The Virtue of Aristotle's Ethics
Paula Gottlieb
Cambridge, 2009

[NOTE: these selections are minimal; if I were to read the book again, I would probably identify more passages to quote.]

With regard to the "nameless virtues" of philia, aletheia, eutrapelia, nemesis, aidos, and semnotes, Gottlieb observes that in EE III.7 Aristotle says these are not hexeis but pathe since they do not involve prohairesis; yet "the idea that they just *are* emotions will not hold up, although emotions proper are to be found in the triads of the other conditions that do not count as full-blown virtues in either work. Envy and shame, for example, just are emotions, according to Aristotle; they are not settled states in virtue of which we experience emotions on particular occasions in particular ways." (GOTTLIEB, pp. 47-48)

"In presenting his virtues and vices in a triadic structure, then, Aristotle must be presenting what virtuous people will do 'for the most part'. The vices, then, present dispositions that result in indiscriminate behavior. The virtues are discriminating." (GOTTLIEB, p. 78)

Commenting on the three factors involved in a experiencing an emotion (phantasia, a physiological reaction/disturbance or pleasure/pain), an impulse to pursue/avoid), Gottlied draws attention to passages in which Aristotle says these can be caused by thought (DA 432b26-433a1, MA 703b5-20, MA 702a17-21). She then comments: "In his ethical works, Aristotle also seems to assume that reason can, although it does not necessarily, affect all three parts of an emotion, since it tells one when and how one should feel an emotion as well as what its objects should be. If practical wisdom is an intellectual state that concerns what is good or bad for a human being and how things strike one reflects this state, it seems reasonable to suppose that ethical virtue involves the correct reason when reason enters not just at the stage of desire but affects the content of the impression as well. In short, ethical virtue involves the correct reason when the reason of practical wisdom is fully integrated with, and not just running parallel to, the workings of the non-rational part of the soul." (GOTTLIEB, p. 104) [PSA: "involves the correct reason" is Gottlieb's translation of meta logou, specifically meta orthou logou.]

"Although Aristotle divides the soul, he argues that in the ethically virtuous person the soul's parts have the same fine aims and function not just together but in an integrated fashion. When a person's soul has reached this state, he has ethical virtue that involves the correct reason. Although there are people who may appear to have one ethical virtue without having the others, on closer inspection they turn out to be acting merely in accordance with the correct reason and not from an ethical disposition that involves the correct reason." (GOTTLIEB, p. 110) [PSA: here again, "involves the correct reason" is Gottlieb's translation of meta logou, specifically meta orthou logou.]

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