Nicomachean Ethics · Chapter
The Several Moral Virtues and Vices explained
This chapter examines specific moral virtues and vices, focusing on courage and temperance as means between extremes.
What happens
This chapter examines specific moral virtues and vices, focusing on courage and temperance as means between extremes. Courage is defined as moderation regarding fear and confidence, especially in the face of noble death in war, while temperance concerns bodily pleasures, particularly those of touch and taste. The chapter also discusses other forms of courage, such as political courage driven by honor or compulsion.
Themes in this chapter
The Golden Mean
Courage and temperance are presented as means between extremes: courage between cowardice and foolhardiness, temperance between insensibility and profligacy.
Virtue and Character
The chapter details how virtues like courage and temperance are habits of character, chosen for their nobility and regulated by reason.
Pleasure and Pain
Temperance is specifically concerned with bodily pleasures, while courage involves enduring fear and pain for a noble end.
Characters to notice
- Aristotle
Primary author and philosopher presenting the analysis of courage and temperance.
- Homer
Cited for examples of political courage in his characters Diomede and Hector.
- Hector
Used as an example of political courage motivated by a sense of honor and fear of reproach.
- Diomede
Mentioned alongside Hector as an example of political courage driven by honor.
Key passages
“We have already said that courage is moderation or observance of the mean with respect to feelings of fear and confidence.”
Courage is the mean between excessive fear and excessive confidence.
Reiterates the doctrine of the mean as applied to courage.
“Temperance, then, will be concerned with the pleasures of the body, but not with all of these even: for those who delight in the use of their eyesight, in colours and forms and painting, are not called either temperate or profligate.”
Temperance deals specifically with bodily pleasures like touch and taste, not with higher pleasures such as sight or hearing.
Distinguishes the scope of temperance from other pleasures.
“But to seek death as a refuge from poverty, or love, or any painful thing, is not the act of a brave man, but of a coward.”
Choosing death to escape suffering is cowardly, not courageous.
Clarifies that true courage is motivated by nobility, not avoidance of pain.