In Book 2, Aristotle starts to fill in some details of what he means by “virtue.”
Aristotle claims virtue is of two kinds:
1) Intellectual virtue διανοητικός “for the most part both produced and increased by instruction, and therefore requires experience and time”
2) Moral/ethical virtue “the product of habit” from ἔθος “habit” and ἦθος “character” (so, “ethical, moral”)
He also claims that “it is clear that none of the moral virtues formed is engendered in us by nature” which sets up a contrast from Epicurus in that we are born with the ability to seek pleasure and avoid pain. We don’t have to learn that!
He goes further down this road by talking about our being born with a dynamis “capacity, ability, potentiality” for something and only later is it developed into an energeia “activity” (the word he used back in Book 1). He stresses the importance of instruction and education in bringing out these potentialities: “it is the nature of a stone to move downwards, and it cannot be trained to move upwards, even though you should try to train it to do so by throwing it up into the air ten thousand times”
So, great. Humans are stones. Go on, Aristotle.
Aristotle contrasts the senses - which we’re born with - with the virtues - which can only be learned through habit and instruction.
“We become just (δίκαια) by doing just acts, temperate (σώφρων) by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. 1. [5] This truth is attested by the experience of states: lawgivers make the citizens good by training them in habits of right action—this is the aim of all legislation, and if it fails to do this it is a failure; this is what distinguishes a good form of constitution from a bad one.” (1103b)
It all comes back to what is good for the polis for Aristotle.
Aristotle does have a point of agreement with Epicurus in 1103b. Aristotle says, “We are not investigating the nature of virtue for the sake of knowing what it is, but in order that we may become good, without which result our investigation would be of no use.” Epicurus said, “A philosopher's words are empty if they do not heal the suffering of mankind. For just as medicine is useless if it does not remove sickness from the body, so philosophy is useless if it does not remove suffering from the soul.” (Fragment 221) So, each of them saw their philosophy as a practical art to be applied to one’s life.
We also find that Aristotle is a “fake it ‘til you make it” kind of guy. He puts forward the formula “to act in conformity with right principle,” which is a way of forming virtuous habits even when you’re not particularly virtuous to begin with.
Then we get down to finally starting to say what “virtue” actually is. But first, Aristotle tries to establish some ground rules: “Moral qualities are so constituted as to be destroyed by excess and by deficiency.” (1104a6)
That’s his basic premise. He hasn’t actually defined moral qualities yet, but he’s setting up the idea that they are bound up with the median between two extremes. Let’s use his pleasure example: “he that indulges in every pleasure and refrains from none turns out a profligate, and he that shuns all pleasure, as boorish persons do, becomes what may be called insensible.” (1104a20)
There are a couple of words here worth pointing out:
Profligate = ἀκόλαστος (akolastos) “undisciplined, unbridled; incontinent, licentious”
Boorish persons = ἄγροικος (agroikos) “dwelling in the fields; dwelling in the country; esp. of men, countryman, rustic”
Insensible = ἀναίσθητος (anaisthetos) “without sense or feeling; without perception or common sense, wanting tact, stupid”
I found the last two interesting from an Epicurean sense. Agroikos since Diogenes Laertius lists one of the characteristics of an Epicurean sage as “The sage will be fond of the countryside, enjoying being outside the towns and cities” and this is summed up in one word: φιλαγρήσειν (philagresein) "They will love the ἀγρός (agros) "fields, land, country as opposed to the town.""
Anaisthetos is interesting because this is the SAME word used in Principal Doctrine 2 to describe the state of being dead:
Ὁ θάνατος οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς· τὸ γὰρ διαλυθὲν **ἀναισθητεῖ·** τὸ δ’ **ἀναισθητοῦν** οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς.
“Death is nothing to us; for what has disintegrated **lacks awareness**, and what **lacks awareness** is nothing to us.”
And, by and large, I’d say both Aristotle and Epicurus would agree with each other on the sentiments laid out in the excerpt above that “he that indulges in every pleasure and refrains from none turns out a profligate” even though Epicurus uses a different word translated as “profligate.”
But Aristotle’s anti-pleasure stance comes through loud and clear nonetheless: “We become temperate by abstaining from pleasures, and at the same time we are best able to abstain from pleasures when we have become temperate.” (1104a)
Epicurus would say that we are abstaining from pleasures to experience even greater pleasures, not to somehow become more virtuous. If that’s described as “temperate” so be it, but I think Epicurus would say you are simply exercising practical wisdom.
