varies from one situation to another.
An appropriate attitude toward pleasure and pain is one
of the most important habits to develop for moral virtue. While
a glutton might feel inappropriate pleasure when presented with
food and inappropriate pain when deprived of food, a temperate person
will gain pleasure from abstaining from such indulgence.
Aristotle proposes three criteria to distinguish
virtuous people from people who behave in the right way by accident:
first, virtuous people know they are behaving in the right way;
second, they choose to behave in the right way for the sake of being
virtuous; and third, their behavior manifests itself as part of
a fixed, virtuous disposition.
Virtue is a disposition, not a feeling or a faculty. Feelings
are not the subject of praise or blame, as virtues and vices are,
and while feelings move us to act in a certain way, virtues dispose
us to act in a certain way. Our faculties determine our capacity
for feelings, and virtue is no more a capacity for feeling than
it is a feeling itself. Rather, it is a disposition to behave in
the right way.
We can now define human virtue as a disposition to behave
in the right manner and as a mean between extremes of deficiency
and excess, which are vices. Of course, with some actions, such
as murder or adultery, there is no virtuous mean, since these actions
are always wrong. Aristotle lists some of the principle virtues
along with their corresponding vices of excess and deficiency in
a table of virtues and vices. Some extremes seem closer
to the mean than others: for instance, rashness seems closer to
courage than to cowardice. This is partly because courage is more
like rashness than cowardice and partly because most of us are more
inclined to be cowardly than rash, so we are more aware of being
deficient in courage.
