We can see this in the instances of bodily health and strength. Physical strength is
destroyed by too much and also by too little exercise. Similarly health is ruined by
eating and drinking too much or too little, while it is produced, increased and
preserved by taking the right quantity of drink and victuals. Well, it is the same with
temperance, courage, and the other virtues. The man who shuns and fears
everything becomes a coward. The man who is afraid of nothing at all, but marches
up to every danger, becomes foolhardy. In the same way the man who indulges
in every pleasure without refraining from a single one becomes incontinent. If, on
the other hand, a man behaves like the Boor in comedy and turns his back on every
pleasure, he will find his sensibilities becoming blunted. So also temperance and
courage are destroyed both by excess and deficiency, and they are kept alive by
observation of the mean.
(Ethics, 2, 2)The doctrine of the mean has become something of a commonplace, but the dis-
cussion and application of it in the Ethics are subtle and discriminating. The
philosopher shows us how inadequate our judgements about the virtues can be and
how, both in our acting and in our judging, we must be perpetually flexible in our
moral insight.
Aristotle introduced his definition of man in order to define the nature of
happiness (‘living well or faring well’) for which the Greek word is eudaimonia, the
desired end of all human activity. Happiness is not to be equated with pleasure,
though pleasure will be a part of it, nor with fame (though his ‘high-souled man’ has
a just regard for his own reputation: Ethics,4, 3), nor even with moral excellence, for
moral excellence alone will not make a success of life. Aristotle would not have
agreed with the later Stoics, who held that interior moral virtue is sufficient and that
we can be indifferent to external factors relating to our needs, our comforts, and our
domestic and political circumstances. Nor would he have been in sympathy with the
later views of Epicurus, who advocated detachment and withdrawal from the world
as the prerequisite of happiness. As a social animal, man needs intercourse and
communication with his fellows. There is a long section devoted to friendship, philia,
in the Ethics. The Greek word for ‘social’ in this connection is politikos,for the good
and happy life is only possible, in Aristotle’s view, within society. The stateless man
is either, like Homer’s Cyclops, an ignoble savage, or a god (Politics, 1253a). In his
view ethics and politics are virtually the same subject, the former concerning the good
for man considered as an individual, the latter the good for man considered from the
point of view of the state as a whole. The function of the state is not conquest, trade
or empire, but to enable individuals to live the good life (Politics,1252d). In particular
it exists to provide the necessary leisure for the good life, for ‘we occupy ourselves
in order that we may have leisure, just as we make war for the sake of peace’ (Ethics,
208 THE GREEKS