Jack Haven

"Ethical Virtue and the Mean"

The Nicomachean Ethics is Aristotle's treatise on happiness. In it, Aristotle attempts to define happiness and to discover how it can be achieved; as it turns out, this is not a simple question. In order to get us from happiness to virtue, Aristotle must connect the two. In a discussion about happiness, we must be convinced that happiness and virtue are related before we allow a discussion on virtue. Since Aristotle intends to build a very in-depth account of virtue in Book II of his treatise, Aristotle cannot evade this important question, and he spends the majority of Book I answering it.

Aristotle begins Book I by claiming that "every art and every inquiry, and similarly, every action and every intention is thought to aim at some good" (Apostle & Gerson, 1991, 429). There are, of course, many arts and, thus, many goods. Some goods are explicitly sought in order to attain some other good. In the case of those goods that are sought for the sake of other goods, Aristotle argues that the latter goods are, by necessity, better than the first. Otherwise, we might be content with the intermediary good and leave things at that. For example, if writing this paper were a good equal to getting my Bachelor's degree, I might decide to drop out of college shortly after writing it. Rather, it is my Bachelor's degree that is the greater good, which is why I will gladly endure one more year of college after finishing this paper.

If all art and inquiry aims at some good, then the good at which all arts ultimately aim can be called the greatest good. To make this step, Aristotle assumes that all goods except for one are sought for the sake of other, greater, goods. The greatest good—the only good not sought for the sake of other goods—is sought for its own sake. This good would be greatest in the same way that my getting a Bachelor's degree is a greater good than my finishing this paper. We know what this good is. We talk about it all the time, even though most of us have very little knowledge of what it is "for both ordinary and cultivated people call it 'happiness', and both regard living well and acting well as being the same as being happy" (ibid., 431; emphasis added).

For his final move, Aristotle concludes that man has a function. After all, a carpenter has a function: to work with wood. An eye has a function: to see. Even a cup has a function: to carry liquid. The "goodness" of the thing that has the function lies in that function. If the thing does its function poorly, we say that it is a bad thing; an eye that cannot see well is not a very good eye. Aristotle posits that if all of the above is true, then it is reasonable to conclude that man, too, must have a function. Next, he considers that man, like all living things, must live, and man's function is, thus, to live, but because he is special in relation to a horse or a house plant, his living must be of a different sort. Since man, unlike a plant, can act, then man's life must be one of action; his function must be an activity. Man also, unlike the other animals, has reason, which distinguishes him from a horse. Therefore, man's function is a life of activity, or actions, according to reason. Just as the good carpenter is thought so when he works well with wood, the good man is thought so when he lives his life of activity according to reason well, and this is what we say of someone who lives his life according to virtue. As a result, the goodness of man lies in a life of activity according to virtue.

The greatest good of man, happiness, is only achievable if a man lives a life of activity according to virtue. Without virtue, as we have seen, happiness is impossible. Aristotle has, by his line of reasoning, made virtue indispensable to the discussion of happiness. Now, if we are going to achieve happiness, we must first discover what virtue is, so that we can exercise it. Aristotle separates virtue into two parts, one which deals with the nonrational part of the soul that can attend to or obey reason, and a rational part that possesses reason of itself. The first part, the nonrational or appetitive part of the soul, is concerned with ethical virtue; the second, with intellectual virtue. We now concern ourselves with the former.

In Search of the Mean

To describe ethical virtue and how it can be achieved, Aristotle puts forward his Doctrine of the Mean. Aristotle begins by describing the mean:

Now in everything which is continuous and divisible it is possible to take an amount which is greater than or less than or equal to the amount required, and the amount may be so related either with respect to the thing itself or in relation to us; and the equal is a mean between excess and deficiency. (ibid., 454; emphasis added)

The equal, or the mean between excess and deficiency, is necessary in any art that seeks a right amount. For example, a doctor who wants to offer her patient a prescription medicine for hypertension needs to offer the patient just the right dosage for his situation. If the doctor gives her patient too much of the medication, the patient may become faint and may suffer from bruising and abnormal bleeding. If the doctor gives her patient too little medication, the patient will continue to suffer from hypertension. In this case, it is imperative for the doctor to find the mean, relative to the patient's unique condition, so that the medication makes the patient healthier rather than worse or no better. The doctor's ability to find the mean would make him a good doctor, and the doctor whose prescribed dosage is either in excess or deficient of the mean would be a bad doctor.

Aristotle concludes that this is the way every art works: "by keeping an eye on the mean and working towards it" (ibid., 454). Virtue, as Aristotle puts it, is better and more precise than any art, which means that ethical virtue would aim at the mean all the more. Ethical virtue is concerned with feelings and actions, and in these there are excess, deficiency, and moderation, or the mean. Every emotion can be felt either too much, too little, or in moderation. If, for example, a child tramples over a patch of daisies on our lawn, we might feel anger toward the child. Excess anger may lead us to go out onto our porch and shoot the child in the chest with a shotgun. Deficient anger may lead us to fail to react at all, allowing the child to mistakenly think that his actions were acceptable behavior. In a case such as this, there is a mean feeling of anger that we would be right to have, and we would need to have it at the right time, for the right thing, toward the right person, for the right purpose, and in the right manner.

