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).