INTRODUCTION | 381 |
The study of moral character is part of the craft of politics. | 381 |
What is virtue and how does it come about? The views of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato. | 381 |
1: THE GOOD | 383 |
Every science etc. aims at a good: the good we are investigating is the political good. | 383 |
The Idea of good and the good which is common to all good things: the latter, whether it depends on definition or on induction, is no concern of ours; neither is the Idea of good, which in any case explains nothing. (Socrates wrongly took the virtues to be bits of knowledge.) | 383 |
Goods can be divided into kinds in five different ways: (1) valuable vs. praiseworthy vs. potential vs. productive; (2) always desirable vs. not always desirable; (3) ends vs. means; (4) complete vs. incomplete; (5) in the soul vs. in the body. | 386 |
2: HAPPINESS | 390 |
Happiness consists in living well, i.e., virtuously: it is not virtue itself but the exercise of virtue. | 390 |
3: VIRTUE | 392 |
The soul is divided into two parts: the rational part, in which reside wisdom and the like, and the irrational part, in which reside the virtues. | 392 |
Moral virtue is destroyed by lack and excess, and has to do with pleasures and pains. | 392 |
Virtue is neither emotion nor capacity: it is a state which is a mean with respect to emotions. Not every emotion admits of a mean. | 393 |
Sometimes it is the excess, and sometimes the lack, that is opposed to the mean: this may be due to the nature of the case, or to our own natural tendencies. | 395 |
How far is virtue in our own power? | 396 |
4: ACTIONS | 398 |
Every natural kind generates from originating principles, and men generate actions through their choices. | 398 |
It is in our power to be virtuous or base, but that does not mean that virtue is easy. | 399 |
What is it for an act to be voluntary? Is it to be in accordance with desire (appetite, passion, or will)? Arguments pro and con. | 399 |
What is force? It is an external cause making something act against its nature or against its will. | 401 |
The voluntary is what is accompanied with thought. | 402 |
What is choice? It is not desire or will or thought, but is an impulse to act consequent on deliberation. It concerns matters of action that are in our power to do or not to do. | 402 |
Virtue proposes the end of action, but is also concerned with the means to the end. | 405 |
5: THE MORAL VIRTUES | 407 |
Courage is concerned with confidence and fear of a specific kind. | 407 |
There are spurious forms of courage: those based on experience, or on ignorance, or on emotion, or on shame, or on hope. | 407 |
Genuine courage is motivated by nobility, and concerns immediate life-threatening dangers. | 409 |
Temperance, a mean between self-indulgence and insensibility, is concerned with the pleasures of touch and taste. | 409 |
Good temper is a mean between irascibility and inirascibility. | 410 |
Liberality is a mean between prodigality and illiberality; the latter takes several forms. | 411 |
Pride is a mean between vanity and diffidence. | 412 |
Magnificence is a mean between extravagance and shabbiness. | 412 |
Indignation is a mean between envy and spite. | 413 |
Dignity is a mean between churlishness and obsequiousness. | 413 |
Modesty is a mean between shamelessness and bashfulness. | 414 |
Conviviality is a mean between buffoonery and boorishness. | 414 |
Friendliness is a mean between flattery and hostility. | 414 |
Candour is a mean between self-deprecation and boastfulness. | 415 |
6: JUSTICE | 416 |
One kind of justice is doing what the law commands—it is complete virtue. | 416 |
Another kind of justice is equal dealing with others in accordance with proportion. | 417 |
Reciprocation is just, but not mere retaliation. | 418 |
Political justice and household justice. | 419 |
Natural justice and legal justice. | 419 |
A just act must be performed voluntarily and in accordance with choice and in knowledge of the relevant circumstances. | 420 |
The ignorance that saves an agent from doing injustice must not itself be voluntary. | 421 |
Can one voluntarily be unjustly treated? Neither forgoing one’s rights nor acting incontinently is a case of this. | 421 |
Arguments to show that it is not possible for a man to treat himself unjustly. | 422 |
7: THE INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES | 425 |
The rational part of the soul has two elements, one concerned with deliberation and the other with knowledge. | 425 |
