Amiability, sincerity, and wit are important
social virtues. Amiability is the virtuous quality of appropriate
social conduct. An overeagerness to please exhibits itself in obsequiousness
or flattery, while surly or quarrelsome behavior exhibits a deficiency
of amiability.
Truthfulness or sincerity is a desirable mean
state between the deficiency of irony or self-deprecation and the
excess of boastfulness. Self-deprecation is acceptable unless it
is overly pretentious, and it is certainly preferable to boastfulness,
which is especially blameworthy when the boasting is directed at
making undeserved gains.
Wit is important to good conversation. A person lacking
in wit is boorish and will be uninteresting and easily offended.
By contrast, buffoonery is the excessive vice of being too eager
to get a laugh: tact is an important component of appropriate wit.
Modesty is not properly a virtue but rather a feeling
that a well-bred youth ought to be capable of. Modesty consists
of feeling shame at the appropriate times. A virtuous person will
never do anything shameful and so will have no need of modesty,
but a youth will learn to be virtuous only by feeling shame when
shame is called for.
Analysis
Aristotle focuses on details in his discussion of the
various virtues and vices. He discusses questions such as which
vicious extreme is worse than the other and whether a particular
vice is truly evil or simply a result of folly or ignorance. By
contrast, we find no general attempt at justifying Aristotle’s choices
of virtues and vices. The absence of general justification is made
particularly glaring by the 2,300-year gap
between Aristotle and ourselves. While the modern West takes some
influence from the ancient Greeks, our conceptions of virtue and
vice are certainly more informed by the Christian tradition than
by the Greek. Aristotle makes no mention of the Christian virtues
of charity, faith, or hope, and the Christian virtue of humility
is considered by Aristotle to be a vice: pusillanimity.
Aristotle provides no argument for his list of virtues
and vices because he assumes his readers will agree with his conception.
In Book II, he asserts that virtue can be learned only through practice: no
set of rational arguments can make a person virtuous.
