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Summary: Virtue is its own reward
Review: Whenever I read the ancient philosophical texts, which I do because I tend to believe that they're good for me and that old wisdom is sometimes (but not always) the best wisdom, I try to identify their influence on modern times and literature. One of the principal messages in the Judeo-Christian tradition is that of the importance of personal virtue, and many images and stories in this tradition instruct us by illustration either real or fictional about virtue's rewards, that he or she who acts in an acceptable manner will reap worldly (and heavenly) benefits. By somewhat of a contrast, Aristotle had contended that virtue is its own reward, that is, to be virtuous is to be happy, and he expounds this idea in the body of writings called the Nicomachean Ethics.Defining virtue as a desirable state of character, Aristotle enumerates the different categories of virtue--courage, temperance, thrift, modesty--and proceeds to explain that the ideal human state is one that seeks the mean, or intermediate, quantity of each of these virtues, the excess or deficiency of which is called a vice. For example, a deficiency of courage, called timidity, is certainly a vice; but likewise an excess of courage, called rashness, is faulty behavior as well. (An "excess" of a virtue may sound like a good thing, but Aristotle means an excess in the sense of lacking judgment or wisdom; for example, stepping in front of a speeding car may take courage, but it is more accurately described as rashness and would not be considered by anybody to be virtuous behavior, unless there were a higher purpose in doing so, such as to save someone else's life. But rashness is at least closer to the virtuous mean than is timidity.) To those that would say that virtue has rewards outside of itself, Aristotle might reply that virtue rather has effects or consequences. A man who attains virtue earns pride, which is the "crown of the virtues" despite the fact that in a different context it can be regarded as a deficiency of modesty, and therefore is happy. A virtuous man is likely to exercise justice (a man who performs a just act is just only if the act is voluntary) and equity (if you steal a man's watch, you owe him a watch), and this behavior wins him friendship (with other people of similar virtue, of course; evil people gain evil friends), which results in pleasure (no man is an island). Unlike the sophists, Aristotle is not teaching virtue or dispensing advice to his students (one of whom was Alexander the soon-to-be-Great) to make them more virtuous; he is suggesting that virtue may be developed by observing the effects of our behavior, since none of us is perfect. Virtue is not a state of perfection but an understanding of how to minimize our tendency to submit to our baser impulses.
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