Then Aristotle goes on to talk about pleasure and pain being the test of virtue: “pleasures and pains are the things with which moral virtue is concerned.” (1104b)
Right from the start, we’re going to have problems with Aristotle: “pleasure causes us to do base actions and pain cause us to abstain from doing noble actions.” Egads! “Pleasure causes us to do base actions”? He expands on that thought just previous to that statement: “An index of our dispositions is afforded by the pleasure or pain that accompanies our actions. A man is temperate (σώφρων “sophron”) if he abstains from bodily pleasures and finds this abstinence itself enjoyable (χαίρω “khairo”), profligate if he feels it irksome; he is brave if he faces danger with pleasure or at all events without pain, cowardly if he does so with pain.”
By Zeus!! Even in his annoyance with pleasure he says that the temperate person “finds this abstinence itself enjoyable”!! Finding something enjoyable IS PLEASURE, Aristotle!! In fact, the “enjoyable” part in that translation is, in fact, the word khairon which is directly related to one of the “kinetic pleasures” (khara) noted by Epicurus as a pleasure deriving from “κίνησιν ἐνεργείᾳ” “moving activity” (notice energeia!)!! Sorry, Aristotle, but you can’t have it both ways. Pleasure is a danger, but you can take pleasure in temperance?? Go on…
He goes on to say that since pleasure causes us to do base actions and pain cause us to abstain from doing noble actions, we have to be trained up from childhood “to like and dislike the proper things; this is what good (i.e., right/correct) education (ὀρθὴ παιδεία “orthe paideia”) means.” (1104b10)
I’m seeing more and more why Epicurus was none too keen on paideia.
Then we come upon words familiar to Epicureans: choice and avoidance, αἱρέσεις haireseis and φυγάς phygas - The SAME words used by Epicurus. (1104b30) Aristotle again provides us with lists:
Three motives for choice:
the noble καλοῦ (kalou)
the expedient συμφέροντος (sympherontos)
the pleasant ἡδέος (hedeos)
Three motives for avoidance (their opposites):
the base αἰσχροῦ (aiskhrou)
the harmful βλαβεροῦ (blaberou)
the painful λυπηροῦ (lyperou)
These bear looking at a little closer through an Epicurean lens.
1) καλος (kalos) is very familiar and is translated in myriad ways, a sampling of which comes from S. C. Woodhouse’s English–Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language (1910): admirable, beautiful, elegant, estimable, excellent, fair, fortunate, good, handsome, happy, honourable, noble, propitious, virtuous, well-favoured. In the end, it seems the word can be used to translate almost anything positive! Epicurus famously said, “I spit upon the honorable (kalos) and those who vainly admire it, whenever it produces no pleasure.” (Usener fragment 512)
2) συμφέροντος occurs in Principle Doctrine 31: Τὸ τῆς φύσεως δίκαιόν ἐστι σύμβολον τοῦ **συμφέροντος** εἰς τὸ μὴ βλάπτειν ἀλλήλους μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι. “What is naturally just is an agreement of interests to not harm each other nor to not be harmed oneself.” The word is translated in this doctrine as “an agreement of **interests**”(σύμβολον τοῦ **συμφέροντος**) It basically means “that which is advantageous or in one’s interest.”
3) ἡδέος hedeos is just an adjective form of hedone “pleasure,” so, “pleasurable, pleasant.” Of course, a motive for choice is that which is pleasurable/pleasant! That’s the whole point! One of the more famous instances of this word is Principle Doctrine 5: It is not possible to live a **pleasurably** (ἡδέως) without the traits of wisdom, morality, and justice; and it is impossible to live with wisdom, morality, and justice without living pleasurably. When one of these is lacking, it is impossible to live a pleasurable life.
For the motives for avoidance:
1) αἰσχροῦ shows up in Vatican Saying 43: “It is not right to love money unjustly, and shameful (αἰσχρόν) to love it justly; for it is unbecoming to be overly stingy, beyond what is right.” The other connotations of the word include “causing shame, dishonoring, reproachful; shameful, disgraceful, base, infamous.” And its antonym is καλός (kalós), so Aristotle is contrasting it with #1 in the motives for choice.
2) βλαβεροῦ is translated as “harmful” by Rackham, but how is it harmful? Epicurus uses this word in Vatican Saying 21: “Nature must be persuaded, not forced; and we will persuade nature by fulfilling the necessary desires and also the natural desires too if they cause no harm, but sharply rejecting the **harmful ones** (βλαβερὰς).” You can also see how this is the opposite (although not formally) of #2’s συμφέροντος “what is to one’s advantage.”
3) λυπηροῦ is the painful just as #3 ἡδέος is the pleasant/pleasurable. This word is defined as “to give pain to, to pain, distress, grieve, vex.” Epicurus uses this word for “pain” in several places in his texts; but the important thing is that this is Aristotle’s motive for avoidance, which is almost comical in its obviousness. We seek pleasure and avoid pain.
