Aristotle on Moral Virtue and the Fine
Gabriel Richardson Lear
In Kraut, ed., The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
Blackwell, 2006

"[I]n the changeable world of nature, order is the arrangement of parts with reference to, or for the sake of, a common end or good.... [T]his arrangement makes things beautiful as well. Beauty qua order is not a mere formal property, then, a relation of parts *to each other*. It is (or inheres in) an effective teleological arrangement (that is, it aims at its good and succeeds in so aiming)." (LEAR-2006, pp. 118-119)

"The kalon as symmetry must also be understood in terms of teleological structure. According to Politics III.13 1284b8-22, something displays symmetry or proportion (summetria) when the size of its parts conduces to its benefit.... But what determines proportionality? It is the well functioning or good of the whole." (LEAR-2006, p. 119)

"There is reason to think, too, that definiteness or boundedness is a teleological notion.... [W]hen things have a boundary or limit that is a true horos, they are limited at *just that point* for the sake of fulfilling their function." (LEAR-2006, p. 119)

"[A]ctions strike us as fine when they seem to indicate what kind of person the agent is." (LEAR-2006, p. 127)

"[W]here two courses of action are equally effective in bringing about a given end, the practically wise person will choose the most fine (EN III.3 1112b16-17)." (LEAR-2006, p. 127)

"[I]n general, fine things exhibit the formal properties of end-directed order, symmetry, and boundedness. So, although Aristotle himself does not present it in this way, his description of virtue as a disposition to produce intermediate actions, carefully poised between two much and too little, with boundaries determined by the agent's skopos is, in effect, a description of the formal basis of beauty in action." (LEAR-2006, p. 127)

"[I]t matters *to reason* that actions be fine as well as good. For when our actions are fine, their perfection is easily intelligible. [19] In fact, the grander and more beautiful they are, the more easily we know their goodness.... Pleasant appreciation of an action's goodness is not a dispensible moment of self-satisfaction; it completes the virtuous person's grip of the practicable good by completing the rational activity of knowing it." (LEAR-2006, p. 131) [PSA: a grand and great action, done by a truly grand and great person, has the beautiful quality of megethos.]

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