Here be Sea-Dragons

Fans of Robert E. Howard will recognize that this AI-generated trailer is almost completely unlike the plot of the actual story Queen of the Black Coast. The central heroine is invented, there aren't any dragons in the original, and the plot of that story doesn't turn on any of the elements described in this trailer. It still looks like a fun kind of story.

Nicomachean Ethics VII.4

We continue examining incontinence and related states. Today's discussion includes some questions of when and how to pursue honor, a topic of great importance to the EN.

(2) We must next discuss whether there is any one who is incontinent without qualification, or all men who are incontinent are so in a particular sense, and if there is, with what sort of objects he is concerned. That both continent persons and persons of endurance, and incontinent and soft persons, are concerned with pleasures and pains, is evident.

Now of the things that produce pleasure some are necessary, while others are worthy of choice in themselves but admit of excess, the bodily causes of pleasure being necessary (by such I mean both those concerned with food and those concerned with sexual intercourse, i.e. the bodily matters with which we defined self-indulgence and temperance as being concerned), while the others are not necessary but worthy of choice in themselves (e.g. victory, honour, wealth, and good and pleasant things of this sort).

We often say that wealth can be pursued excessively. This is usually put in a Christian context, but the pagan Greeks understood the idea as well. The character of a man for whom wealth is unreasonably important admits of many bad things, even though there's nothing per se wrong with wealth. Simply not valuing the several goods of life in the right order is damaging to one's character.

Yet it is much harder to see how one can go to excess in pursuing victory. Perhaps in unimportant matters, as when it might be praiseworthy to let someone else have a turn rather than having to win all the time; but in the ancient world especially, a great deal hung on victory. Even today it can. Remembering the Charmides' introduction, the failures of Athenian virtues that led to their defeat in the Peloponnesian War led to their loss of power, their subjugation by Sparta, and a period of rule by the Thirty Tyrants over them. For Troy it led to the destruction of their city, the death of almost all of their men and boys, and the enslavement of their women. Victory in that sense surely has to be pursued with a whole heart.

And honor, we have said repeatedly in this commentary, defines how one identifies the best and most worthy of actions and lives. How can one go wrong with that?