29.  After the discussion of the nature of moral virtues in general, Aristotle sets out to discuss the specific characteristics of single moral virtues in particular. To organize the material, it is useful to consider Aristotle’s discussion as following a certain system of classification of these virtues.

30.  As we have seen above, Aristotle first distinguishes excellence in all sorts of operation from excellence in the rational operations, that is, irrational and rational virtues, and then within the sphere of rational virtues, intellectual from moral virtues.

31.  The specific moral virtues discussed by Aristotle then can be subdivided into personal, as opposed to social virtues, the first dealing with right choices concerning personal conduct whether in a social context or not, while the latter concerning behavior in some specific social context.

32.  The former group comprises courage and temperance, the virtue concerning the ability to properly handle fear, the latter concerning the ability to properly handle pleasure. The latter group comprises virtues concerned with money (liberality and magnificence), those concerned with honor (pride, healthy ambition), those with anger (good temper, indignation), with social intercourse (friendliness, truthfulness, ready wit), and the quasi-virtue of the feeling of shame.

33.  The following table summarizes Aristotle’s classification of moral virtues. (Note that the terminology provided here comes from another translation; the point is that you recognize the corresponding discussion in your translation.)

 

Type

Concerning

Vice of Deficiency

Virtuous Mean

Vice of Excess

Personal virtues

Fear

Cowardice

Courage

Rashness

Pleasure

Insensibility

Temperance

Self-indulgence

Social virtues

Money

Stinginess

Liberality

Prodigality

Pettiness

Magnificence

Vulgarity

Honor

Lack of Ambition

Healthy Ambition

Over-ambition

Humbleness

Pride

Vainglory

Anger

Lack of Spirit

Good Temper

Irascibility

Callousness

Indignation

Spitefulness

Social intercourse

Surliness

Friendliness

Obsequiousness

Self-Deprecation

Sincerity

Boastfulness

Boorishness

Wittiness

Buffoonery

Shame

Shamelessness

Modesty

Bashfulness

 

34.  In addition to these, Aristotle deals in more detail with justice, which has a special status, since the notion of justice in one way is much broader then that of a specific moral virtue, indeed, in this broad sense it coincides with the notion of moral virtue in general, with the connotation of the exercise of all moral virtues towards one’s neighbor (i.e., one’s fellow humans).

35.  So Aristotle in the first place distinguishes universal justice from particular justice. The former is nothing but virtue in general in its exercise toward one’s neighbor [1130a6], while the latter is a particular kind of moral virtue, concerning hitting the mean in terms of the equality of certain quantities, as opposed to their inequality in either way.

36.  The specific forms of justice are determined by the kind of equality to be aimed at by the corresponding just act.

37.  In the case of distributive justice the equality in question is the equality of the proportions between the amounts of goods distributed (g1:g2) and the greatness of the merits of the recipients (m1:m2), that is to say, a just distribution in this sense is one that observes the proportionality: g1:g2=m1:m2. For example, this sort of justice is at work when shareholders receive their dividends in proportion to their quantifiable “merits”, namely, their investments.

38.  In the case of commutative justice the equality to be observed is the equality of the amounts exchanged. This is the kind of justice to be observed in commerce, where a fair deal is one in which goods of equal value are exchanged.

39.  In the case of rectificatory justice the equality to be observed is the equality of the results, when the just action is one that corrects some unjust inequality. This type of justice is to be exercised most commonly in lawsuits, where the unjust inequality is caused by the damage inflicted by one person on another, and the legal system is supposed to rectify the situation by compensating the plaintiff at the expense of the culprit.

40.  However, since all these forms of justice are to be realized in a working society in some form of political and legal system, these specific kinds of justice are the manifestations of overall political and legal justice, or the lack thereof, in a given society.

41.  Political and legal justice manifest themselves in the justice of the laws and their execution in a given society, insofar as it is the laws of that society which will provide the standard by which all particular actions will be evaluated as legally just or unjust. But then, if the laws themselves are definitive of justice in a given society, and we know that different societies in different regions and different historical periods have widely different legal systems, will this render justice relative to time and place? Would not this reasoning have the consequence that justice is a matter of convention depending on the geographically and historically contingent legislation of a given society? Could there be, then, any justification for international law other than the military and/or economic power of powerful nations? Would not this justify the cynical claim ‘might makes right’?

42.  To all these questions Aristotle’s answer would be a definitive ‘No’. In his view, we need to distinguish further between the historically and geographically relative positive law of several nations in several historical periods, and the universal natural law of all human societies. In view of this distinction, even though the variable laws of positive legal systems are definitive of positive legal justice in a given society in a given historical period, they themselves are to be judged for their justice in terms of the precepts of natural law: any positive law is just and is thus justifiable only to the extent it is a particular realization of the precepts of natural law.

