Ethics
Lecture 11: The Definition of Moral Virtue and the Mean

Transcript
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Shall we begin? I've got a little cold here so I hope my voice will not 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. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, pray for us. And help us to understand what you have written. 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, let's talk about the definition of moral virtue. 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 Nicomachian Ethics, he divides human virtue into moral virtue and the virtues of what? Reason. 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. Aristotle takes up moral virtue in books 2 through 5, and in book 6, the virtues of reason. But in book 2, he takes up moral virtue in general. And then at the middle of book 3, he goes into the moral virtues in particular that he mentioned last time. 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, 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, in particular, what it is. 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 and logic. And it has the same root, 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 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 will distinguish in the book called Categorize. 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 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. 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 notice, shape or figure is not the source of any action or operation, right? Well, a habit or a disposition can be, right? Mm-hmm. A ability, a power, and even the, what? Sense qualities. The movie, in some sense, huh? The emotions, huh? Let's narrow that in a little bit to the most known moral virtues. The ones where it involved the emotions, right? Like courage and moderation and mildness and so on. What is the virtue, the ability to feel that emotion? 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? 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. Yeah. The ability to feel that emotion, as such, is neither good nor bad, right? Mm-hmm. But, virtue or vice means that you are, what? Disposed, right? Habituated. Habit or disposition is going to be the genus of moral virtue, huh? That the man who is courageous has a certain habit or disposition, right? Whereby, when dangerous things come up, right? He is disposed to feel anger as he should, right? In 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. And the same way, mildness, right? It's 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, okay? Now, Christel is going to add, I mean, perhaps to distinguish, four more parts to the definition of moral virtue, right? He just begins by saying it's a 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 involve something called choice, okay? So, moral virtue, moral vice, for that matter, has to be a habit with choice in some way. And that's where Estalo, after he defines moral virtue in Book 2, he takes the moral virtue and he takes up in the beginning of Book 3, choice, right? Okay? And he defends advantage through choice. But he wants to know what choice exactly is, right? So, it's a habit with choice. Perhaps you could even say, perhaps it's a habit of choosing, right? 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. So, when the bottle is put in front of the water, and the other man will choose to drink a certain amount of water, and the other man will choose to drink a certain amount of water, and the other man will choose to drink a certain amount of water, and the other man will choose to drink a certain amount of water, and the other man will choose to drink a certain amount of water, and the other man will choose to drink a certain amount of water, and the other man will choose to drink a certain amount of water, and the other man will choose to drink a certain amount of water, and the other man will choose to drink a certain amount of water. and the other man would choose another mouth, right? They're virtually inclined to do this, right? Now, for the next part of the definition of moral virtue, Aristotle makes an interesting comparison of moral virtue to human art. And a comparison he could make to science later on, too, but he makes a comparison to human art. 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? And the carpenter is going to, by the art of carpentry, replace that leg, right? And so he cuts a piece of what, right? Now, if he cuts it too long, it's not going to work well, is it? If he cuts it too short, it's not going to work well. 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? Little, right? Okay. Or suppose you're going to cook a steak on the grill. Now, I hope you know a steak has to be still pink. Well, he read. But it should be, you know, you can cook a piece of meat too much, right? Or too little, right? Yeah. My cousin used to say, yeah, he wants the steak, so rather when he sticks the fork in, he'll say, moo! That was his way of emphasizing the way he wanted it. 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? So, there can be too much or too little salt or pepper or some other seasoning, huh? 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, it's the same thing true about the fine arts. Now, we have Letters of Mozart where he talks about the golden meat in the famous conversation between the emperor there and Mozart, and the emperor says, too many notes, Mozart! And Mozart said, just as many as are needed. Of course, you often say about Mozart, he knows when to what? Stop. Stop, yeah, yeah. There's a good Sherlock Holmes story there, the Norwood builder, I don't know if you've ever read that story. But a man, he's got it 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 he didn't shock Holmes for a little bit of while he's deceived by this man, huh? But then he goes too far, right? And Holmes discovers it, right? But towards the end of the story, when Holmes is recounting, you know, and so on. He said he lacked, he was a pretty clever guy, this guy, he had to be fooled for a while. He lacked the supreme gift of the artist, knowing when to stop, huh? 