What are the objects of knowledge, wisdom, intelligence, and understanding? | 426 |
Knowledge uses demonstration; wisdom deals with matters of action. | 426 |
Acting differs from producing, and therefore wisdom differs from craftsmanship. | 426 |
Intelligence deals with first principles and thus differs from knowledge. Understanding is compounded of knowledge and intelligence, and differs from wisdom in its object. | 427 |
Understanding is the virtue of the superior rational element. | 427 |
The relationship between cleverness, judgement, and wisdom: cleverness is related to wisdom as the natural virtues are to the complete virtues. | 428 |
Wisdom itself is a virtue, since it enjoins what virtue does. It is an architectonic virtue, but is inferior to understanding. | 429 |
Equity and good sense rectify the imperfection of law, while skill in deliberation is an accessory to wisdom. | 431 |
The relation between wisdom and justice. | 432 |
Residual problems: can injustice be done to a bad man? Can two virtues conflict? Can a man be spoilt by too much virtue? | 433 |
8: CONTINENCE AND INCONTINENCE | 436 |
Brutishness, incontinence, and vice are three defects in the soul. The most extreme is brutishness. | 436 |
Incontinence raises a number of problems, but Socrates was wrong to deny its existence. It is doing what one thinks to be wrong, whether this thought is mere belief or amounts to knowledge. | 437 |
The problems about incontinence are to be solved by making distinctions between the possession and the exercise of knowledge, and between knowledge of the universal and knowledge of the particular. | 439 |
There are morbid and natural forms of incontinence. | 441 |
Strictly speaking, the sphere of continence and incontinence is the pleasures of touch and taste; but there is also incontinence of anger, which is a less blameworthy form. | 441 |
An incontinent man is better than a self-indulgent man, because he is base by custom, not by nature. | 443 |
There are two kinds of incontinence—impetuosity and weakness. | 444 |
An incontinent man may be clever but cannot be wise. | 445 |
9: PLEASURE | 447 |
We must treat of pleasure because of its connection with happiness. | 447 |
Arguments to the effect that pleasure is not a good—e.g., because it is a process. Refutation: pleasure is not a process, but an activity of the soul simultaneous with bodily processes. | 447 |
Pleasures differ in kind, and only some of them are base. If pleasure is common to all, this shows that it is a good. Pleasure is not an impediment, but an incentive, to the activity to which it belongs. | 449 |
Virtue cannot be misused, and takes its origin not from reason but from well-ordered emotion. | 452 |
10: GOOD FORTUNE | 454 |
Fortune is neither nature, nor intelligence, nor divine benevolence. | 454 |
Good fortune consists in achieving good beyond rational expectation, or escaping impending evil. It is nature without reason, an irrational impulse towards the good. | 455 |
There is also a coincidental type of good fortune. | 456 |
11: GENTLEMANLINESS | 457 |
A person for whom the possession of good things is good, and who is not spoilt by them (e.g., riches and office) is a gentleman. | 457 |
Virtuous action is action in accordance with correct reasoning. But what is the test of this? It is when the irrational part of the soul does not hinder the calculating part. | 458 |
12: FRIENDSHIP | 460 |
Does friendship hold between people who are alike, or who are unlike? | 460 |
Distinction between the lovable and what is to be loved. | 461 |
Three forms of friendship: of the good, of the pleasant, and of the advantageous. | 462 |
The firmest, the most abiding, the noblest, and the most pleasant form of friendship is that between the virtuous. | 463 |
Difficulties that arise in friendships on an unequal footing, or with different motives on the two sides. | 463 |
The characteristics of perfect friendship are all found in a man’s relation to himself; so a virtuous man but not a base one can be his own friend. | 467 |
Arithmetical and proportional equality in friendship. | 468 |
Friendships based on kinship. | 469 |
The relation between friendship, benevolence, and concord. | 469 |
The self-love of the virtuous man will resign other goods to his friends, in order to claim the noble for himself. | 470 |
The self-sufficient man will need friends to be a mirror in which he can see himself. | 471 |
One should have neither few friends nor many friends. | 473 |