Section 2: Moral virtue is acquired by avoiding excess and deficiency

A reminder about the basic approach we’re taking in this inquiry

Our inquiry doesn’t aim at theoretical knowledge, since we are inquiring not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good people. For otherwise the inquiry would be of no benefit to us. Thus, we must examine what relates to actions, in what way we ought to do actions. For actions also determine _[30] the dispositions that are produced, as we have said.

That we must act according to right reason is a common view and should be taken as basic. We will discuss this later, though, both what right reason is and how it relates to the other virtues.

But the following must be agreed upon beforehand: that the whole account of matters relating to action must be given in outline _[1104a1] and not precisely, as we said at the very beginning, that the accounts we demand must be in accordance with the subject-matter. When it comes to action and questions of what is good for us, there is no fixity, any more than there is fixity when it comes to matters of health.

The general account being of this nature, _[5] the account of particular cases is yet more lacking in exactness. For particular cases do not fall under any skill or set of rules, but the people acting must themselves in each case consider what is appropriate to the situation, as happens also in the practice of medicine or of ship navigation. But although our present account is of this nature, we must give what help we can.

For both bodily excellence and moral virtues, the good is in the mean or middle condition

First, then, let us consider that things like skills, good conditions, and good habits are naturally destroyed by deficiency and excess, as we see in the case of bodily strength and health. It’s helpful consider sense perceptible examples like bodily strength and health, in order to shed light on qualities like virtue that we can’t perceive with our bodily senses. In the case of bodily strength, both excessive exercise and not enough exercise _[15] will harm it. Likewise, eating and drinking too much or eating and drinking too little will harm one’s health, while what is the right proportion for a given person both produces health and increases and preserves it.

It is similar in the case of temperance, courage, and the other virtues. For the person who avoids and fears everything and doesn’t stand his ground against anything _[20] becomes cowardly, and the person who fears nothing at all but goes to meet every danger becomes overconfident. Similarly, the person who indulges in every pleasure and abstains from nothing becomes intemperate, while the person who avoids every kind of pleasure, as uncultured people do, becomes in a way insensitive. Temperance and courage, then, are destroyed _[25] by excess and deficiency, and preserved by the mean or middle condition.

The virtuous person is best able to do virtuous actions

But when it comes to these sorts of things, not only are the sources and causes of their beginning and growth the same as those of their destruction, but also the sphere of their actualization will be the same. For this is also true of the things that are more evident to the senses; for example, bodily strength. _[30] Strength is produced by eating enough good food and doing a lot of exercise, and it is the strong person that will be most able to do these things.

This is also the case with the virtues. By abstaining from pleasures, we become temperate, and once we have become temperate, we are most able to abstain from pleasures. Similarly _[35] in the case of courage. For by being habituated to despise frightening things _[1104b1] and to stand our ground against them we become courageous, and once we have become courageous, we will be most able to stand our ground against them.