Since we have previously said that one ought to choose that which is intermediate, not the excess nor the defect, and that the intermediate is determined by the dictates of the right rule, let us discuss the nature of these dictates. In all the states of character we have mentioned, as in all other matters, there is a mark to which the man who has the rule looks, and heightens or relaxes his activity accordingly, and there is a standard which determines the mean states which we say are intermediate between excess and defect, being in accordance with the right rule.
This is in a way a restatement of what has been said, but in another way it seems to introduce the concept of having "the right rule." If you had a rule to follow, what would you need with a state of character? Indeed, the justice discussion of Book V seems to indicate that we should just have laws that require us to obey the rule that will make us behave virtuously.
That doesn't seem to be what Aristotle meant. Terence Irwin instead translates that phrase as "having the correct reason," but reasoning is a process rather than a measuring tool. H. Rackham gives it as "in conformity with the right principle." The principle is going to admit of clear cases that look very rule-like, e.g., 'Don't throw down you shield and flee in the face of the enemy'; but also there are going to be vague areas, where you are determining if it is more courageous to die holding your ground or to conduct a fighting withdrawal to where you might be able to hold the ground and not lose the field. Likewise, as we have seen in the distinction between justice and magnanimity, there are lesser and greater ways of doing things that are both permissible: the just will do what the law requires, but the magnanimous will go beyond what is required to seek what is most worthy of honor. Likewise, the 'equitable' may go beyond the rule to do more than what is needed out of a sense of fairness to another.
We have not, then, fundamentally altered the project. It is still about using your reason to find the right way to behave, so there are rational principles to seek. Yet we must also look to our sense of fairness and honor, and if we are to be the very best sort of people, go beyond what mere rules require of us.
But such a statement, though true, is by no means clear; for not only here but in all other pursuits which are objects of knowledge it is indeed true to say that we must not exert ourselves nor relax our efforts too much nor too little, but to an intermediate extent and as the right rule dictates; but if a man had only this knowledge he would be none the wiser e.g. we should not know what sort of medicines to apply to our body if some one were to say 'all those which the medical art prescribes, and which agree with the practice of one who possesses the art'. Hence it is necessary with regard to the states of the soul also not only that this true statement should be made, but also that it should be determined what is the right rule and what is the standard that fixes it.
We require more furniture to fully examine this project.
We divided the virtues of the soul and a said that some are virtues of character and others of intellect. Now we have discussed in detail the moral virtues; with regard to the others let us express our view as follows, beginning with some remarks about the soul. We said before that there are two parts of the soul-that which grasps a rule or rational principle, and the irrational; let us now draw a similar distinction within the part which grasps a rational principle. And let it be assumed that there are two parts which grasp a rational principle-one by which we contemplate the kind of things whose originative causes are invariable, and one by which we contemplate variable things; for where objects differ in kind the part of the soul answering to each of the two is different in kind, since it is in virtue of a certain likeness and kinship with their objects that they have the knowledge they have. Let one of these parts be called the scientific and the other the calculative; for to deliberate and to calculate are the same thing, but no one deliberates about the invariable. Therefore the calculative is one part of the faculty which grasps a rational principle. We must, then, learn what is the best state of each of these two parts; for this is the virtue of each.
So, the distinction he is proposing here has to do with his account of 'coming to be' in the Physics and the Metaphysics. In the Physics, we learn that all things and motions that come to be either do so for their own reasons, or because of something else acting upon them. If they arise from reasons of their own, we say that they are autonomous and that it is their own nature that is causing them or their motions to come to be: and since their nature can be expressed as a Form, we can say that it will not vary of itself. Because chance can cause things to interfere with each other, we can't say that everything will happen the same way with perfect regularity when we are dealing with physical (as opposed to mathematical) objects, but 'always or for the most part' the Form will guide the outcome in a predictable manner. Birds will hatch in the springtime; they will fly up into the air to seek food; fish will come to be in a different way and will live in the water. In mathematics like geometry, we can say that the Form always will guarantee the outcome; in astronomy, as far as the Greeks knew, we could say that also. This is properly a science for the ancients because the Form guarantees a unity to the field of study.
