We’ve traveled far in this series on restoring the forgotten goal of prudence or practical wisdom to our educational goals. We established the necessity of prudence alongside moral virtue as constituting the intellectual virtue that accompanies and regulates all the moral virtues by deliberating about what is good or bad for human beings. A Christian and classical education must provide for this instruction in moral wisdom, without which life has no real direction. Prudence thus restores a practical dimension to education that is not utilitarian.
We’ve also explored how the underpinnings of prudence are instilled in the young through practice according to principles, examples of good character, and appropriate discipline. Prudence itself can then flower into fully blooming rationality through a pedagogy of dialectic, rhetoric, and ethical inquiry. Students who have had their “powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Heb 5:14 ESV) will then be equipped to live virtuous and prudent lives. And if they add some measure of political, managerial or leadership wisdom to their personal prudence, these graduates might just lead their communities and the culture at large in a wiser direction.
But readers familiar with Aristotle, whether from a college philosophy class or an inspiring YouTube video, may be left wondering, “What about the virtues themselves? What about Aristotle’s famous mean?” Today were going strengthen the connection between Head and Heart by describing how the beginnings of prudence can help a person develop the moral virtues through aiming at the mean or intermediate state. Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean is an incredibly helpful aid to self-regulation and self-government. Through understanding and teaching students the nature of virtue and vice, we give them one of the linchpins of prudence that has stood the test of time.
Moral Virtue as a Mean between Excess and Deficiency
What does Aristotle mean by the “mean” or “intermediate” in his discussions of moral virtue? In Book II, chapter 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle introduces this idea of the mean through a physical analogy:
First, then, let us consider this, that it is the nature of such things 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. (Nicomachean Ethics II.2, trans. W. D. Ross, Internet Classics Archive)
“Defect” here refers to a deficiency, when there is too little of something, the excess refers to too much. If you work out too little or too much, both those extremes will have a negative effect on strength, just like eating too little or too much will hurt a person’s health. But an amount that is in between or “proportionate” will have a positive effect. That right amount is the virtuous mean or intermediate. Aristotle then applies this principle to two common virtues:
So too is it, then, in the case of temperance and courage and the other virtues. For the man who flies from and fears 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. (Nicomachean Ethics II.2, trans. W. D. Ross, Internet Classics Archive)
We might summarize Aristotle here by observing that courage is a mean or intermediate state of proportionate fear between cowardice, on the one hand, and rashness on the other. Courage, as a virtue, then is not simply a passion, like fear, but a state of character, whereby a person has been accustomed to feel fear or confidence at the right sorts of things in the right amounts and at the right time (see Nic Ethics II.5).
Developing courage over time, then, can be helped by a sort of nascent awareness of our own tendency toward excess or defect in our responses or passions. In the same way, when I become aware that temperance consists in a mean or intermediate state between the excess of too much indulgence pleasures or the wrong sorts in the wrong ways, and insensibility of the deficiency in pleasure, I can learn how to prudently manage my own inclinations to aim nearer the mark.
Aristotle helpfully remarks that the intermediate or mean of virtue isn’t always halfway between two equal and opposite vices, but is an intermediate “relative to us”: “if ten pounds are too much for a particular person to eat and two too little, it does not follow that the trainer will order six pounds; for this also is perhaps too much for the person who is to take it, or too little- too little for Milo, too much for the beginner in athletic exercises” (Nic Ethics II.6). So in similar fashion to this physical analogy, moral virtue too has
the quality of aiming at the intermediate… for it is this that is concerned with passions and actions, and in these there is excess, defect, and the intermediate. For instance, both fear and confidence and appetite and anger and pity and in general pleasure and pain may be felt both too much and too little, and in both cases not well; but to feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way, is what is both intermediate and best, and this is characteristic of virtue. (Nic Ethics II.6)
The intermediate is a helpful concept for understanding virtue because it provides us with the moral categories for avoiding pendulum swinging from one extreme to another. There is a real danger in swinging continually from one vice to another that we must guard ourselves and our students against. Aristotle concludes this thought with the blatant remark that “men are good in but one way, but bad in many” (Nic Ethics II.6), a comment that could have come out of a Christian theology book. “To miss the mark [is] easy, to hit it difficult,” he says, reminding attentive readers of the linguistic origin of the term ‘sin’ in Greek as to miss the mark. Which mark? The intermediate virtue that we should be aiming at!
Aristotle’s Moral Virtues in Prudential Perspective
For those who have paid close attention to this series of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues, it may be that this descent into the details of his theory of moral virtues seems out of place. (Never mind the fact that we’ve already discoursed on the analogy between artistry and morality in our series on Apprenticeship in the Arts….) While I can assure you that we are right on track, or hitting the proper mean as far as I’m concerned, that may convince you less than a deliberate appeal to Aristotle:
Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect; and again it is a mean because the vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate. Hence in respect of its substance and the definition which states its essence virtue is a mean, with regard to what is best and right an extreme. (Nic Ethics II.6)
Did you catch it? While we’ve jumped back several chapters from the Nicomachean Ethics Book VI, where Aristotle’s mini-treatise on the five intellectual virtues situates the life of the mind within his broader ethical vision of the good life, still Aristotle’s consistent terminology is at play here. Practical wisdom consists in that rational principle to choose correctly the mean of moral virtue rather than the vices of excess or deficiency.
What then are some of these Aristotelian virtues, along with their vices of excess and deficiency? It seems obvious that knowing or perceiving the nature of virtue and vice will help the person who is developing prudence to aim correctly. In the case of prudence, we must, says Aristotle, “not only make this general statement, but also apply it to the individual facts,” because the particulars are essential to reasoning about what will make for human flourishing (Nic Ethics II.7).
