Getting it right is very difficult

In Chapter 9, Aristotle points out that getting it "just right" is very difficult. Anyone can be angry, or anyone can spend money. But to do this just right, at the right person, at the right time, with the right motive, and so on --- that is not easy at all. So wherever someone does these things skillfully, that should be praised.

Thus, to learn how to get it "just right", we must first train ourselves to avoid the extremes. To do that, we can start avoiding the worst of the two extremes, and this will slowly help to train us and develop the right sorts of habits.

We must also consider our own proclivities, and try to over-correct for them. If I have a penchant for sex, then I should over-correct and avoid sex more than indulge in it. That will help to correct my penchant, and develop a habit for getting it "just right". It's like trying to straighten a curved stick. We bend it the other way even further, in the hopes that this will correct the curve that goes in the opposite direction.

We should especially watch out for pleasure. That is very tempting, and we do not go into with a cool head. So we can best develop moderation by aiming at the opposite extreme.

Nevertheless, we praise the man who deviates from "just the right amount" only a little bit, and we condemn the man who deviates from "just the right amount" a great deal. And indeed, we can err in degrees. If I slap my grandmother, that's much less worse than delivering a spinning air kick. Neither are good, but one is much worse than the other.

Still, it is not easy to determine the precise point where a man becomes culpable. Can I deviate from "just the right amount" only a little bit? A little bit more? A little bit more than that? How far before I am culpable for wrong-doing? This is tricky, and it takes wisdom to know how much is too much, and it takes skill to do just the right amount. 

And with that, we finally reach the end of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, book 2.

The scale of virtue

In Chapter 8, Aristotle discusses how all of these virtues and vices stand on a scale with respect to each other. So to begin, there are three kinds of dispositions: too much, too little, and just right. The "too much" and "too little "are vices, and the "just right" are skills/virtues.

Each of these are relative to each other. The "just right" is the excess of "too little", and the "just right" is too little with respect to the "too much". Further, the two extremes are the most opposed: "too little" is much farther away from "too much" than it is from "just right".

Sometimes, though, the "just right" is slightly closer to the "too little" than the "too much", and sometimes it is closer to the "too much" rather than the "too little". For instance, being courageous involves having a slight tendency to stand up to danger than to run from it. But moderation involves abstaining more often than indulging.

There are two reasons for this. Sometimes, the "just right" is actually more like the "too much" (or "too little"). For instance, being rash is a little bit more like being courageous than it is being cowardly, so the "just right" is closer to the "too much" in that case.

But sometimes, we are drawn to one of the extremes more than the other, in which case, we need to overcompensate a little bit and aim slightly in the other direction. For instance, pleasure is extremely attractive, so to teach us moderation, we want to err on the side of abstinence.

Some examples of virtues

In Chapter 7, Aristotle briefly runs through the various emotional skills that lead to a successful life. He discusses these skills in much more detail later in the Nicomachean Ethics, but here is his brief summary.

Courage

Courage involves just the right amount of fear and confidence.

(a) Too little fear makes you rash.
(b) Too much fear makes you a coward.

In short, being courageous involves knowing when to stand your ground, and when to run.


Moderation (Temperance)

Moderation involves just the right amount of indulgence and abstinence.

(a) Too much indulgence makes you self-indulgent.
(b) Too little indulgence makes you austere.

In short, enjoying pleasure with moderation involves knowing when to indulge, and when to abstain.


Financial Liberality

Financial liberality involves just the right amount of giving and taking money.

(a) If you give too much and take too little, you are prodigal. 
(b) If you take too much and give too little, you are mean. 

(Strictly speaking, Aristotle says that financial liberality has to do with small amounts of money. If we are talking about huge amounts of money, then we are talking about magnificence, and this too can have extremes: tastelessness and vulgarity is the excess, and stinginess is the deficiency.)

In short, financial liberty involves knowing when to give, and when to take.


Honor

Honor involves just the right amount of pride and humility.

(a) Too much pride is empty vanity.
(b) To little pride is undue humility.

(Like financial liberality, this deals with smaller amounts of pride. For huge amounts, we are talking about ambition, and there too one can have too much or too little.)

