their actualization of themselves, causing them to suffer from a lack of flourishing and unhappiness.
It was mentioned that Aristotle has a
“substantive”
ethical approach, and what was meant was that he
understood good ethical action as requiring an agent act good in a whole range of different areas of life –
with “good” defined in terms of “
acting according to the mean.”
In the following table I’ve made life easy
and isolated the different phenomenon he considers and his analysis of the
mean/virtuous
way of doing
X-phenomenon, and the
deficient/excessive/vicious
way of doing X. Thus take everything that was just
said about courage in our example and apply it to each of the following:
Categories of Different
Modes of Being
Deficient (negative)
Too…
Mean (Good)
Excess (Negative)
Too…
Pleasure/Pain
Insensible
Temperate
Self-Indulgent
Giving/Taking Money
Frugal
Liberal
Wasteful
Honor
Humility
Pride
Vanity
Courage
Fearful/Meek
Courageous
Brash
Anger
Nonchalant
Tempered
Irascible
Truth
Modest
Honest
Boastful
Being-With-Others
Bore
Wit
Buffoon
18
Emotions
Bashful
Righteous
Spiteful
Spending Money
Cheap
Magnificent
Vulgar
Self-Opinion
Temperate
Proud
Vanity
Conversation
Flatterer
Friendly
Quarrelsome
Negative Emotions
Envy
Righteous Indignation
Spite
Carrying the Self
Humble
Honorable
Pride
What Aristotle does in the
“Nicomachean Ethics”
is look at each of the phenomenon from the first
column “Categories of Different Modes of Being,” evaluating each one at a time, studying how humans
can do such a thing in a way that is
deficient
or
excessive
, and how they can do that thing in the proper
proportion, or according to the
mean
relative to that agent. The former lead to
bad habits
, which in turn
start to create a bad character, which in turn means one is failing to realize/actualize the
telos
of being a
human being – with potential being misused and squandered a wilted sapling grows where once a
mighty tree could have sprouted (e.g.
vice
is embodied). Note the sheer number of different areas that
an agent has to display
virtuous
conduct in in order to be considered as fully
flourishing
. Remember to
be truly
excellent
, to actualize one’s potential, to be truly virtuous, one must
habituate
themselves so
that they hit the
mean
in each
categorical mode of being.
To be ethical
therefore means to be
temperate
in terms of
pleasure, liberal
in terms
of giving and spending money
,
proud
in terms of
honor
,
courageous
in terms of
courage
,
tempered
in terms of
anger
,
honest
in terms of
truth
,
witty
and
funny
when
with
others
,
righteous
when
displaying
emotions
, and so on down the list.
To make this list more real lets run down some examples closer to home. Christian Bale yelling on the set
of batman – total excess of anger (irascible). Philip Seymour Hoffman loved chasing the dragon – tad
excessive love of pleasure (self-indulgent). Lance “the champ” Armstrong sure showed an excess of a
sense of honor which manifested itself as vanity. What about a bunch of professors at a raging frat-party