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. 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 opened the definition. It's a habit with choice, but in the middle. 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, or do you mean the middle towards us? If you put the bottle of whiskey on the table, right? Because the virtuous thing for me to do is to drink half the bottle, because that's the middle of it. Or, you put the turkey on the table for Thanksgiving and cut it in half, and I'll eat half the turkey, right? Is it the middle of the thing? No. No. It's the middle towards us, right? So, that's the fourth part of the definition, right? It's a habit with choice, in the middle, but the middle towards us, right? What is neither too much nor too little for me, right? In these circumstances, right? And, of course, that's not the same for every man, right? And it's not the same in all circumstances, right? If I'm going to operate on you today, 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 I have whiskey, I want to relax, maybe I can have more whiskey, right? But, you need your reason to what? Determine. Yeah, yeah. So, that's the next part, and the last part of the definition, right? It's a habit with choice, in the middle, towards us, and is determined 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, should I get angry? Not very. Well, you see, anger doesn't know whether it was an accident that you bummed me, right? 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 punches you at all. Maybe no anger at all. If it's a purity accident, right? If somebody's curious, you know, well, let's look where you're going, you know? But if somebody's, you know, on purpose, you're going down and whacking people, and trying to give them a sore arm, and so on, then that might require a little more anger, right? Yeah. To rectify things, huh? Okay? 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 might 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? Although some of you probably know as they go around to the table after it. Very uncomfortable, right? Okay. So this is a definition that Aristotle works out, huh? It's a habit with choice, in the middle, towards us, is determined to write these. Perhaps you could say it's even a habit of choosing what is in the middle towards us, right? As determined by right reason. Aristotle goes through the always moral virtues he 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 to see, kind of more concretely, that moral virtue is in fact a habit in the middle between two extremes that are bad, right? So let's go through them a little bit to see if they're in the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle One being too much, and one being too little. And not only will Aristotle show that, going to each of them, but he also considers 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. 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? 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 reading and drinking and so on, right? But it's given for courage. So, he begins with that virtue, right? Now, 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. 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, huh? Fool's Russian, right? Now, is courage equidistant 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 of the opposite of the coward than of the foolhardy man, right? Okay? 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? 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, huh? As I get a little bit older and smarter and see the dangers involved and things, right? Then I might, what? Stop courageous. Yeah. Yeah. Okay? So, they have the early letters of Washington, you know, where the bolts are going by him, you know? And what a sweet sound it is, you know, and so on. Of course, later in life they asked him about this, and he said, well, I was young, maybe. Well, it's like Winston Churchill said, you know, there are few things more exhilarating than being shot at and missed. So, that's the, you know, the bravado kind of young man, see, but Washington was not going to, you know, rescue his life, I mean, risk his life unnecessarily later on, right? But, 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, huh, how the foolhardy man seems to be lacking in reason, right? The coward, seems to be using his head, right? I'm going to get out of here. It's a dangerous place to be. The coward seems more thoughtful than the foolhardy man, right? So, it's interesting, the foolhardy man is named from the following, right? Even though he's closer to the, what? Virtue, huh? Now, the second virtue we take out 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? The 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? Now, sometimes we use the term moderation, sometimes you see the word temperance. I think maybe the word moderation is a better word, huh? Now, Aristotle says here, we have names for the, what? Excess, right? 