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(Previous: Eudemian Ethics II.2.)
Having made these distinctions, we must grasp that in every continuum along which we can draw distinctions there is going too far and falling short and a middle way, either in relation to each other or in relation to us. These exist in fitness training, medicine, architecture, navigation, and every kind of action, whether or not founded in some form of understanding and craft; for change is continuous and action is a form of change.
In all things the middle way in relation to us is best, for that is what our understanding and reason urge us to do, and in all cases that also produces the best trait. This is clear both from bringing in what's evident and from reasoning, for opposites destroy each other and extremes are opposite both to each other and to the middle way, which is related each to each, as for instance what's equal is larger than what's smaller but is smaller than what's larger. Thus it must be that excellence of character is all about the middle way and it itself a certain midpoint. Hence we must grasp what sort of midpoint excellence is, and what sort of middle ways it is all about. In the way of precedents let us take the following outline and give our attention to each of the items.
| belligerence | impassivity | mildness |
| daring | timidity | courage |
| shamelessness | shyness | shame |
| dissipation | insensibility | moderation |
| envy | [unnamed] | indignation |
| advantage | disadvantage | justice |
| wastefulness | servility | free-heartedness |
| false pretense | false modesty | truthfulness |
| flattery | surliness | friendliness |
| obsequiousness | churlishness | dignity |
| softness | toughness | patience |
| conceitedness | small-heartedness | great-heartedness |
| ostentation | stinginess | magnificence |
| cunning | foolishness | wisdom |
These feelings and the like arise within personhood, and all of them are spoken of in terms of going too far on the one hand and falling short on the other. The belligerent person gets angry more often than one should and more quickly and at more people than one should, whereas the impassive person falls short with respect to whom, when, and how. The daring person doesn't feel terror at things one should nor when nor how one should, whereas the timid person is terrified of things one shouldn't and when one shouldn't and how one shouldn't. Likewise the dissipated person indulges in cravings and goes too far in every possible way, whereas the insensible person falls short and has no need even for what is better or natural, but is as unfeeling as a stone. The person who seeks advantage from every source is avaricious, whereas the person who seeks it from no source or from few is a loser. The pretentious person lays claim to more than what's real, the modest person to less. The flatterer joins in praise beyond what's beautiful, the surly person less than what's beautiful. Being too eager to please is obsequiousness, whereas doing so on few occasions or hardly at all is churlishness. The person who can't put up with any pain, even if it is better to do so, is soft; strictly speaking there is no name for a person who can tolerate every pain, but in a sense is called hard, enduring, and tough. The conceited person overrates their self-worth, whereas the small-hearted person underrates it. The wasteful person goes too far with every expense, whereas the servile person falls short. Likewise with the stingy person and the snob, for one goes beyond what's fitting and the other falls short of what's fitting. The cunning person seeks every advantage from every source, whereas the foolish person doesn't even seek advantage from sources one should. The envious person is pained by more instances of success than one should be (for the envious person is pained even by the success of those who deserve to do well); there is no name for the opposite, although there is the person who goes too far in not being pained by undeserved success but instead is overly tolerant (like someone who will eat anything), whereas it is through envy that the other is intolerant.
It would be a waste of effort to specify in each case that these feelings are not merely by-the-way, for no form of understanding, whether directed at giving attention or making things, specifies this in what it says or what it does; it is said here only to address the quibbles of the craft of argumentation. So let things be defined simply in this way, but more accurately when we speak of the opposing traits.
These feelings have different ways of being that are named by differing in excess of time or intensity or the things in relation to which the feelings arise. I mean for instance the unstable person is named by feeling more quickly than one should, the hard and fierce person by feeling more intensely, the bitter person by nursing their anger, and the aggressive and abusive person by seeking retribution because of their anger, while gourmands and gluttons and drunkards are so named by having an emotional capacity to take pleasure in their respective foods beyond reason.