43.  But then, who is to say what those precepts of natural law are, and whether some positive legislation is in fact a particular realization of those precepts or rather goes against them? Who is to judge the natural justice or injustice of positive legislation? What can possibly be the standard for this judgment?

44.  In fact, this question is still not the most universal question that one can raise concerning the objectivity of value judgments. After all, as we have seen, justice, despite its comprehensiveness, is just one among a number of moral virtues, all specifying right and wrong with respect to their corresponding actions.

45.  We have also seen that the important common element in Aristotle’s discussion of moral virtues in general is that they are all presented as enabling us to choose the mean between two bad extremes, excess and defect, with regard to handling things to be desired or to be avoided. Avoidance of things to be desired is just as bad as desire of things to be avoided, and so the extremes in either direction are naturally and intrinsically bad.

46.  So with respect to all human actions in general, the question of the objectivity of value-judgments is this: is there an objective standard by which we can tell right from wrong, virtuous from non-virtuous, intrinsically good from intrinsically bad?

47.  As a matter of fact, we get a hint of Aristotle’s answer to this question early on, in his fully articulated definition of moral virtue: “Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e., the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it”. [1006b36]

48.  It is “the man of practical wisdom” who is going to be able to set the standards we are looking for.

49.  The rationale for this answer is given by Aristotle’s discussion of intellectual virtues and their relationships to moral virtues.

50.  In general, as we have said, intellectual virtues, as opposed to moral virtues, are concerned not with doing things, but with knowing things. But knowledge itself has several kinds, some more theoretical and more universal, being the perfection of what Aristotle calls the scientific part of the soul, some more practical and more particular, being the perfection of what Aristotle calls the calculative part of the soul.

51.  Accordingly, intellectual virtues are distinguished with respect to their characteristic objects. The purely theoretical  intellectual virtues are: (1) scientific knowledge, (2) intuitive reason, and (3) philosophic wisdom. (1) Scientific knowledge for Aristotle is the knowledge of necessary and universal aspects of things, based on strict deductions. (2) Intuitive reason is the understanding of the first principles of demonstration from which scientific knowledge is deduced. (3) Philosophic wisdom is the combination of the two with respect to knowledge of the highest things and most universal first principles.

52.  The practically oriented intellectual virtues are (4) art and (5) prudence or practical wisdom. (4) Art in Aristotle’s interpretation is the craft of the craftsman that enables him to produce something. (5) Prudence, however, is the more general intellectual ability to secure some human good, by applying some universal knowledge to some particular situation, offering the alternatives for deliberation before the will would chose to carry out some particular course of action.

53.  Prudence, therefore, is the mediating virtue between the purely theoretical virtues and the moral virtues. Philosophical wisdom, combining intuitive reason and scientific knowledge establishes the general philosophical understanding of the nature of being and goodness in general, and man’s good in this hierarchical order of being in particular, specifying what is the characteristic perfection of human nature in the nature of things. Given this philosophical, theoretical understanding of what is the good for man in general, prudence will have to evaluate any concrete situation, and determine the best means for achieving some particular end as eventually leading to this overarching end. (Note that this may also require skill in some art. Indeed, one may also want to consider equity in this context, as being the specific kind of prudence of the judge who knows how to serve the spirit of the law in a particular situation, occasionally even against its dead letter).

54.  Thus, in any actual situation of choice, the virtues are supposed to work in concert, in a certain hierarchical order, providing the integrity of character determining the choice: presented by prudence with a number of alternatives for achieving a certain end, the will, predisposed by the moral virtues to aim at the mean between bad extremes, after some deliberation makes the particular choice that initiates the action. But the deliberation is always guided by prudence, which evaluates the possible alternatives with the end in view.

55.  In this scheme, therefore, prudence is acting like the conductor of an orchestra, organizing the activity of the musicians for the sake of achieving harmony; the virtues act like the score prescribing the best individual sounds to be aimed at by the musicians, who are like the specific skills materializing some particular action. The decision of a musician to sound his instrument is like the act of will making a particular choice, in which, however, he has to heed the conductor (prudence), who knows when and how it is the best for this particular act to take place. But the conductor is still not the one who wrote the score, his activities are still subordinate to the score of the composer, who discovered the best harmony to be achieved by contemplating the nature of harmony itself, just like philosophical wisdom discovers what is the best for man, by considering the harmony of all things in general.