Deeper Than Disposition

(i.e., Aristotle's definition of virtue)

I approached Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics with a mixture of interest and latent frustration. The full expanse of The Stagirite’s work is daunting - encompassing foundational contributions to politics, logic, education, ethics, theology, and more. Throughout my own shallow excursions in these spheres, the references to Aristotle have been seemingly everywhere and nowhere; he’s consistently credited with supplying bedrock concepts and essential axioms, but there is rarely a crisp articulation of his key contributions. As I read through The Ethics and supplementary materials, my motivation was to walk away with a clear grasp of what specifically was being asserted about the nature of virtue.

Prior to Aristotle, myriad philosophers throughout Ancient Greece, such as Heraclitus and Pythagoras, had assembled views on what defined virtue (arete in Greek, a personal state of excellence that is aligned with the ultimate good), and the associated attributes that one ought to cultivate. Aristotle’s direct predecessors, Plato and Socrates, linked the notion of individual virtue with the human capacity for rationality; in their paradigms - which I won’t do proper justice to in this post - effectively all virtues are obtained through the accumulation of knowledge. The corresponding injunction is rather straightforward: one simply has to seek and acquire the relevant knowledge in order to proceed with a perfectly virtuous life. This sort of “intellectualization” placed the pursuit of virtue in the same category as other academic pursuits, such as natural studies or mathematics.

In a break with his forerunners, Aristotle rejected the claim that virtue can be gained solely through the acquisition of particular knowledge (whether Plato’s fabled Forms, or something else). Through the chapters of The Ethics, he charts a circuitous path - discussing the nature of individual virtues at length, exploring the gradient that often exists between specific states of virtue and vice, and eventually delineating his own definition and requirements for being virtuous. Aristotle’s rigor, which can at times feel pedantic, proved essential to establishing ethics as a standalone discipline.

The Virtuous Mission

Aristotle opens The Ethics by describing the pursuit of virtue as an eminently practical matter: the goal of every individual is to live as well as possible - and this cannot be substituted by some nebulous or intellectual satisfaction. Virtue, he asserts, is the internal quality that is aligned with this highest possible happiness and welfare (eudemonia, which represents a rich synthesis of material, mental, and spiritual flourishing). Every other desire in one’s life, in Aristotle’s estimation, is either directly or indirectly contingent on the foundational desire for true flourishing; it is the final and unqualified aim of all human longing. He explains that the human soul shares many dimensions with other animals, including the appetitive and locomotive aspects of the soul - but the rational dimension of the soul is the element that allows us to navigate towards true flourishing, and it is the source of our ability to consider ethics.

Aristotle then proposes that, in contrast to the Socratic and Platonic definitions, virtue is inherently produced and sustained through activity. Having an intellectual understanding of a given virtue (e.g., justice) does not equate to acquiring or exemplifying that virtue, in any meaningful regard. Throughout the treatise, Aristotle repeats that true flourishing requires practical application, and is contingent on the steady accumulation of the proper habits. He then identifies two general categories: moral virtues and intellectual virtues. The bulk of the book is spent on the former, which Aristotle uses to iteratively explore the interplay between virtuous disposition and virtuous activity.

The primary moral virtues include courage, temperance, justice, and prudence. With each, Aristotle explores the extremes that supposedly bracket the virtue itself, which is positioned as a sort of mean between potential vices. As an example: courage is defined as the virtue that sits between the vicious states of cowardice and rashness. To be courageous is to aim and act in correspondence with the mean position between one’s inner feelings of fear (which, unchecked, produce cowardice) and confidence (which, unchecked, produce rashness). Aristotle is careful to clarify that his concept of the virtuous mean does not imply a literal mathematical mean - e.g., in the case of courage, the correct “middle” is actually closer to rashness than to cowardice.

The subsequent chapters walk through analogous explorations: temperance is the virtue that sits between insensitivity and profligacy; generosity is bounded by stinginess and prodigality; and so on. In each case, Aristotle places central importance on human agency - the choice made in each situation. Proper virtue involves the concerted exercise of practical wisdom, which moves the rational soul towards an ideal, situationally-appropriate desire. This is contrasted with lesser states of being, such as mere continence - which may produce the right activity and outcome, but is not borne from a proper state of the soul. Aristotle expresses particular empathy in the case of akrasia: a form of incontinence where the individual knowingly - but helplessly - acts in a suboptimal manner, due to a lack of self-control.

Character in Motion

Throughout The Ethics, Aristotle repeatedly references a handful of elements associated with the cultivation and practice of virtue - such as habit, disposition, character, and proper action. After completing my initial read through, I felt that my understanding of the relationships among these concepts (and their discrete importance to realizing virtue) was tenuous at best. While doing a bit of supplemental reading, things began to “click” as I dug into the textured meaning of two Greek terms that, in conjunction, appeared to faithfully represent the essence of Aristotelian virtue: Hexis and Energeia.

While hexis (ἕξις) abides by no single translation, it roughly corresponds to the integrated disposition, or character, that is required to identify and enact virtuous action. In contrast to mere habit, hexis is a fundamentally active state; it is the ethical equilibrium of the soul held by an individual, when exercising a rationally-governed choice. Aristotle places hexis in the general category of “inner dispositions”, but claims that it is qualitatively from other dispositions in both its durability and dynamism. An individual pursuing proper action will produce proper habits, which do not directly give rise to virtue, but can place them in the circumstances required to form more sophisticated dispositions; these dispositions then ultimately congeal into hexis, through active learning and the light of the rational soul.

If hexis roughly corresponds to the correct “potential” required to manifest virtue, then energeia (ἐνέργεια) is the state of being-at-work. It is derived from the generic term for work (ergon), and at least by Aristotle’s estimation, contains a multitude of subcategories - such as physical motion (kinesis). The realization of any moral virtue necessarily involves both potential (hexis) and its corresponding actuality (energeia). The visualization that kept coming to mind was that of a vector in two dimensional space; while hexis can provide the precise “direction” for a given scenario, without energeia the “length” would always be zero.

The remaining piece of the puzzle was the complement to the moral virtues: the intellectual virtues that Aristotle covers in the latter part of The Ethics. The cultivation of intellectual virtues is put forth as essential to the development of hexis; for without their presence, it would be impossible for hexis (or any rational disposition) to accurately pinpoint the virtuous “direction” worth aiming for. As an example, Aristotle details the process of gradually determining the correct mean for a particular moral virtue (e.g., in the case of justice); this necessitates the development of intellectual virtues such as traditional knowledge (episteme), which can - over the course of many practical iteration cycles - inform the habits and dispositions that will ultimately produce hexis.

Among the chief intellectual virtues is the practical wisdom that governs ethical judgment, known as phronesis. In The Ethics, it is strongly associated with the political arts, and is generally considered instrumental to parsing the particulars of complex situations. Aristotle contrasts it with traditional wisdom (sophia), invoking the philosophers Anaxagoras and Thales as historical examples of conventionally wise men that lacked any practical judgment - and consequently lacked the ability to engage in virtuous activity, and achieve any of the beauty associated with ultimate flourishing. (Harsh.)

Onward

This ended up being a particularly terminology-heavy topic (for which I provided a low-resolution analysis, at best); thanks for reading. It’s evident that Aristotle is a thinker that needs to be absorbed in waves; his work is replete with references to his predecessors, and I’ve learned that the boundaries separating his different explorations are somewhat artificial. As I eventually trek through his wider corpus (e.g., metaphysics, poetics, politics), and the wide tapestry of thinkers that he influenced, I’m looking forward to strengthening my preliminary understanding.