We must not ignore the fact that some of the descriptions are not a matter of "how", if "how" is taken in the sense of feeling more. For instance, an adulterer is not so called for seducing married women more than one should (for there is no such thing); instead, adultery itself already a form of corruption, as its name implies. Likewise with assault. Thus people contest an accusation by saying they had sex but it wasn't adultery because they did so unwittingly or were compelled to do so, or that they hit someone but it wasn't assault; and similarly in other cases.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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Before saying goodbye to José Ortega y Gasset's book What Is Philosophy?, I'd like to offer one more quote:
[L]ife always carries with it a fatal dimension and some hint of having fallen into a trap. Except that this trap does not strangle us, but leaves to life a margin of decision and always permits us, out of the imposed situation, to achieve an elegant solution and to forge for ourselves a beautiful life. Hence, because life is part fate, and part the freedom we need to make decisions for ourselves, there is at its very root the stuff of art.... [D]o not say that fate does not allow us to improve our lives, for the beauty of life does not lie in the fact that destiny is or is not favorable to us, but in the grace with which we accept the challenge and out of its fatal material fashion a noble figure.
Each of us is dropped into the pageant of the world, and we are fated to live as human beings in a certain time and place with all of the attendant difficulties and ambiguities. Yet, despite this destiny, each of us has enough freedom to forge a beautiful life. That's all that truly matters, isn't it? If I'm not creating something beautiful, why am I here?
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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(Previous: Eudemian Ethics II.1.)
Clearly, then, excellence of character is all about pleasures and pains. Because character (as the name suggests) develops from what we characteristically do, acquiring a certain character happens not by being born into it but by being guided into it through repeated changes, and only then being activated in that way. (We don't see this in inanimate things, for you can throw a stone upwards ten thousand times but it will never do so except by being forced to.) Thus let character be a quality of the unthinking aspect of personhood that has the ability to heed thought and that is directed by the orders of reason.
Next we must articulate what it is in personhood by which character traits have the qualities they do. And these are our capacities for the feelings - for being sensitive, as it's said - as well as our traits, by which we are said to be affected or unaffected by these feelings in a certain way. After that there is the distinction, already settled, between feelings, capacities, and traits. By feelings I mean things such as anger, fear, shame, craving, and in general things which in themselves are accompanied by an awareness of pleasure or pain. With regard to these there arises no particular quality but instead they are something we undergo, whereas with regard to capacities a quality does arise. I mean those capacities by which we are said to be activated with regard to feelings, such as being belligerent, stolid, amorous, bashful, or shameless. Traits are the things responsible for these capacities, either guided by reason or the opposite, such as courage and moderation or cowardice and dissipation.
(Next: Eudemian Ethics II.3.)
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION
In José Ortega y Gasset's book What Is Philosophy? can be found the following quote:
Truth descends only on him who tries for it, who yearns for it, who carries within himself, pre-formed, a mental space where the truth may eventually lodge.
On reading that I immediately thought it would be interesting to substitute "love" for "truth", resulting in this:
Love descends only on him who tries for it, who yearns for it, who carries within himself, pre-formed, an emotional space where love may eventually lodge.
I was primed for this substitution because a few pages prior Ortega had made a connection between love and truth:
He who fixes his attention only on what awakes and fires love does not understand what love is. If the love of a woman is born of her beauty, it is not pleasure in that beauty which constitutes love and the process of loving. Once awakened, love consists in the constant beaming forth of a favorable atmosphere, a loyal and affectionate light in which we envelop the beloved being, so that all her other qualities and perfections can reveal themselves, make themselves manifest, and we will recognize them. Hatred, on the contrary, puts the hated being in a negative light, and we see only its defects. Love, then, prearranges and prepares the possible perfections of the beloved. Hence it enriches us by making us see what we would not see without it. Above all, the love of a man for a woman is like an attempt at transmigration, at going beyond ourselves, it inspires migratory tendencies within us.
