Aristotle was a very down-to-earth philosopher. He said we should trust observation over theory, and trust theory only if it matches up with the observable world. If you want to understand something, we should look first and think after. He takes the same approach to questions about virtue.
Look around you, and have a think, and draw up a list of qualities that some people have that you admire or appreciate. What comes to mind? You will have your own list: I will stick to some uncontroversial examples, such as kindness or compassion, willpower, humility, courage or bravery, humour or wit, confidence, generosity, a sense of justice, etc., etc., etc.
It doesn’t really matter what the names of these ‘virtues’ are, or which you place higher or lower on your hierarchy of values, the point is only that we can observe some qualities that we admire. We point at these qualities in people and say ‘that is good’. These good qualities are called ‘virtues’.
Virtue
The word ‘virtue’ has unavoidably ‘moral’ connotations now, but that wasn’t always the case. The dominant moralised version of the concept came about partly from the Romans and the transition from Greek into Latin as the philosophical language of choice: some words just don’t translate in a straightforward way, and the Greek-to-Latin translation of ‘virtue’ is one of them.
But the moralised version of ‘virtue’ also came about because the language of virtue was entangled with Christianity for over a thousand years; by the time it got spit out the other end, the concept of ‘virtue’ had taken on some heavy moralistic and religious baggage.
The Ancient Greek notion of ‘virtue’ is not necessarily a moral notion, however. The word ‘virtue’ is a Latin translation of the original Greek word arete. This word does not necessarily connote anything moral: it simply means an ‘excellence’. This ‘excellence’ can be academic, athletic, economic, political, theatrical, etc., etc. It doesn’t have to be moral. Socrates spoke of ‘virtue’ in a moralised way, but he was just one dissenting voice, arguing that none of the other excellences really matter as much as moral excellence. So bear in mind that when Aristotle talks about ‘virtues’, he doesn’t necessarily mean anything moral.
Good Qualities
Since we are calling these qualities ‘good’, they will each have a purpose, according to Aristotle, and the goodness that the quality has will be related to that purpose.
Consider the virtue of having some willpower. This is ‘good’ because it serves the purpose of enabling us to control ourselves. If we want to lose weight or stop smoking, we need to exert our willpower to stick to a regime, even when it’s hard and we don’t want to. Good willpower allows us to do this; bad willpower doesn’t. Willpower is ‘good’ to the extent that it achieves its purpose. And if we identify this quality as ‘good’ or ‘virtuous’, then it must be because its purpose ultimately serves our purpose of purposes, which is to be happy. Having willpower allows you to exert self-control, which enables you to be someone you are happy to be.
Willpower is just one example. You will find the same for any example you choose. It’s not for Aristotle (or me) to list the virtues, nor identify their purposes, because you can do this for yourself based on your own observations and reflections. What Aristotle points out is that virtues are very important, but you can have too much of a good thing.
Too Much of a Good Thing
Each ‘excellence’ will lie at a happy middle point between two extremes: too much is as bad as too little.
The classic example is courage or bravery. To be brave is an excellent quality to have: it serves the purpose of being able to stand up for yourself when you need to, or find the strength to help others when you want to, etc. In the Ancient Greek world it was important to have the courage to fight well in battle. We tend to contrast courage with cowardice. A courageous fighter stands their ground; a cowardly fighter runs away. Cowardice does not serve the purpose required of fighting in battle. Courage does, and so courage is the ‘good’ quality: the ‘virtue’ not the ‘vice’.
There are degrees of courage, obviously. Some of us might be brave enough to stand up to our boss once in a while, but not many would back themselves to stand their ground against a horde of heavily-armed and bloodthirsty warriors. Some of us can’t even return food in a restaurant. So there’s a sliding scale, with each of us finding ourselves at some point on that scale at various times and in various contexts. What Aristotle observes is that it is not ideal to be at the extreme of either end of the scale; we should want to be somewhere in the middle.
To lack courage is clearly a problem. If you need to fight a battle for the purpose of protecting your property, but you run away out of cowardice, you will lose your property. Purpose not served = bad. So you want to have some courage.
But to have too much courage is equally problematic. If you have so much courage that you rush headlong into battle, you put yourself in far greater danger than is needed. You might well die needlessly. You are just as likely to cause more problems for yourself and others by being too courageous as you are by not being courageous enough. Too much courage is identified with their own ‘vice’ words, such as ‘reckless’ or ‘foolhardy’. Aristotle’s method identifies why these are not virtues: they do not serve their purpose. Recklessness can be just as counter-purposive as cowardice.
Consider another example: ‘wit’ or a sense of humour. Everyone likes a laugh, and someone who can find the funny side and make us laugh is often rightly admired. But this can go too far. Someone who tells nothing but jokes, never takes anything seriously, always sees the funny side no matter how dark the situation is, etc., is not a ‘wit’ but a ‘fool’. And possibly an insensitive fool at that. No one wants to be boring, but no one wants to be an insensitive fool either. What you want is the happy middle between these two extremes.
Consider another example: confidence. Confidence is a tremendous quality to have. It makes everything easier and allows you to glide through life. Almost all of us feel like we want more confidence. But look around and see what you think about the instances of ‘confidence’ we can observe in ourselves and others. Yes, we admire (and envy) those who have confidence, but we tend to really dislike those who have too much, or more than we feel they deserve. It’s all too easy to take self-belief too far. When this happens, we call it arrogance. A lack of confidence is a problem, but too much confidence it a problem too. What you want is just enough confidence: the happy middle between two extremes.
The Happy Middle
According to Aristotle’s view, wisdom lies in the ability to identify and choose the happy middle, for you, relative to yourself and your purposes. One part of this is philosophical: you need to look, think, and understand what the happy middle is, for you, for any given virtue. The other part is practical: you need to choose what you identify as the happy middle. This choice is an action; it is something that it done, not only something that is thought about.
The ability to make that choice depends on more than just thinking about it: you need to train yourself to make the right choices. You need to make them habitual. But if you can manage that, you will achieve your purposes and make yourself someone you are happy to be.
Read more: Think Well, Live Well: A Free Introduction to Philosophy
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