Virtues/Aristotle’s Ethics
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Aristotle's Ethics
[edit | edit source]In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle's best known work on ethics, he presents the idea that we can describe virtues as things which are destroyed by deficiency or excess. Someone who runs away becomes a coward, while someone who fears nothing is rash. In this way the virtue "courage" can be seen as depending upon a "mean" between two extremes. Aristotle goes on to describe several virtues in this form, beginning with courage:
| Concerned with | Mean | Excess | Deficiency |
| fear (phobos) and confidence (tharsos) | Courage (andreia): mean in fear and confidence | First Type. excessive fearlessness has no special name | Cowardly (deilos): exceeds in fear and is deficient in confidence |
| Second Type. Rash (thrasus): exceeds in confidence | |||
| pleasure (hēdonē) and pain (lupē) | Temperance (sōphrosunē) | Profligacy, dissipation, etc. (akolasia) | scarcely occurs, but we may call it Insensible (anaisthētos) |
| giving and getting (smaller amounts of) money | Liberality (Rackham), generosity (Sachs) (eleutheriotēs) | Prodigality (Rackham), Wastefulness (Sachs) (asōtia) | Meanness (Rackham), Stinginess (Sachs) (aneleutheria) |
| giving and getting greater things | Magnificence (megaloprepeia) | Tastelessness (apeirokalia) or Vulgarity (banausia) | Paltriness (Rackham), Chintziness (Sachs) (mikroprepeia) |
| great honor (timē) and dishonor | Greatness of Soul (megalopsuchia) (Traditional translation "magnanimity". Sometimes "pride".) |
Vanity (chaunotēs) | Smallness of Soul (mikropsuchia) |
| lesser honor (timē) and dishonor | no special term in ancient Greek for the right amount of ambition | (Over-)ambitiousness (philotimos) | lack of ambition (aphilotimos) |
| anger (orgē) | Gentleness (praotēs) | Irascibility (Rackham), Irritability (Sachs) (orgilotēs) | Spiritlessness (aorgẽsia) |
| general pleasantness in life | Friendliness (something like philia) | First Type. obsequious (areskos), if for no purpose | quarrelsome (duseris) and surly (duskolos) |
| Second type. flatterer (kolax), if for own advantage | |||
| truth (alēthēs) | Truthfulness(alētheia) | Boastfulness: pretense as exaggeration (alazoneia) | Self-deprecation: pretense as understatement (eironia, same word as "irony") |
| pleasantness and social amusement | Wittiness (Rackham) Charming (Sachs) (eutrapelos) | Buffoonery (bõmolochia) | Boorishness bõmolochos |