In short, honor involves knowing when to be proud of yourself, and when to be humble.


Good-temper

Being good-tempered involves just the right amount of anger.

(a) Too much anger makes you irascible.
(b) Too little anger makes you inirascible.

In short, being good-tempered involves knowing when to be angry, and when to not, and in just the right amount.


Truthfulness

Being truthful involves just the right amount of being truthful.

(a) Too much truthfulness makes you boastful.
(b) To little gives you false modesty.

In short, truthfulness involves just the right amount of saying what you did and what you are.


Witty

Being witty involves just the right amount of amusement.

(a) Giving too much amusement makes you a buffoon (a jokester).
(b) Giving too little amusement makes you boorish (a bore).

In short, being witty involves knowing when to crack a joke or tell a good story, and knowing when not too.


Friendly

Being friendly involves just the right amount of general pleasantry.

(a) If you are too friendly too often, you are obsequious (too agreeable) and a flatterer.
(b) If you are not friendly enough, you are quarrelsome and surly (no fun).

In short, friendliness involves knowing when to be agreeable, and when to disagree.


Modesty

Modesty involves just the right amount of shame and modesty.

(a) Too much shame makes you bashful.
(b) Too little shame makes you shameless.

In short, modesty involves knowing when to be ashamed, and when not to be.


Righteous Indignation

Righteous indignation involves feeling just the right amount of sympathy for the good and bad fortune of your neighbors.

(a) Too much sympathy makes you envious (I want what they have).
(b) Too little makes you spiteful (I don't care what they have).

In short, righteous indignation knows when to feel pleasure or pain for what happens to your neighbors.

Some things are just plain wrong

Aristotle admits, however, that some things have no 'middle ground', and they are just flat out bad and should always be avoided. For instance, spite, envy, adultery, theft, murder, and so on --- these are all bad. There is no "middle ground" to these; one cannot do "just the right amount" of adultery or murder or anything like that.

Similarly, there is no middle ground for the vices, for the vices are already the extremes. Being cowardly, for instance, is having a deficiency of fearlessness. It is, then, silly to think about the "middle ground" with cowardliness. You can't be "just the right amount" of cowardly, because being cowardly is already an extreme.

Likewise, the middle ground (a skill) does not have "just the right amount" or "not enough". Having just the right amount is precisely that: having just the right amount. You can't have "just the right amount of just the right amount". Either you have just the right amount, or you don't.

So: some things are just bad, and for them there is no "just the right amount". Other things (vices) are extremes all ready, so there is no "just the right amount" for them either. Finally, other things (virtues/skills) are "just the right amount" already, so there is no "just the right amount" of them either.

Two vices for every virtue

Since a skill (virtue) involves hitting the middle ground, there are two extremes that it avoids: excess and deficiency. These two extremes are called 'vices', so there are two for every virtue/skill. For instance, being courageous involves knowing when to stand up to the danger, and when to flee. But if I run to face every danger, then I have an excess of fearlessness, and that makes me rash. So rashness is a vice with respect to courage. Similarly, if I run from every sign of danger, then I have too little fearlessness, and that makes me a coward. So being a coward is a vice with respect to courage as well. For every skill, there are two vices: one involving excess (too much), the other involving deficiency (too little).

The Doctrine of the Mean Again

For anything that comes in degrees, there is too much, too little, and somewhere in the middle. If we consider just the spectrum or range of options itself, we can usually identify the exact middle. For instance, 6 is exactly between 2 and 10. However, if we consider what is the 'middle ground' for us, this may not be the exact middle. For instance, if I need to eat a certain number of apples each day, and 2 is too few and 10 is too many, the right amount may not always be 6 apples. It might be 4.5 on one day, or 7 on another. It really depends on the situation and just how much I might need at that time.

Choosing the middle ground is thus something of an art: knowing how much at a particular point in time. It's not a science, like choosing the exact middle in mathematics.