To return yet again to I.3, however, the fields of ethics and politics have been omitted from that kind of certainty. We are to reason probabilistically when we are in these fields; it is the mark of understanding correctly that you do not try to apply logical proofs to practical matters. This is not a science, but probabilistic reasoning, of which ethical reasoning is a subspecies.
2The virtue of a thing is relative to its proper work. Now there are three things in the soul which control action and truth: sensation, reason, desire.Of these sensation originates no action; this is plain from the fact that the lower animals have sensation but no share in action.
That probably sounds wrong, because even lower animals respond to stimuli like pain. Aristotle has a specific idea of what he means by the term "action" which we will get to later. He was an avid student of biology, though he lacked some of the later tools for observation; thus, he is aware that animals will evade pain. As you shall see, he intends that kind of activity to be cashed out by 'desire' instead of 'sensation,' i.e., the desire to avoid pain or pursue food.
What affirmation and negation are in thinking, pursuit and avoidance are in desire; so that since moral virtue is a state of character concerned with choice, and choice is deliberate desire, therefore both the reasoning must be true and the desire right, if the choice is to be good, and the latter must pursue just what the former asserts. Now this kind of intellect and of truth is practical; of the intellect which is contemplative, not practical nor productive, the good and the bad state are truth and falsity respectively (for this is the work of everything intellectual); while of the part which is practical and intellectual the good state is truth in agreement with right desire.The origin of action-its efficient, not its final cause-is choice, and that of choice is desire and reasoning with a view to an end.
So this is why sensation does not lead to 'action' in the lower animals: 'action' is defined as the product of reasoning, and the lower animals seem to lack a capacity for reason. Aristotle might not be strictly correct about that even for the lowest animals; but that's what he's getting at here.
This is why choice cannot exist either without reason and intellect or without a moral state; for good action and its opposite cannot exist without a combination of intellect and character. Intellect itself, however, moves nothing, but only the intellect which aims at an end and is practical; for this rules the productive intellect, as well, since every one who makes makes for an end, and that which is made is not an end in the unqualified sense (but only an end in a particular relation, and the end of a particular operation)-only that which is done is that; for good action is an end, and desire aims at this. Hence choice is either desiderative reason or ratiocinative desire, and such an origin of action is a man.
The concept here is that desire is a producer of choice, which is a producer of action. This is action being "caused" in the sense we use today, efficient causality. Aristotle develops a theory of causality in the Physics that holds that there are four causes for everything;* modern physics only has use for efficient causality. Here he means that you get up out of your chair and move to the kitchen because you are hungry and seek food. The desire couples with your reasoning about how to satisfy it to set an end, and that end motivates you to action.
(It is to be noted that nothing that is past is an object of choice, e.g. no one chooses to have sacked Troy; for no one deliberates about the past, but about what is future and capable of being otherwise, while what is past is not capable of not having taken place; hence Agathon is right in saying:For this alone is lacking even to God,To make undone things that have once been done.
It actually isn't at all clear if Agathon is right about that. If God changed the past, it would change the world that we came to know through our passage through history, and thus would change our minds in the present as well. There's simply no way to know if God, or anyone, can change the past. This has been the subject of innumerable science fiction tales over the last century. Aristotle didn't have the benefit of watching Star Trek, I suppose.
The work of both the intellectual parts, then, is truth. Therefore the states that are most strictly those in respect of which each of these parts will reach truth are the virtues of the two parts.
* The Four Causes are Formal, Material, Efficient, and Final. In the case of the kitchen example, they work out like so:
Formal: Being the kind of being that I am, i.e. having the Form that I have, I grow hungry and must eat periodically.
Material: The stomach has processed all the food and grown empty; the blood sugar is dropping; hunger is triggered by these material causes.
Efficient: I decide to go to the kitchen to satisfy my hunger, so I stand up and move that way.
Final: I preserve my life and health so that I can continue to engage in the best sort of human life: including the study of philosophy, which is hard to focus on when you're hungry.
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