Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics Resume.

Aristotle speaks about two kinds of virtue: the one of the intellect and the one of character. One arises from teaching, while the other from habit; but none of the virtues arises in us either by nature or contrary to it. In fact we have the possibility (by nature) to get them and to complete them through habit. How can we acquire virtues? In the same way we learn skills, namely, exercising them. So we become just by doing just actions as we become players by playing. More over, the actions that produce virtues are the same that can increase them or ruin them (depending on whether we act in a good way or in a bad way). In the other hand, activity of virtues is also the same actions that give rise to them. But actions are not enough if we talk about virtues: even our feelings (especially pleasure and pain) play an important role, because we regulate our actions by pain and pleasure. For only who feels enjoyment in doing just actions is really just. So Aristotle claims that virtue is the state to do the best actions in connection with pleasure and pain, whereas the vice is the contrary. More over, to act in accordance with virtue the agent must know what a just action is, be able to choose it, and act it from a firm and unshakable character. What are exactly virtues? Aristotle says that there are three things in our soul: feelings, capacities and states. Virtues are not feelings, because we dont decide to prove a feeling, while virtues and vices involve a rational choice. Neither are they capacities, because we are not praised or blamed through the capable to experience a feeling. So virtue is a state. A state that makes human good at making his activity well, likewise the virtue of the eye makes it good at seeing. However, every virtue is ruined by its excess and its deficiency, while its mean increases it. But the right mean is not objective, like arithmetic mean, but it depends on us. So we can say that excess and deficiency are characteristics of vice and the mean characteristic of virtue. There are, further, actions like homicide that do not admit the mean. Indeed this kind of actions is always bad and there is no way to aim to its mean. For there is neither an excess or deficiency of mean, nor a mean of deficiency or excess. These three elements are not in arithmetic relation, as we said, therefore there are some situations in which the excess is more opposed to the mean than the deficiency, and vice versa. For example we often say that the contrary of courage is cowardice, while rarely we talk about rashness. The reason for this is that the two extremes are not always equidistant from the mean, and the further one is more contrary to the virtue.

Politics. In Aristotles opinion, the state is a sort of partnership, and it aims to the most supreme of all goods. He starts with the analysis of the first coupling together of persons, which is family. This is a natural instinct to continue their own species. The second stage is the village which is composed by many households. At this level man is able to satisfy some of his more complex needs and not only daily ones. But he has not yet reached the excellence. Finally, from the union of several villages is produced the city-state. That attained the limit of the complete self-sufficiency. But it is not born from a sort of contract; it exists by nature just like family. State is the end of the natural growth because human being is a politic animal by nature. Why are not other animals able to live in a state like man does? Aristotle says that other animals have got only the voice to indicate pleasure and painful, while men possess the speech that enables them to talk about what is right and what isnt. For the sense of politics (the meaning of which comes from the word polis) is to be found in the perception of the sense of justice; and this arises only from human speech. More over, state is the prior in nature to the household and the individual, as the whole is always more important than the part (for example the hand has got its sense only in the whole body; without the whole body it has no function). Again, man can become self-sufficient only in the whole, namely the state. Individuals, who are not able to enter any kind of partnership, or are already completely selfsufficient so that they dont need partnership, are either politically lower animals, or superior beings (namely gods).