Aristotle then goes on to get his knocks against pleasure… again… in 1104b and over to 1105a (emphasis added): “Now in respect of all these the good man is likely to go right and the bad to go wrong, but especially in respect of pleasure; for pleasure is common to man with the lower animals, and also it is a concomitant of all the objects of choice, since both the noble and the expedient appear to us pleasant.”
It is not the noble and expedient in themselves that are pleasant, it is the results of that which is noble and that which is "to our advantage" (let's not use Rackham's translation) that may lead to pleasurable outcomes. Aristotle is trying to imbue "the noble" and "that which is to our advantage" as inherently appearing pleasant. I'll repeat again Epicurus's injunction: "I spit upon the honorable (kalos) and those who vainly admire it, whenever it produces no pleasure.” We need to look at the result of honorable action - at the result of that which appears to be our advantage - and assess whether it will result in a more pleasurable life direction.
The next part is even more disturbing from an Epicurean perspective (emphasis added): "the susceptibility to pleasure has grown up with all of us from the cradle. Hence this feeling is hard to eradicate, being engrained in the fabric of our lives. ... to feel pleasure and pain rightly or wrongly has a great effect on conduct."
Of course, we're "susceptible" to pleasure. It is a natural feeling that provides us the ability to seek out what is good for us (food, shelter, warmth, friendship, etc.) from the moment we are born! Why would we want to eradicate that faculty of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain?? Epicurus would agree that we need to make prudent decisions on what to choose and what to reject, but he would not say that we need to "feel" pleasure and pain "rightly or wrongly (εὖ ἢ κακῶς "well or badly")" That is the completely wrong way to think about that faculty!
Finally, in 1105b, Aristotle begins to better define "virtue." He starts out by looking at what "virtue" could be: "A state (γινόμενα) of the soul (psykhe "mind") is either
(1) an emotion (πάθη pathe "feeling, that which one experiences")
(2) a capacity (δυνάμεις dynameis "capacity, ability, potentiality" (see above))
(3) a disposition ( ἕξεις hexeis "trained habit, skill, state or habit of mind");
virtue therefore must be one of these three things."
By the pathe (1), Aristotle includes "desire, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, friendship, hatred, longing, jealousy, pity; and generally, those states of consciousness which are accompanied by pleasure or pain." So, he's saying here that "virtue" is not a feeling or emotion accompanied by pleasure or pain. Go on...
"Now the virtues and vices are not emotions because we are not pronounced good or bad according to our emotions, but we are according to our virtues and vices; nor are we either praised or blamed for our emotions—a man is not praised for being frightened or angry, nor is he blamed for being angry merely, but for being angry in a certain way—but we are praised or blamed for our virtues and vices. Again, we are not angry or afraid from choice, but the virtues are certain modes of choice, or at all events involve choice. Moreover, we are said to be ‘moved’ by the emotions, whereas in respect of the virtues and vices we are not said to be ‘moved’ but to be ‘disposed’ in a certain way."
He goes on this way for a while then finally decides that genus into which virtues fall are the ἕξεις "dispositions, characteristics; trained habits; etc."
Then he leans into the concept of the virtue being the median between two extremes, but not just any median: "the median relative to us" (Ostwald) or "the mean relative to us" (Rackham): "that amount which is neither too much nor too little, and this is not one and the same for everybody."
So, Aristotle is a Goldilocks kind of person, too? "Not too hot, not too cold, but just right"?
Ostwald's translation convey's Aristotle's notion best: "Thus we can experience fear, confidence, desire, anger, pity, and generally any kind of pleasure and pain either too much or too little, and in either case not properly. But to experience all this at the right time, toward the right objects, toward the right people, for the right reason, and in the right manner -- that is the median and the best course, the course that is a mark of virtue."
Again, I say, egads! That all seems like a VERY arbitrary and subjective yardstick against which to measure what you mean by "virtue."
Ostwald's translation also brings up a problematic point: "there are many ways of going wrong, but only one way which is right." (c. 1106b25/30) (τὸ μὲν ἁμαρτάνειν πολλαχῶς ἔστιν "many ways to fail"... τὸ γὰρ κακὸν τοῦ ἀπείρου "for evil is infinite/limitless" (ἀπείρου is the same word Epicurus uses to describe the number of atoms and worlds, if memory serves me correctly.)
This whole idea of an absolute singular "one way which is right" seems antithetical to Epicurus's philosophy. His philosophy is more contextual, nuanced, and relativistic than Aristotle's perspective.
This is getting long... Let's start a new section...