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account those who occupy the extremes lay claim to the middle place. And in
common parlance, too, the moderate man is sometimes called ambitious and
sometimes unambitious, and sometimes the ambitious man is praised and sometimes
the unambitious. Why this is we will explain afterwards; for the present we will
follow out our plan and enumerate the other types of character.
In the matter of anger also we find excess and deficiency and moderation. The
characters themselves hardly have recognized names, but as the moderate man is here
called gentle, we will call his character gentleness; of those who go into extremes, we
may take the term wrathful for him who exceeds, with wrathfulness for the vice, and
wrathless for him who is deficient, with wrathlessness for his character.
Besides these, there are three kinds of moderation, bearing some resemblance to one
another, and yet different. They all have to do with intercourse in speech and action,
but they differ in that one has to do with the truthfulness of this intercourse, while the
other two have to do with its pleasantness one of the two with pleasantness in
matters of amusement, the other with pleasantness in all the relations of life. We must
therefore speak of these qualities also in order that we may the more plainly see how,
in all cases, moderation is praiseworthy, while the extreme courses are neither right
nor praiseworthy, but blamable.
In these cases also names are for the most part wanting, but we must try, here as
elsewhere, to coin names ourselves, in order to make our argument clear and easy to
follow.
In the matter of truth, then, let us call him who observes the mean a true [or truthful]
person, and observance of the mean truth [or truthfulness]: pretence, when it
exaggerates, may be called boasting, and the person a boaster; when it understates, let
the names be irony and ironical.
With regard to pleasantness in amusement, he who observes the mean may be called
witty, and his character wittiness; excess may be called buffoonery, and the man a
buffoon; while boorish may stand for the person who is deficient, and boorishness for
his character.
With regard to pleasantness in the other affairs of life, he who makes himself properly
pleasant may be called friendly, and his moderation friendliness; he that exceeds may
be called obsequious if he have no ulterior motive, but a flatterer if he has an eye to
his own advantage; he that is deficient in this respect, and always makes himself
disagreeable, may be called a quarrelsome or peevish fellow.
Moreover, in mere emotions* and in our conduct with regard to them, there are ways
of observing the mean; for instance, shame (±?´ÎÂ), is not a virtue, but yet the modest
(±?´®¼É½) man is praised. For in these matters also we speak of this man as observing
the mean, of that man as going beyond it (as the shame-faced man whom the least
thing makes shy), while he who is deficient in the feeling, or lacks it altogether, is
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called shameless; but the term modest (±?´®¼É½) is applied to him who observes the
mean.
Righteous indignation, again, hits the mean between envy and malevolence. These
have to do with feelings of pleasure and pain at what happens to our neighbours. A
man is called righteously indignant when he feels pain at the sight of undeserved
prosperity, but your envious man goes beyond him and is pained by the sight of any
one in prosperity, while the malevolent man is so far from being pained that he
actually exults in the misfortunes of his neighbours.
But we shall have another opportunity of discussing these matters.
As for justice, the term is used in more senses than one; we will, therefore, after
disposing of the above questions, distinguish these various senses, and show how each
of these kinds of justice is a kind of moderation.
And then we will treat of the intellectual virtues in the same way.
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[Back to Table of Contents]
8.
The Two Vicious Extremes Are Opposed To One Another And
To The Intermediate Virtue.
There are, as we said, three classes of disposition, viz. two kinds of vice, one marked
by excess, the other by deficiency, and one kind of virtue, the observance of the mean.
Now, each is in a way opposed to each, for the extreme dispositions are opposed both
to the mean or moderate disposition and to one another, while the moderate
disposition is opposed to both the extremes. Just as a quantity which is equal to a
given quantity is also greater when compared with a less, and less when compared
with a greater quantity, so the mean or moderate dispositions exceed as compared
with the defective dispositions, and fall short as compared with the excessive
dispositions, both in feeling and in action; e.g. the courageous man seems foolhardy
as compared with the coward, and cowardly as compared with the foolhardy; and
similarly the temperate man appears profligate in comparison with the insensible, and
insensible in comparison with the profligate man; and the liberal man appears
prodigal by the side of the illiberal man, and illiberal by the side of the prodigal man.
And so the extreme characters try to displace the mean or moderate character, and
each represents him as falling into the opposite extreme, the coward calling the
courageous man foolhardy, the foolhardy calling him coward, and so on in other
cases.
But while the mean and the extremes are thus opposed to one another, the extremes
are strictly contrary to each other rather than to the mean; for they are further removed
from one another than from the mean, as that which is greater than a given magnitude
is further from that which is less, and that which is less is further from that which is
greater, than either the greater or the less is from that which is equal to the given
magnitude.
Sometimes, again, an extreme, when compared with the mean, has a sort of
resemblance to it, as foolhardiness to courage, or prodigality to liberality; but there is
the greatest possible dissimilarity between the extremes.
Again, things that are as far as possible removed from each other is the accepted
definition of contraries, so that the further things are removed from each other the
more contrary they are.
In comparison with the mean, however, it is sometimes the deficiency that is the more
opposed, and sometimes the excess; e.g. foolhardiness, which is excess, is not so
much opposed to courage as cowardice, which is deficiency; but insensibility, which
is lack of feeling, is not so much opposed to temperance as profligacy, which is
excess.
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The reasons for this are two. One is the reason derived from the nature of the matter
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