Crafting the perfect work of art is also like this. The perfect art work is such that we can't take away anything, but nor do we need to add anything. The artist has done just the right things, in just the right places, with just the right materials, and so on. Good artists know this. Too much or too little of something destroys quality work, while doing just the right amount preserves it. This "just the right amount", thinks Aristotle, is the standard by which we judge that a work is good. If I'm in a museum and I say, "too much red", I'm pointing to a fault in the work. But if I say, "that's a nice balance of red and blue", then I'm praising the work. Aristotle thinks this kind of "just the right amount" is what makes the work good.

Skills that help us live successfully are like this too. Good skills aim at just the right amount; not too much, not too little.

All our emotions can be felt in degrees, so we would want to learn to feel them in just the right amount, at just the right time, with just the right motive, and so on. Similarly, actions can be done in degrees as well, so again, we would want to do something to just the right degree, at just the right time, and so on.

The skills that help us live successfully are skills in this sense: when I know how to do just the right amount, at just the right time, with just the right people, with just the right motive, and so on --- then I am skilled at doing that sort of thing correctly. After all, if I do too much of it, or do too little of it, then I have failed. But if I do just the right amount, then I have succeeded. So doing things successfully takes skill. It is something of an art.

Hence, says Aristotle, these skills are aimed at the middle ground. This is Aristotle's famous "doctrine of the mean."

The good-making character of life skills

At the beginning of Chapter 6, Aristotle claims that these life skills are such that they both (i) make their possessors good, and (ii) make the activities of their possessors good. They firm up, so to speak, their possessors and the work they do.

As an analogy, Aristotle mentions the eye and a horse. When an eye is in excellent working order, it sees very well. So its fine character both makes the eye good, and it makes its vision good. Similarly, an excellent horse performs very well, so its fine character makes that horse good, and it makes it run well (or behave well in battle).

The skills that help us live successfully are like this too. They make a person good, and they make him or her do their work well.

What type of feature is a life skill?

In Chapter 5, Aristotle explains that the soul has three types of features:

(1) Emotions (anger, envy, joy, etc.).
(2) Capacities (the capacity to be angry, the capacity to be envious, etc.).
(3) Dispositions (tendencies to feel an emotion intensely or not, e.g., to be violently angry rather than barely angry, as when we say "he has an violent disposition").

(Note that in this context, "disposition" is not the technical term that analytic philosophers often use to mean a causal power. "Capacities" are more like powers here. Dispositions are more like tendencies.)

As for the skills that help us live successfully (and the contrary skills that help us live unsuccessfully), which type are they?

Aristotle first explains that they are not emotions. We are not good or bad because we have certain emotions. On the contrary, we are called good or bad because of our emotional skills. E.g., I am not a bad person just because I feel angry. I am a bad person if I don't handle my anger well.

Similarly, we don't choose to have certain emotions. Anger, envy, joy, and the like often arise quite naturally. But skills involve choice, so skills cannot be mere emotions.

For the same reasons, the skills that help us live un/successfully are not capacities either. We are not god or bad because we have the capacity to feel anger, envy, joy, and so on. We are good or bad because of how we handle our emotions.

That leaves option (3): dispositions. The skills that help us live un/successfully are therefore dispositions --- tendencies to feel emotions in particular ways and act accordingly. These skills belong to the genus of "disposition" (tendencies).

Learning emotional skills requires practice

At the beginning of Chapter 4, Aristotle raises an objection: if we develop our skills by practicing rightly, then aren't we already good at it? Aren't we already doing it right? For instance, if I train my skills to take things in moderation by actually taking things in moderation, then aren't I already doing it right in the first place?

Similarly, isn't this true for any other craft? If I speak according to the proper rules of grammar or play the piano according to the proper rules of music, don't I have the skill to speak with grammatical correctness, and don't I have the skill to play the piano correctly?

In response, Aristotle says that these other crafts are different from the skills that help us live successfully. The reason, he says, is this: the products that come about by these crafts are worthy in and of themselves. In order to "speak well" or "play well", I only need to produce the right thing. It doesn't matter how I do those things. The end result is all that matters. If the end result is right, then I did it right.

The skills that help us live successfully are not like this. Even if the end result is the 'right thing to do', that doesn't mean that I have done them skillfully. Why?