The following table has been developed from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, ch. 7, and also Books III-IV, when Aristotle returns to each of these to discuss them in more detail (using mainly Ross’ translation, but with some additions/alterations). Take a moment to look it through and contemplate the Aristotelian mean.
| Moral Virtue – Mean | Vice – Excess | Vice – Deficiency | Passion/Action |
| Courage | Cowardice | Rashness | Fear and confidence |
| Temperance | Self-indulgence | Insensible | Pleasures and pains |
| Liberality | Prodigality | Meanness or greed | Wealth or Giving and Taking Money |
| Magnificence | Tastelessness or vulgarity | Niggardliness or stinginess | Giving and spending large sums |
| Proper pride | Empty vanity | Undue humility | Honor and dishonor on a grand scale |
| Ambition or contentment | Ambition | Lack of drive | Desire for small honors |
| Good temper | Irascibility | Inirascibility | Anger |
| Truthfulness | Boastfulness | Mock modesty | Truth in words |
| Ready wit | Buffoonery | Boorishness | Amusement in words |
| Friendliness | Obsequiousness or flattery | Quarrelsomeness or surliness | Pleasantness in words and demeanor |
| Modesty | Shamelessness | Bashfulness | Shame |
| Righteous indignation | Envy | Spite | Pain and pleasure at the fortunes of others |
It is important to note that even Aristotle confessed that the names are not always apparent for either the excess or deficiency. Ambition, for instance, is a challenging virtue and vice because sometimes people call ambition the vice, when someone is too ambitious and sometimes an ambitious person is praised (see IV.4). Aristotle’s conclusion is that the character of moral virtue is “to aim at what is intermediate in passions and in actions”: he has given us the middle way as a target and argued for “moderation in all things.” This claim does not let us off from the hard discipline of virtue; in fact, he states that often there is a more opposed vice, whether for humanity as a whole or for a particular individual, that must be violently striven against. For instance, Aristotle barely even discusses insensibility, since he knows that self-indulgence is the vastly more common flaw (see III.10-12)
On the contrary, most often we must, as in archery practice, aim toward the opposite side of the target, since we see clearly that when we shoot at the bull’s eye, our arrow inevitably strays off to a particular side. As Aristotle explains,
Hence he who aims at the intermediate must first depart from what is the more contrary to it, as Calypso advises–
Hold the ship out beyond that surf and spray.
For of the extremes one is more erroneous, one less so; therefore, since to hit the mean is hard in the extreme, we must as second best, as people say, take the least of the evils…. But we must consider the things toward which we ourselves also are easily carried away; for some of us tend to one thing, some to another; and this will be recognizable from the pleasure and pain we feel. We must drag ourselves away to the contrary extreme; for we shall get into the intermediate state by drawing well away from error, as people do in straightening sticks that are bent. (II.9)
This involves a knowledge of self and particulars that only the eye of prudence can rightly perceive. And so it is that we encounter the inevitable chicken or the egg syndrome of moral virtue and prudence: both require some measure of the other’s presence even in their first formation.
A Christian Assessment of Prudential Aim
Christians might initially object to these Aristotelian categories as being unbiblical. Surely Jesus and the apostles do not represent holiness as in every case an intermediate between extremes? Should we really aim at vice rather than virtue in order to straighten ourselves out? We can deal with these objections by first noting that Aristotle is crystal clear that while in one sense the essence of virtue is a mean, “with regard to what is best and right it is an extreme” (II.6). As for whether we should aim at an opposite vice in order to hit the mark of virtue, we need look no further than Jesus’ hyperbolic words in the Sermon on the Mount:
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Matt 5:29-30 ESV)
I cannot think of a stronger endorsement of aiming at insensibility in order to fix the fatal flaw of intemperance and self-indulgence. Lest we forget, the term ‘self-control’ used in the New Testament derived from the Aristotelian and Stoic tradition of reflection.
We must admit that the idea of proper pride as a sort of crown of the virtues strikes against the heart of the New Testament’s overwhelming endorsement of humility. Part of this is easily accounted for based on a different view of the facts of the human situation. In Christian theology, human beings are poor and needy sinners standing by nature under the judgment of a holy God. In such a context humility before God and fellow image-bearers is the only right disposition. Still, even Christians can resonate appropriately with some aspects of Aristotle’s description of the man of proper pride, as characteristic of Jesus at least, if not the Christian martyr:
Again, it is characteristic of the proud man not to aim at the things commonly held in honour, or the things in which others excel…. He must also be open in his hate and in his love (for to conceal one’s feelings is a mark of timidity), and must care more for truth than for what people will think, and must speak and act openly; for he is free of speech because he is contemptuous, and he is given to telling the truth, except when he speaks in irony to the vulgar. He must be unable to make his life revolve around another, unless it be a friend; for this is slavish, and for this reason all flatterers are servile and people lacking in self-respect are flatterers. (IV.3)
We need not quibble over details, but we can simply observe that a person’s worldview as well as their assessment of the particular details of life and relationships will inevitably influence their take on what exactly each virtue looks like.
Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice offers its own semi-Christian chastening of Mr. Darcy’s Aristotelian proper pride. When charged by Elizabeth (ironically) with the faults of pride and vanity, he disavows vanity but says that “pride will always be under good regulation where there is a real superiority of mind.” It is this Aristotelian view that he must modify in his repentance after being initially rejected in his proposals. There is good reason to fail to endorse all the details of Aristotle’s exact take on what is and is not virtuous. At the same time, we would be unwise not to take on board Aristotle’s fundamental insights into the nature of virtue as an intermediate state between excess and deficiency. We can recognize with him that “to find the middle of a circle is not for every one but for him who knows” and this unique sort of knowledge is in fact prudence. So also, “any one can get angry–that is easy–or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right aim, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy; that is why goodness is both rare and laudable and noble” (II.9).
