Section 5: What is virtue? A kind of disposition

Next we must consider what virtue is. There are three kinds of things that come to be in the soul: feelings, capacities, and dispositions. _[20] So virtue must be one of these.

By “feelings” I mean desires, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, love, hate, longing, jealousy, pity, and in general whatever entails pleasure or pain.

By “capacities” I mean that within us that make it so we can experience feelings; for example, that within us which makes us susceptible to becoming angry, feeling pain, or feeling pity.

By “dispositions” I mean _[25] that within us which makes us either in a good condition or in a bad condition in relation to our feelings. An example of a disposition would be that within us which makes us either in a good condition or bad condition in relation to our feelings of anger. If we feel anger too intensely or too weakly, we are in a bad condition in relation to anger. Whereas if we feel anger moderately, we are in a good condition in relation to anger. The same goes for our other feelings.

Now neither virtues nor vices are feelings, because we are not called good or bad people on the basis of our feelings. Instead, we are called good or bad people on the basis of our virtues and vices. _[30]

Likewise, we are neither praised nor blamed for our feelings, since the person who simply feels fear or anger is not praised for that, nor is the person who simply feels fear or anger blamed. Instead, the person who feels fear or anger in a certain way is praised or blamed. We are praised or blamed for our virtues and our vices.

_[1106a1] Again, we feel anger and fear without choosing to, but virtues are a sort of choice–or, more precisely, involve choice.

Further, when it comes to our feelings, we are said to be moved, _[5] whereas when it comes to our virtues and vices, we are not said to be moved, but instead to be disposed to act in a certain way.

For these reasons, virtues are not capacities either. For we are neither called good nor bad, nor praised nor blamed, simply for the capacity to have feelings. We have these capacities by nature. But, as discussed before, we do not become good or bad people by nature.

If, _[10] then, the virtues are neither feelings nor capacities, all that remains is that they are dispositions. Thus we have stated what the “genus” of virtue is. [Or put differently, we have stated what kind of thing virtue is, since the “genus” of a thing is the kind of thing it is, in the way that “bird” is the “genus” of eagle and crane, since both are kinds of birds].