According to Aristotle, you must satisfy certain conditions when you do the right thing if your action is to be done skillfully:

(1) First of all, you need to have the knowledge that "this is how you do it correctly".

(2) Second, you must choose to do it.

(3) Third, your activity must proceed from a "firm and unchangeable character". That is, you must have a solid habit for doing that sort of thing. It can't just be that you choose to do the right thing this one time. You need to have done it so many times that you have developed a serious habit of doing that sort of thing. And then, your habit is so deeply instilled, as it were, that it is of a "firm and unchangeable character".

Without all three of these conditions, thinks Aristotle, doing the right thing doesn't count as skillful activity. Only when you meet all three conditions is your activity skillful.

The crucial bit is (3). That's the one that can only be developed through time and training. Without training, you can't develop a firm habit, and without a firm habit, you aren't acting skillfully.

For this reason, Aristotle claims that you become skillful by practicing the activity. Doing just things is what makes you just, for by doing just things over and over, you develop the habit that makes your activities just. Before you have that habit, you just happen to do the right thing out of chance, or even under instruction as part of a practice routine. But you don't have the habit yet, so you are not just. You only become just once you've practiced enough to develop the habit of being just.

(Of course, it is very difficult to see why the crafts wouldn't be like this too. It seems to me that all this stuff would apply just as well to say, sculpting, or building, or fixing cars, or whatever.)

Pleasure and pain

In chapter 3, Aristotle argues that doing things well or poorly involves pleasure and pain, and the pleasure or pain that is associated with any given activity is a sign of how developed one's skills are.

For instance, if I stand up to a danger and delight in that, I am courageous, but if I stand up to that danger and it pains me to do so, then I am a coward. The idea here seems to be this: when you delight in doing the right thing, you have developed your skills fairly well, but if it still pains you to do the right thing, then you need to keep working at it. 

This is a subtle point. Aristotle is not saying that we should decide which activities are good and which are bad based on whether they bring pleasure or pain. Now, sex (for instance) is always pleasurable, while doing the right thing often involves pain. Aristotle openly admits that we often do the wrong thing precisely because it is pleasurable, and we don't do the right thing because it might be painful.

But that doesn't mean (according to Aristotle) that we should always indulge in sex, or always avoid doing the right thing. On the contrary, thinks Aristotle, we should avoid excesses and do the right thing, even if it is not as pleasurable as indulging.

But Aristotle's point, I think, is that when we have developed our skills well enough, it will, in the end, bring us pleasure to exercise those skills correctly. Conversely, if our skills are underdeveloped, it may be painful to exercise them correctly. So the enjoyment we get from exercising our skills correctly is a sign of how developed they are. When we delight in the proper exercise of our skills, we know that our skills are reaching a high degree of development.

This is why I said earlier that developing skills to do the right thing involves emotional training. Doing the right thing is not simply doing the right thing but feeling something different. No, as Aristotle sees it, we need to bring our emotional responses in line with the right thing to do. So we should delight in the right thing to do, not feel conflicted about it.

Aristotle also makes the point that training from childhood is important, for otherwise, he seems to think, we would always just indulge in the pleasurable (like sex) and avoid the painful (like abstaining). We need, he says, to be trained from a very young age to delight in doing the right thing.

So, says Aristotle, pleasure and pain accompany all activities, but we need to be careful about following or avoiding the pleasurable or painful. It is easy to pursue the pleasurable, but this may be wrong. On the other hand, once we have developed our skills sufficiently, doing the right thing becomes pleasurable indeed.

This is about training, it is not about a rule

Aristotle's point here --- that choosing the middle ground is best --- is not intended as a moral rule. Rather, it is intended as a training principle. That is, it is not that you are 'good' if you choose the middle and 'bad' if you choose too much or too little. Aristotle is saying something quite different. He is saying that when you train your emotional skills, you need to aim (roughly) for the middle as you practice. If you always do too much in your training, or if you always do too little, you aren't habituating the middle ground. So this is about training, not a rule.

Also, Aristotle points out that the practice arena is alway the same, irrespective of whether you practice in the right way or the wrong way. For instance, if I were learning to play the piano, I would sit in a practice room and practice every day. However, I could still be practicing in the wrong ways there. So simply jumping into the practice arena and practicing is not enough to guarantee that I will develop my skills correctly. It takes the right kind of practice.