This is a topic which I explored a few days ago in a post (also inspired by Ortega) on love and attention. In relation to both love and attention, Ortega interestingly uses the word "transmigration" and sees the possibility that one can engage in truthful perception of the other person or being. Far from holding that love is blind, he insists that the perception discovered in the "favorable atmosphere" engendered by love and attention is more truthful since it "makes us see what we would not see without it". In his book On Love, which I discussed a few months ago in a post about enchantment and surrender, Ortega locates the essence of love and friendship in uprooting your vital depths and transplanting them into the soil of another soul, which is an activation of your capacity for transmigration. It is only by migrating out of yourself to some extent that you can see and love another person for who they truly are.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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In Book X, Chapter 8 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes the puzzling claim that "eudaimonia extends just so far as theoria does"; much of the puzzle arises from the fact that in standard translations this is usually rendered as "happiness extends just so far as contemplation does", which according to some recent scholars implies that happiness consists primarily or exclusively in acts of contemplation. By contrast, I would render it as "fulfillment extends just so far as attending does" - still somewhat puzzling, but something that I think I can unpack in a more reasonable manner.
In the Philebus, Plato has Socrates argue that no human being would ever want to experience physical pleasures without the accompanying psychological awareness of those pleasures, since that would betoken a merely animal existence. Aristotle seems to be saying much the same thing in the full passage from the Nicomachean Ethics:
[T]he other animals have no share in fulfillment, being completely deprived of such activity [i.e., theoria as attending]. For while the whole life of the gods is blessed, and that of men too in so far as some likeness of such activity belongs to them, none of the other animals experiences fulfillment, since they in no way share in attending. Fulfillment extends, then, just so far as attending does, and those to whom attending more fully belongs are more truly fulfilled, not by-the-way, but as directed by attending; for this is in itself glorious. Fulfillment, therefore, must be some form of attending. [Revised Oxford Translation modified; 1178b24-32]
One approach to elucidating this matter comes from Alexander Grant, who all the way back in 1885 wrote as follows:
[A] psychical energeia [i.e., activity - PSA] must be different from the same category exhibited in any external object. Life, the mind, the moral faculties, must have their 'existence in actuality' distinguished from their mere 'potentiality' by some special difference, not common to other existences. What is it that distinguishes vitality from the conditions of life, waking from sleeping, thought from the dormant faculties, moral action from unevoked moral capacities? In all these contrasts there is no conception that approaches nearer towards summing up the distinction than that of 'consciousness.'
Instead of the notoriously slippery word "consciousness", I prefer the verb "attending". Grant seems to be saying that the activity of attending to things distinguishes aliveness from nonexistence, waking from sleeping, and a capacity from its activation. This is true even of animals which engage in perceptual awareness, but is even more true of human beings, which engage in conceptual awareness through the activity of attending.
Another way to put it is captured in a passage from What Is Philosophy? by José Ortega y Gasset:
Life is knowing oneself, it is evidential. It is right to say that living comes first and then philosophizing - in a very strict sense this is, as you see, the principle of my entire philosophy. It is well that this should be said, but not without noting that the root and heart of living consists of knowing oneself and understanding oneself, of observing oneself and what surrounds one, of being transparent to oneself. Therefore, when we put the question, "What is our life?" we might answer, "Life is what we do, of course, because living is knowing what we do; in short, it is finding oneself in the world and being occupied with the things and beings in the world."
To my mind, "knowing what we do" is equivalent to the Socratic requirement (described in Plato's Laches) to give an account of one's life, while "being occupied with the things and beings in the world" is equivalent to attending to them through the ongoing activity and practice of theoria. Fulfillment extends just so far as attending does because living consists in knowing oneself, which is a matter of attending to one's life in the world.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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Having recently rebalanced my financial portfolio, I remembered that I've been meaning to write about the ways in which I periodically rebalance my life portfolio, too. I first sketched out the idea of a life portfolio about eight years ago, asserting somewhat arbitrarily (because the areas of life can be sliced and diced in a variety of ways) that for my own purposes I think of my life pursuits as consisting of Health & Vitality, Wealth & Achievement, Love & Caring, Character & Self-Improvement, Wisdom & Sagacity, and Beauty & Creativity. As my life circumstances change, I tend to modify the weightings I assign to these different areas. Here are a few examples:
I've observed similar portfolio rebalancings among friends and loved ones, so the idea seems to be generally applicable even though the particulars may differ. As always, your mileage may vary...
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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