In terms of ethical virtue, excess and deficiency are errors and we are blamed for them. Shooting a child for trampling on daisies is a felony in any state of the United States, since trampling daisies is a wrong for which no one would consider being shot a reasonable punishment. On the other hand, doing nothing would allow the child to think he had done nothing wrong, and he would return the next day just as blithely to trample the daisies again. In the former case, we would be blamed for being murderous and irascible; in the latter case, we would be blamed for letting little children step all over us. Only by reacting with moderation would we be rightly praised for both keeping our daisies safe and for teaching the local children proper lawn etiquette. The mean, then, is success, and both success and praise, Aristotle tells us, belong to virtue. Because success and praise are virtues and arise out of the mean, then virtue must aim at the mean.

The way Aristotle describes the process of aiming at the mean, it appears a great deal like aiming at a target. If we were to aim either too high or too low, we would miss the target, but we would hit the target if we aimed just right. Aristotle refers to the Pythagoreans when he concludes this very thing by saying that "evil, ... belongs to the infinite, while goodness belongs to the finite" (ibid., 455). There are many ways in which we can miss the target, since there is only one target and only one way to aim so that we will hit it; every other way is wrong and will lead to a sure miss.

Another important caveat that Aristotle notes is that the mean is not equidistant from its corresponding excess and deficiency. While both excess and deficiency are contrary to one another, and the mean is contrary to both its excess and its deficiency, there are some means that are more contrary to one than to the other. In the these cases, the mean appears similar to one of its extremes only because it is more contrary to the other extreme. Aristotle uses bravery as an example, which appears similar to rashness only because it more contrary to cowardice. I will use another example: love, or the desire to be with or share in another person (since this was the subject of my last essay, it seems appropriate here).

With regard to romantic relations, love is the mean. The feeling of love is good, and people are praised for loving because loving is well-thought of and considered virtuous. When a mother loves her child, when a husband loves his wife, when a daughter loves her parents, this is generally considered to be a good thing. The excess of love has no name, but we might, for our purposes, offer it the name "obsession." We will call the deficiency of love by the same name Marilyn Manson uses for it: "apathy." When we speak of love, we think of attachment, but some people often confuse love with obsession, which is compulsive, unreasonable fixation. It goes far beyond desire and can become dangerous, both to the lover and to his object. The obsessed husband may become paranoid that his wife is cheating behind his back, and he may decide to kill her and himself in order to ensure they will be together forever; these sorts of stories are in the news all the time, and people often speak of it as if it were love, though they admit that it is also insanity. Even Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers, are held by most people to be the archetypal lovers precisely because their obsession for one another leads them both, in the end, to suicide. In contrast, apathy is held in stark contrast to love, and no one ever confuses the two. Love is more contrary to apathy than to obsession; love is farther from its deficiency than from its excess.

Aristotle concludes that it is difficult to find the mean, just as it is difficult to find the exact center of a circle unless one is knowledgeable in geometry. In order to be safe, we should avoid at all costs the vice which is farthest from the mean, since that will get us closest to our goal. If we want to be brave, for instance, we should reject cowardice because cowardice is farther from bravery than is rashness. Similarly, in order to be truly loving, we should reject apathy because apathy is further from love than is obsession. We can most closely approach the mean by being as far away as possible from its most contrary extreme and, thus, begin our path toward virtue.

Aristotle's arguments appear flawless so long as one accepts his assumptions. People always say that extremes are bad, and this appears to be true. The right amount of salt on food can make a meal delicious, but too much salt will make the food bitter and too little will make it bland. So it appears to be with virtue. When I first considered whether or not Aristotle was right, I thought about whether having too much virtue would be an error. Surely, if virtue aims at the mean, then hitting the mean too much would be virtuous. But too much virtue should be an excess, which should be erroneous, thus contradicting Aristotle's entire argument.

In fact, being virtuous must itself be a mean. One cannot be excessively virtuous because to be virtuous, by definition, entails moderation. Being virtuous is the mean in relation to a life of activity according to reason. Its excess is hyperactivity, which is an error because if one acts too much or too often, then one never rests and never does anything well or virtuously. A person who works hard everyday may perform deeds that appear virtuous in large numbers, but he will fall behind in relation to his other virtues. His health and familial relations may suffer, and he will not, overall, be a virtuous man. Similarly, the deficiency of action is lethargy. If one never acts, then one cannot ever do anything virtuous. In fact, the very lack of action would be an error, and a demonstration of the lack of virtue.

Even virtue can be contrasted with its extremes because virtue is the mean of a life of activity according to reason. While it is not appealing to consider that virtue is so difficult to reach, it is easy to agree that Aristotle is correct in concluding, as he does, that virtue is nigh impossible. Modesty, too, is a virtue; it is the mean between arrogance and self-deprecation. By exercising it, we may become more willing to accept Aristotle's conclusions on this subject.

References

Apostle, H.G., & Gerson, L.P. (Eds.). (1991). Aristotle: Selected Works (3rd ed.). Grinnel, Iowa: The Peripatetic Press.