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readoldthings) wrote2020-11-17 09:21 am
readoldthings) wrote2020-11-17 09:21 am
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Daily Advice 11.17.2020
Today, a note from Aristotle, on the nature of the virtues:
A virtue is not the opposite of a vice, but rather the balance point between two equal and opposite vices. This is one of the most important ideas I have ever encountered.
When I look at the behavior of our media and political elites and many people that I know personally over the last year, I can't help but conclude that they are cowards, and that we have become a nation of cowards. Now, the opposite of cowardice is not courage, on Aristotle's account, but rather rashness-- and so I am not suggesting taking no precautions against the coronavirus. I take precautions, and I took far more precautions when the virus seemed more dangerous than it has proven to be. Washing your hands regularly, and avoiding crowds if you are part of an at-risk population groups, is just good sense. Wearing a mask by yourself out of doors is cowardice.
One more thing, from earlier in the same book:
I can go on all I like about my disgust for the American people and our would-be thought leaders, but that doesn't make me good, even if I am right. I am not made good or bad by my opinions, but by my habits. We become courageous by practicing courage. We become temperate by practicing temperance. It is by our habits, and not our opinions, that we become virtuous or vicious.
Let us consider this, that it is the nature of such things [i.e., such things as the virtues are] to be destroyed by defect and excess, as we see in the case of strength and of health (for to gain light on things imperceptible we must use the evidence of sensible things); both excessive and defective exercise destroys the strength, and similarly drink or food which is above or below a certain amount destroys the health, while that which is proportionate both produces and increases and preserves it. So too is it, then, in the case of temperance and courage and the other virtues. For the man who flies from fear and everything and does not stand his ground against anything becomes a coward, and the man who fears nothing at all but goes to meet every danger becomes rash; and similarly the man who indulges in every pleasure and abstains from none becomes self-indulgent, while the man who shuns every pleasure, as boors do, becomes in a way insensible; temperance and courage, then, are destroyed by excess and defect, and preserved by the mean.
A virtue is not the opposite of a vice, but rather the balance point between two equal and opposite vices. This is one of the most important ideas I have ever encountered.
When I look at the behavior of our media and political elites and many people that I know personally over the last year, I can't help but conclude that they are cowards, and that we have become a nation of cowards. Now, the opposite of cowardice is not courage, on Aristotle's account, but rather rashness-- and so I am not suggesting taking no precautions against the coronavirus. I take precautions, and I took far more precautions when the virus seemed more dangerous than it has proven to be. Washing your hands regularly, and avoiding crowds if you are part of an at-risk population groups, is just good sense. Wearing a mask by yourself out of doors is cowardice.
One more thing, from earlier in the same book:
...Moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name ethike is one that is formed by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit). From this it is also plain that none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can form a habit contrary to its nature. For instance, the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten thousand times; nor can fire be habituated to move downwards, nor can anything else that by nature behaves in one way be trained to behave in another. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.
I can go on all I like about my disgust for the American people and our would-be thought leaders, but that doesn't make me good, even if I am right. I am not made good or bad by my opinions, but by my habits. We become courageous by practicing courage. We become temperate by practicing temperance. It is by our habits, and not our opinions, that we become virtuous or vicious.