Generally, Aristotle believes that what makes you 'good' or 'bad' is not following a rule. You are 'good' or 'bad' if you more or less consistently do the right thing. You can slip up every once in a while, especially while you are training. But slip ups don't make you 'bad'. Excellent piano players can make mistakes once in a while. What makes you 'bad' is consistently doing the wrong thing. By Aristotle's reckoning, you are judged to be good or bad in accordance with how you live your whole life, not in accordance with how you enacted this or that particular thing.

The doctrine of the mean

Aristotle next points out that skills are destroyed by excess or deficiency. As analogies, Aristotle cites nutrition and strength. Take nutrition. Too much food and wine is bad for you, but so is too little. You need just the right amount. Doctors tell us it's helpful for our hearts if we have a glass of wine each day, but of course no wine will give you no benefits, and too much wine may kill you.

Now take strength. Too much exercise destroys your strength, and too little doesn't give you enough strength. (Over zealous body-builders can become so bulky that they can only move in very awkward ways, whereas wraith-like weaklings can barely lift a finger.)

This is how it is for the emotional skills that lead to a successful life. Consider, says Aristotle, courage. If we jump right into every sign of danger, we're rash. If we run like screaming rabbits from every sign of danger, we're cowards. But when we take the middle ground --- i.e., when we stand up to the dangers we should stand up to and flee from the dangers we should flee from (and let's pretend that this does not involve any circular reasoning) --- that's courage.

Similarly, consider moderation (or 'temperance', as some translations put it). We can over-indulge in pleasures, but we can also abstain totally. As Aristotle sees it, the middle ground is best. Running headlong (or perhaps handlong) into every pleasure is hedonist, and running from every pleasure is austerity. Taking your pleasures with moderation is the best way to go.

Ethics is not an exact science

The theory of conduct (i.e., doing the right thing) is not an exact science. The reason, says Aristotle, is that every theory needs to be as exact as its subject matter. In the realm of conduct though, there are no exact rules. Consequently, a theory of conduct cannot have any exact rules either.

As an analogy, Aristotle points to matters of health. There are no exact rules for making a sick person healthy. Sometimes it's good to do an organ transplant, but sometimes it is not. It really depends on the circumstances. And since circumstances can be infinitely variable, there simply cannot be any solid, steady rules about making sick people healthy. A good doctor is not one who always assigned the textbook prescribed medication. On the contrary, a good doctor is one who knows when and where to do certain things, and when and where to not do such things.

The same goes for a theory of conduct. Sometimes it's good to do X, but sometimes it's good to do Y. It really depends on the circumstances. So when it comes to matters of conduct, we need to pay attention to the circumstances.

Still, Aristotle says we can do something to help us understand good conduct, and that's what he tries to do in the rest of the Nicomachean Ethics.

Ethics is about conduct, not mere knowledge

Aristotle begins chapter 2 by claiming that ethics is different from other branches of philosophy because ethics is a practical discipline rather than a theoretical discipline. That is, it is concerned with doing the right thing, not just knowing the right thing. After all, one could know the right thing to do, but sit on a mountain top and do nothing, but then Aristotle would think that you aren't really living successfully.

So, says Aristotle, we need to look into our conduct: we have to ask how we are to live skillfully so as to live successfully. For as we have seen, the quality of our practice (i.e., the things we do day-in and day-out from a very young age) determines the quality of our skills.

Aristotle then brings up a principle: "to act in conformity with the right principle". This should be read like so: "be able to do the right thing at the right time, and know why you did such and thing and why it was the right thing to do at that time." Theo point here is this: doing the right thing does involve knowledge: it involves knowing what the right thing to do actually is, and knowing why it is the right thing to do. Doing the right thing, for Aristotle, is a reasoned course of action. We truly succeed at doing the right thing only when we have good reasons for doing so.

Hence, knowledge is involved here, even though ethics is a practical science. But of course, ethics also involves doing things, so it is ultimately a practical science, albeit a reasonable one.

