Philosophy 361          		Ethics          		Darwall         		Fall 1997

ARISTOTLE III
Text Analysis Project:  NE, IX.9

I       In Book I of NE Aristotle argues that the chief good is a life of excellent 
distinctively human (rational) activity.  How are virtues acquired?  Aristotle is 
famous for holding that virtues and vices arise through habituation:
        "moral virtue comes about as a result of habit" (1103a 13)
        "the virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the 
arts as well.  For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by 
doing them." (1103a 32-33)
        "Thus, in one word, states of character arise out of like activities." (1103b 22)

        Notice here the analogy Aristotle draws between ethical virtues and artistic 
skills.  With both we can acquire them only by practice resulting in the right habits.  
And with both "it is from playing the lyre that both good and bad lyre-players are 
produced." (1103b 7)  By playing over time in some way or other we acquire habits.  
If these are good, then we will be good lyre players.  If they are bad, then we will be 
bad, and able to become good by unlearning bad habits and learning good ones.  
        Aristotle believes the same of the virtues.  A person who deals unfairly with 
others will acquire the habit of unfair dealing, and become, therefore, an unfair 
person.  To become a fair person, she must break old habits and acquire new habits 
of justice.
        It should be obvious why Aristotle lays such stress on upbringing in his ethics.  
Upbringing creates habits which can only be broken with great difficulty.

II  Now if acquiring the virtues were like acquiring a good tennis backhand--so that 
solid instruction and practice while young leads to "country club strokes", and 
hacking around while young leads to a "hacker's chop"--then that would make ethical 
upbringing important 
enough.  But the truth is that Aristotle thinks that the virtues are unlike artistic skills 
in crucial respects that make acquiring them much more complex.
        Aristotle writes:  "the case of the arts and that of the virtues are not similar; for 
the products of the arts have their goodness in themselves, so that it is enough that 
they should have a certain character, but if the acts that are in accordance with the 
virtues have themselves a certain character it does not follow that they are done 
justly or temperately."  (1105a 25)
        With artistic skill, we have an independent conception of what such skill 
accomplish:  good lyre playing is any technique producing the sounds we identify as 
good lyre-playing ("the products of the arts have their goodness in themselves").  
        With virtuous activity this is not so.  We don't begin with a clear conception of 
what "products" or acts the virtue of, say, courage will produce, and then define 
courage as simply any state of the person that will produce these.  Rather, we have a 
conception of courage as a state of character (according to Aristotle, we think of it as 
the character of the person who responds to the feelings of fear and confidence in the 
appropriate way), and we count outrageous acts as the ones she would perform.  And 
unlike the products of an art, the value of actions realizing virtues doesn't consist 
simply in the act, in "what is done", but in its realizing a virtue--in how it is done.
III     There is related point hinted at here as well.  In the case of the arts, it is quite 
possible for someone to evaluate lyre playing who doesn't have a clue as to how to 
play the lyre.  With ethical virtues this is not so clear.  If courageous acts are those 
the courageous person would perform.  And if courage is the appropriate way of 
responding to fear and confidence, then it may be that how it is appropriate to 
respond to fear and confidence, in a context sensitive way, cannot be fully grasped 
except by someone who has acquired the virtue.  
        As an analogy, it may be, for example, that we cannot grasp what sorts of 
conduct towards others show appropriate respect unless we have become the kind of 
person who respects others.  

IV   In acquiring excellences of character, therefore, one acquires practical 
knowledge:  the ability to see what one should do or feel in a certain context.  
        "The agent also must be in a certain condition when he does them [acts we 
count as genuinely virtuous activity]; in the first place he must have knowledge, 
secondly he must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes and thirdly 
his actions must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character."
        Unlike the arts, whose products have value in themselves, the value of virtuous 
activity consists in realizing a state of character.  A genuinely fair action, for 
example, must be one the agent himself conceives (knows) to be fair, and which he 
chooses to do for its own 
sake as fair, indeed is disposed to choose as a matter of firm character.
        Moreover, the genuinely virtuous person takes pleasure in her virtuous activity; 
she does not have to drag herself to undertake it, but actively enjoys it (II.3)  

V  Now all this means that in acquiring virtues, one does not simply acquire a certain 
knack or know-how.  One comes to know, desire, and enjoy virtuous activity for its 
own sake.  How is this supposed to work?  How is it that habituation can lead to 
ethical virtues if these involve, as for Aristotle they must, knowledge, feeling, and 
motivation?
        Somehow it must happen that by acquiring the habit of acting fairly with others, 
for example, one comes:  (a) to know what fair dealing involves, (b) to desire to deal 
fairly for its own sake, and (c) to enjoy this.  Here one can only begin with direction 
from those who 
already know what fair dealing is, someone who is fair himself.  To acquire the habit 
of acting fairly, then, one must be directed, on specific occasions, to specific acts as 
fair acts, or as the acts of a fair person.  This is already different from the arts, the 
relevant habituation must be 
under a certain concept; it must impart the agent's knowledge of what he is himself 
doing as fair.  Presumably it will also seek to impart the knowledge that this action is 
worth choosing because it is fair.  In Aristotle's terms, it must impart the knowledge 
that this action is noble 
because it is fair.
        Now when the child initially is brought to choose fair actions, with the 
knowledge that they are noble, he will not choose them just for this reason.  He will 
choose them, presumably, to gain parental approval, or for some such reason.  Over 
time, however, Aristotle must 
believe, maturing human beings who are habituated properly will come to enjoy 
choosing fair dealing for its own sake, i.e., as noble.  They will come to enjoy this, 
because human beings naturally enjoy their distinctively human well-functioning.  
And the capacity to choose an action because it realizes a conception of value (the 
noble) and a conception of the kind of thing a good person would do (virtuous) is a 
distinctively human capacity.  

VI  Aristotle says of ethical virtue that it "is concerned with passions and actions" 
(1106b 13).  Our passions and feelings set the practical situation.  Our practical 
problem is how to respond to them.  It is because we are subject to fear and to feeling 
encouraged or discouraged 
that we can display the virtue or vice that is distinctively related to these:  courage or 
cowardice.  It is because we are subject to pleasures of various sorts that we can 
display the virtue of temperance or the vice of self-indulgence.  And so on.  All 
Aristotelian virtues and vice are related to specific passions, appetites, or emotions 
that characterize the 
human condition.
        It is against this background that we must understand Aristotle's famous theory 
of the mean.  In all passions and actions, Aristotle writes, "there is excess, defect, 
and the intermediate." (1106b 15)  So, he concludes:
        "Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. 
the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that 
principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it." (1106b 36-8)

Some remarks:
        (a)  Aristotle uses both "mean" and "intermediate"; usually he uses the former to 
refer to the virtuous state of character and the latter to refer to that at which this state 
of character aims.
        (b)  We should resist taking the metaphor of a mean too seriously.  Aristotle 
distinguishes between the intermediate "in the object" and the intermediate "relative 
to us."  "By the intermediate in object I mean that which is equidistant from each of 
the extremes . . . by the intermediate relatively to us that which is neither too much 
nor too little . . . ." (1106a 22)  So the "mean relative to us" is not terribly 
informative, taken by itself.  Aristotle is making more of a structural point--virtues 
are states of character that are somewhere between 
opposing vices; and they aim at actions and responses that are somewhere between 
opposing actions and responses to certain specific passions, emotions, and feelings.