December 5, 2003

1. Two kinds of virtue: moral virtues and intellectual virtues (one of which is practical wisdom).
2. No moral virtue is possible without practical wisdom (an intellectual virtue).
3. Without the moral virtues there can be no practical wisdom.
4. The agent must develop the moral virtues first (as a youth, preferably).
5. The agent cannot develop the intellectual virtues without first having the moral virtues.
   

B) Reason serves as the regulating principle for the ethical agent.

A) Elements of a virtuous act

1. Voluntary (3.1)

2. Unchanging state (depends on character, 2.1)

3. Deliberated (3.2)
a. See the end (depends on character, 3.4)

b. Deliberate about what promotes that end (depends on practical wisdom, 3.3)

B) Definition of virtue (2.6)

A) Acquisition of the virtues of character (books 2 & 3)

B) Acquisition of the virtues of thought (book 6)

1. "It is clear, then, from what has been said, that it is not possible to be good in the strict sense without practical wisdom, or practically wise without moral virtue. [...] This is possible in respect of the natural virtues, but not in respect of those in respect of which a man is called without qualification good; for with the presence of the one quality, practical wisdom, will be given all the virtues." (158)
   
2. "...the agents themselves must consider what is appropriate to the occasion, as happens also in the art of medicine or of navigation." (30)
3. "...the work of man is achieved only in accordance with practical wisdom as well as with moral virtue; for virtue makes us aim at the right mark, and practical wisdom makes us take the right means." (155)
4. "...for we are inquiring not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, since otherwise our inquiry would have been of no use." (30)
5. "...like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do." (35)
6. "...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. The agent also must be in a certain condition when he does them; in the first place he must have knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and thirdly his action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character." (34)
   
7. "in one word, states of character arise out of like activities." (29)
8. "For each state of character has its own ideas of the noble and the pleasant, and perhaps the good man differs from others most by seeing the truth in each class of things, being as it were the norm and measur e of them." (59)
   
9. "We deliberate not about ends, but about means." (56)
   
10. "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. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect...." (39)
    
11. "exercise either excessive or defective destroys the strength, and similarly drink or food which is above or below a certain amount destroys the health, while that which is proportionate both produces and increases and preserves it." (31)
    
12. "if ten pounds are too much for a particular person to eat and two too little, it does not follow that the trainer will order six pounds; for this also is perhaps too much for the person who is to take it, or too little — too little for Milo, too much for the beginner in athletic exercises." (37)
    
13. "Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit...’" (28)
14. "Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit." (28)
    
15. "It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference." (29)
    
16. "A good man (they think), since he lives with his mind fixed on what is noble, will submit to argument, while a bad man, whose desire is for pleasure, is corrected by pain like a beast of burden." (271)
    
17. "We must take as a sign of states of character the pleasure or pain that supervenes upon acts; for the man who abstains from bodily pleasures and delights in this very fact is temperate, while the man who is annoyed at it is self-indulgent..." (31-2)
    
18. "...while young men become geometricians and mathematicians and wise in matters like these, it is thought that a young man of practical wisdom cannot be found. The cause is that such wisdom is concerned not only with universals but with particulars, which become familiar from experience, but a young man has no experience for it is length of time that gives experience...." (148)
    
19. Practical Wisdom: "...it is a true and reasoned state of capacity to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for man." (142)
    
20. "...the work of man is achieved only in accordance with practical wisdom as well as with moral virtue; for virtue makes us aim at the right mark, and practical wisdom makes us take the right means. (155).
    
21. "For the fact is a starting-point, and if this is sufficiently plain to him, he will not need the reason as well; and the man who has been well brought up has or can easily get starting-points." (6)
    
22. "...we learn by doing them, e.g., men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts." (29)
    
23. "Learning that there are things which one is expected to do even when all concerned are aware that one does not feel like doing them is perhaps the only way we have of learning from scratch that there are things worth doing and aiming for which are not immediately pleasant." (Broadie, 109)
    
24. "...virtuous actions must be in themselves pleasant." (17)
    
25. "In short, the logic of our natural bent for the noble is such that we begin by being utterly dependent on others for our development to autonomous nobility. It is, of course, human nature to tend to accept (even if against the immediate grain) those others’ authority, since otherwise our nature has no chance of becoming actually human." (Broadie, 110)

Bibliography:

Broadie, Sarah. Ethics with Aristotle. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.