Practice can lead to good or bad performers

However, Aristotle is aware that practice can lead to good or bad performers. For instance, if I practice playing the piano every day, I could still turn out to be a very good piano player, or I could turn out to be a very bad piano player. Similarly, even if I try to build something out of wood every day, I could turn out to be a great builder or a horrible builder. Which way it turns out depends on the quality of my practice routine. Good practice leads to good performance skills, bad practice leads to bad performance skills.

If this were not so, says Aristotle, we would not need any instruction. If I could be a good piano player just by sitting down and banging my fingers on the keys every day, then I would never need a piano teacher. But obviously, that sort of practice will not make me a maestro. I need a good teacher to guide my practice in the right ways.

The same goes for emotional skills. Take courage. According to Aristotle, being courageous means facing danger when it's appropriate, and fleeing when the danger is too great. Suppose, then, that I were training to be a ninja, and suppose that everyday my master put me in a ring with a sparring partner. Then suppose that every time the adjudicator yells "fight!", my master yells out, "run away!".

Would I develop any courage with that kind of training? Not unless my master were teaching me to run to another, even better sparring match. But assuming that my master were not doing that, he or she would really just be teaching me cowardice, not courage.

On the other hand, if my master always had me run headlong into my opponent's house --- and by 'house', I mean round house (a kind of spinning kick) --- would I be developing courage? Aristotle thinks not. On the contrary, I would be developing rashness, i.e., the kind of crazy fearlessness that would lead me to take on anything anytime, even if my opponent were a giant tank, or perhaps a stationary brick wall.

So, thinks Aristotle, we need good training and good practice. Otherwise we won't develop our skills correctly. And this is why, Aristotle explains, our childhood training is very important. Or, as Aristotle puts it, our upbringing makes all the difference.

Emotional skills are not naturally instilled in us

Aristotle next points out that emotional skills are not naturally instilled in us. The reason, he says, is that natural inclinations cannot be trained, whereas emotions can. Aristotle gives the following (amusing) example. Stones like to fall to the earth, and that's something they do naturally. Consequently, I could never train a stone to fall upwards, even if I spent half my life throwing the stone up in the air over and over again. The stone would never develop the habit of flying upwards, for it goes down naturally.

Emotional skills, on the other hand, can be trained, so they must not be natural proclivities in us. This is not to say that emotional skills are contrary to our nature. No, says Aristotle, we are naturally set up to develop these skills. But the point is that we won't develop these skills naturally. Rather, we need to develop them through training, namely by developing the right habits. 

Also, says Aristotle, natural proclivities are first potential and then actual, whereas emotional skills are first actual then potential. The idea here is that natural proclivities are already built-in, and so we can exercise them whenever we want because we already have them. Emotional skills, by contrast, are not built-in. Rather, they need to be developed first. And the only way to develop them is to start doing them: to practice them.

With emotional skills then, we have to start doing them first, and only after doing them for a while can we develop the skill to do them well. For instance, people become good builders by building, and they become good piano players by playing. The same goes for emotional skills: we develop them by practice. They are not built-in in the way that natural proclivities are.

(One might object: some emotions are natural proclivities. Take anger, jealousy, and so on --- surely these are natural responses to certain situations. I suppose, though, that Aristotle could say that although these may appear to us as 'natural responses', they are in fact trained responses; it's just that we have been trained in these ways from a very young age.)

Developing mental and emotional skills

Aristotle next says that we develop mental skills through instruction. The point, I take it, is that in order to become skilled at processing information, we need to be taught how to do so. Anybody can learn the basic theorems of arithmetic, but that doesn't mean they can work through an arithmetic problem very quickly. It takes someone like me a very long time to work through even basic addition and subtraction, so I am not skilled at arithmetic. But someone could probably teach me how to do that better. That would involve lots of practice of course, but it would still require some sort of instruction. And obviously, developing such mental skills takes experience and time, just like learning any other skill.

