A History of Greek Philosophy / ARISTOTLE

Page 17

So far Aristotle’s analysis of virtue is quite on the lines of his general philosophy. Here, however, he diverges into what seems at first a curiously mechanical conception. Pointing out that in everything quantitative there are two extremes conceivable, and a mean or average between them, he proceeds to define virtue as a mean between two extremes, a mean, however, having relation to no mere numerical standard, but having reference to us. In this last qualification he perhaps saves his definition from its mechanical turn, while he leaves himself scope for much curious and ingenious observation on the several virtues regarded as means between two extremes. He further endeavours to save it by adding, that it is “defined by reason, and as the wise man would define it.”

Reason then, as the impersonal ruler,—the wise man, as the personification of reason,—this is the standard of virtue, and therefore also of happiness. How then shall we escape an externality in our standard, divesting it of that binding character which comes only when the law without is also recognised and accepted as the law within? The answer of Aristotle, as of his predecessors, is that this will be brought about by wise training and virtuous surroundings, in short, by the civic community being itself good and happy. Thus we get another dynamic relation; for regarded as a member of the body politic each individual becomes a potentiality along with all the other members, conditioned by the state of which he and they are members, brought gradually into harmony with the reason which is in the state, and in the process realising not his own possibilities only, but those of the community also, which exists only in and through its members. Thus each and all, in so far as they realise their own well-being by the perfect development of the virtuous habit in their lives, contribute ipso facto to the supreme end of the state, which is the perfect realisation of the whole possibilities of the total organism, and consequently of every member of it.

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A History of Greek Philosophy : Table of Contents
Cf. D'Arcy W. Thompson, Aristotle's Natural Science

Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/history-of-philosophy/aristotle.asp?pg=17