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, 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 nutting enough, right? Okay? So Aristotle says, well, I have to invent a name for the vice, if you're the 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? Okay? In our tradition, you know, we might speak of maybe a, what? Puritan or something, right? Or get arrested for kissing the girl or something, right? Okay? Or, you know, people who think it's wrong to drink, right? You see, you know, any alcoholic beverages or something. Okay? I told you the story of a 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, in Lancaster there, at the Seventh-day Adventist, I guess it is. And he ran out of cigarettes. So he went into the kind of the college store there, right? And he was taking some cigarettes, and the woman says, Oh, we don't have any cigarettes. We're all good people here. So let's call it puritanism, right? But you're inventing a word for it, right? Okay? Now over here you have different names, right? Like you have gluttony, right? For, in one case, and the drunkard, and so on. Okay? Don Juan, we don't call him. Okay? Now, which is moderation closer to? Is it equidistant from these two? It's more like what? The puritan. Yeah. Yeah. So make a short line between that and the puritan, huh? And we'll make a long line between platanus and so on in moderation, right? They're more opposed to it, right? So we say it's 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? But notice, when you use the word intemperance, we're naming it from the negation of temperance, aren't we? But we're applying intemperance to the man who eats too much, or drinks too much, or wenches too much, right? Okay. Okay. as if that is much more opposed to temperance than the man who doesn't enjoy these things at all, right? So it's more opposed to that, right? Now, who seems to be the fool more? The man doesn't drink at all, or the man who drinks too much? Too much. Yeah, yeah. In the same way, I mentioned how 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, it's not about a girl, you know. That's your fond, right? 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? 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. 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? That's interesting because if you read Plato's dialogue, the Protagoras, beautiful dialogue, huh? And it's very interesting for a lot of reasons, this 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, Sir Socrates? Yes, yes, introduce me to him, Socrates, will you? Well, it's, you know, five o'clock in the morning. You can't 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. 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, to get into a conversation about what you and I might call 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? 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, huh? Like the nose and the ear and all these different parts of virtue. Well, then Socrates starts to develop an argument. And he develops an argument that moderation and wisdom are the same thing. And the way he develops the argument is that each thing has only one opposite. Now, the opposite of wisdom is what? Foolishness, yeah. Oh, 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 and wisdom must be the same thing. But Socrates doesn't try to argue in 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, huh? It's interesting how all the great thinkers see this connection between wisdom and, what, moderation, huh? So I just mentioned that, right? That Socrates understands that difference, right? Between courage and moderation, huh? That moderation is more like wisdom than, what, courage, right? 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 you there too. But he sees a connection between moderation and, what, wisdom, right? Now, the next virtues that Aristotle takes up, huh? Courage and moderation are taken up in the second half of book three after he discusses what choice is, right? And there are various great virtues. The whole book five is devoid to justice, right? But then in book four, there's these somewhat lesser virtues, huh? And the first one he takes up is liberality, as it's called in Latin or in Greek, or generosity we could call it in English, right? And this is concerned now with your own body or 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, you know? Okay? 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? Okay? And, of course, in politics, liberal is the opposite of, what, conservative, right? Okay? 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, then, okay? So you have, in a kind of excess here, you have extravagance, 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 this here 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, finestly wealthy, right? And the donation was something like $25 or something. Oh, no! Well, this, I would say, was, you know, too little for him, right? Well, let's say it's our 25th wedding anniversary, you know? We're going out to dinner today, right? Where are we going? Oh, McDonald's! Well, if that's all I can afford, that would be okay, right? But 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 in the circumstances called for, right? 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. It's closer to which one? Extravagance. Yeah, yeah. That's interesting, right? Yeah. So we draw a sharp line here, right? And a long line of stinginess, right? That's interesting, right? Now, which of the extremes seems to be more like folly? No, it's true, right? Yeah, it's interesting, right? The same thing we saw here with courage, right? So, the virtue of courage, the virtue of liberality, is closer to the extreme that seems more foolish. But moderation is what? Closer to the what? Closer to the what? Closer to the what? Closer to the what? Closer to the what? Closer to the what? Closer to the what?