A characteristic becomes a virtue when it avoids a defiency or an excess of a trait. For example someone who is courageous is someone who is unafraid but is not ignorant or overly brash.
I don't think there's any evidence you can draw that would show whether moderation would lead to a fufilling life. The term "fufilling life" is fairly vague and Aristotles' idea of moderation is equally vague. There's no hard and fast guidelines between seeking "the fine" as Aristotle calls it and falling into excess or defiency. Aristotle seems to me to not take ethics as Socrates does, as something that one can gain knowledge of through reason, but rather he looks to clarify how people speak about ethics. He almost always starts with "people say courage (or x) is this" not "courage (or x) is this."
2 comments:
I really agree with what you said about aristotle defining it as an excess or deficiency. I also agree that Aristotle did not really define what his points were but more he defined what they weren't.
Really? This seems an unfair characterization. I'll grant that he starts with common usage of the term, but he rarely stops at this point and goes on the make the point far more precisely and with more rationale than common usage does. To the extent that he does rely upon common usage, how else might one define a word than to look, at least initially, at how the word is used. Are you really going to define "couch" without every referring to how it's used? Unless there's an argument that language is (a) given by some sort of omniscient being and (b) common usage is unrelated to correct usage (and, thus, that to which refer as a "couch" may really be a "magnet" but we'd never know) I'm not sure how reference to common usage when trying to determine how a word is most appropriately used is going to be possible.
It might be helpful to look to his discussion of proof. Also, it isn't clear to me that you've taken Aristotle's arguments for his position all that seriously.
Lastly (for now), it isn't clear to me that lack of "hard and fast" guidelines is evidence of Aristotle being vague or his conclusions not warranted by his arguments.
Post a Comment