Aristotle's Conception of To Kalon
Kelly Rogers
Ancient Philosophy 13 (1993), 355-371

"Aristotle often indicates that what renders an entity kalon has much to do with order (taxis) and related properties, including symmetry (summetria), definiteness (horismenon), and absence of the haphazard (me tuchontos). He remarks that goods such as health and temperance are kalon for their order (taxis) and equilibrium (epemia), and that the immovables are even kallion since they possess these properties to a greater degree (EE 1218a21-24; cf. PA 645a23-25, Meta 1078a36-b1, Pol 1326a29-35, Poet 1450b34-37). Virtue itself manifests such order and equilibrium, for Aristotle, in two ways. First, virtue is orderly because it is rational. Aristotle endorses the Platonic doctrine that an agent's actions manifest order to the extent that the elements of his soul are hierarchically arranged with reason in control (EN 1098a4-17; see Rep 430e, 443d). Virtue's nobility, then, has something to do with the harmony of soul that underlies it. Second, virtue displays equilibrium by its association with the mean. The mean, quite straightforwardly, *is* a condition of equilibrium (1106a29-32), in which one's feelings and actions are in every respect *fitting* or *appropriate*, i.e., occurring 'at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right end, and in the right way' (b21-22). The overall fittingness of virtuous action is also, thereofre, relevant to its being kalon. Aristotle's frequent association of both virtue and to kalon with the fitting (to prepon), suggests that fittingness is not only relevant to the nobility of virtue, but, indeed, essential.... Throughout his ethical works, Aristotle associates what it is kalon with what is prepon and generally fitting (prosekon, emmeles, axios) to do.... In addition, he often relates choice of the kalon to acting in accordance with worth (kat' axian, EN 1115b19-20; cf. 1119a16-20, EE 1249a8), and acting in accordance with worth, to to prepon (EE 1233b7-8).... Finally, Aristotle considers the virtuous individual most stable because he bears what befalls him 'most nobly (kallista), and altogether appropriately (emmelos, EN 1100b19-22).... It may not be amiss to say that to kalon in this sense functions as the formal cause of virtue, for Aristotle links it with the mean in which virtue formally consists. [fn9: [T]he kalon, through its connection with the beautiful, seems to possess a perceptual immediacy absent in the mean, which is something we come to understand primarily on reflection. [PSA: to kalon is more *determinate*]]" (ROGERS, pp. 337-339)

"The kalon also emerges in Aristotle as an epithet of functional excellence. The virtue of anything, he argues, be it an eye or a human being, depends directly upon the correct performance of its respective ergon (1097b25-28). Whether or not an entity achieves functional excellence is a question of whether its parts possess order, thus, those persons who exhibit a disorderly soul cannot perform their function or, therefore, achieve the kalon (cf. Gorgias 503a-504a). The exemplars of virtue in Aristotle's scheme are those whose lives exhibit the correct order (taxin orthen, 1180a14-18), and it is precisely such people who perform their function most fully (1106a16-24) and so act nobly (1179a29)." (ROGERS, p. 339) [PSA: note how taxis applies both to the psuche and to the bios/zoe which that aliveness makes possible.]

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