As for emotional skills, Aristotle says we develop them by developing habits. A habit is a tendency to act in a certain way rather than another way. For instance, I have developed the habit of never putting my wallet down. It goes in my pocket, or it stays in my hand, and nothing else. At first, this required conscious thought. But after doing this for a period of time, it became a habit, and now I just do it without even thinking about it. That's a habit. Emotional skills are like this, thinks Aristotle. We start our training early, in childhood, but we develop habits to feel certain things (anger, etc.) and hence to act accordingly in certain situations.

Two kinds of life skills

Aristotle opens Book 2 by claiming that the skills which help us live successfully come in two flavors: there are

(a) skills for thinking the right thing, and
(b) skills for doing the right thing.

(Note: older translations use the label 'intellectual' virtues for (a), and 'moral' or 'ethical' virtues for (b), but I think the way I have put it here captures the idea a little more clearly.)

Now, in order to have the skill to think the right thing, and we might call this a mental skill, we obviously need to know the correct facts about the world and our situation. So Aristotle lists (i) having good intuitions, and (ii) scientific knowledge among the mental skills we need for living successfully.

But thinking the right thing also involves being able to make the right judgments at the right time. Now, we make judgments about theories, and we make judgments about what to do, and these are two separate skills. Aristotle says that the ability to make the right judgment about theories is called 'theoretical wisdom', and the ability to make the right judgment about what to do is called 'practical wisdom'. As Aristotle sees it, these two kinds of wisdom are the most important mental skills, because they ultimately guide our thoughts and actions.

Skills for doing the right thing involve just that: having the skill or ability to do the right thing at the right time. However, Aristotle thinks this also involves emotional training. It does not simply amount to doing the right thing, it amounts to feeling the right thing as well. Hence, what we feel and what we do should not be out of whack.

For instance, suppose that you tred on the toe of my sheep, and that gets me super pissed. Still, I recognize that I shouldn't punch you in the forehead, so I decide to forgive you instead. In this case, I feel one thing (anger: I want to punch you in the forehead so badly), but I know that acting on that would be the wrong thing to do, so I end up doing the right thing.

Aristotle thinks that I wouldn't be very skillful at doing the right thing in this case, for having the skill to do the right thing involves not just doing the right thing, but also having the appropriate emotional response. And if punching you in the forehead is not the right thing to do, then feeling that I want to punch you in the forehead is not the right thing to feel either. I need to train my emotions so that I end up feeling an emotion that corresponds exactly to the action that I should do.

In other words, I need to train my emotions to feel the right things at the right times, and then act accordingly. That is what Aristotle thinks is involved with skills for doing the right thing. And since there is emotional training involved here, we might as well call these skills 'emotional skills' (though I mean to imply that we should also act on our (right) emotions, and not simply have the right emotions).

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2

In the next few posts, I'm going to put down some thoughts on book 2 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. This will be a sort of commentary, though I am no specialist, and so there are bound to be all sorts of things here that specialists could take up. But this is really just an attempt to put some thoughts of my own down and try to understand the text.

Before I dig in to book 2, I should say a little about what Aristotle says in Book 1. There, Aristotle argues that we can develop certain skills that help us live successfully --- i.e., live the best kind of life. (I sometimes call these skills 'life skills', though I'm still looking for a better term.)

Now, older translations use the word 'virtues' for these life skills, and they use the word 'happiness' for living successfully. I do not particularly like these labels. On the one hand, the word 'virtue' (in my mind anyway) seems to bring along with it some sense of morality. But that is not quite right. Aristotle is suggesting something much closer to 'skill' than 'morality'. These skills involve doing things well, in the way that a master calligrapher can make a very precise pen stroke. It is not simply following rules of right and wrong.

On the other hand, the term 'happiness' suggests a state of mind, something like 'contentment' or 'bliss'. One could be 'happy' in that sense and not do anything, e.g., by sitting on a mountain top meditating. But that is not what Aristotle has in mind either. Aristotle is thinking of doing things well. This is about activity, not sitting there contentedly. 

So the point Aristotle is making is this: living successfully involves certain skills. More precisely, by developing and using these skills, we can live a successful life. Or, to put it the other way around, the most successful life is one that is lived by exercising the skills in question.

But what exactly is the nature of these skills? That is the topic of Book 2 in the Nicomachean Ethics.