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.