Section 4: Ambition

There also seems to be in the sphere of honor and reputation, as was said in _[1125b1] our first remarks on the subject, a virtue which would appear to be related to magnanimity as generosity is to the appropriate use of wealth. For neither of these has anything to do with the grand scale, but both dispose us as is right with regard to middling and unimportant objects. _[5] And just as in getting and giving of wealth there is a mean and an excess and defect, so too honor or good reputation may be desired more than is right, or less, or from the right sources and in the right way.

We blame both the ambitious person as aiming at honor more than is right and from wrong sources, and the unambitious person _[10] as not willing to be honored even for noble reasons. But sometimes we praise the ambitious person as being manly and a lover of what is noble, and the unambitious person as being moderate and self-controlled, as we said in our first treatment of the subject.

Evidently, since “fond of such and such an object” has more than one meaning, we do not assign the term “ambition” or “love of honor” always to the same thing. Instead, when we praise _[15] the quality, we think of the person who loves honor more than most people, and when we blame it, we think of him who loves it more than is right. The mean being without a name, the extremes seem to dispute for its place as though that were vacant by default. But where there is excess and defect, there is also an intermediate. Now people desire honor both more than they should and less. Therefore it is possible also to do so as one should. At all events, this is the disposition that is praised, _[20] being an unnamed mean in respect of honor.

Relative to ambition it seems to be unambitiousness, and relative to unambitiousness it seems to be ambition, while relative to both severally it seems in a sense to be both together. This appears to be true of the other virtues also. But in this case the extremes seem to be contradictories because the mean has not received a name. _[25]