Nicomachean Ethics: Book III, Chapters 6–12

6

[Bravery: its scope]

First let us discuss bravery. We have already made it apparent that there is a mean about feelings of fear and confidence.1  §2 What we fear, clearly, is what is frightening,2 and such things are, speaking without qualification, bad things; hence people define fear as expectation of something bad.3

§3  / Certainly we fear all bad things—for instance, bad reputation, poverty, sickness, friendlessness, death—but they do not all seem to concern the brave person. For fear of some bad things, such as bad reputation, is actually right and fine, and lack of fear is shameful; for if someone fears bad reputation, he is decent and properly prone to shame, and if he has no fear of it, he has no feeling of disgrace. Some, however, / call this fearless person brave, by a transference of the name; for he has some similarity to the brave person, since the brave person is also a type of fearless person.

§4  Presumably it is wrong to fear poverty or sickness or, in general, <bad things> that are not the results of vice or caused by ourselves; still, someone who is fearless about these is not thereby brave. He is also called brave by similarity; / for some people who are cowardly in the dangers of war are nonetheless generous, and face with confidence the <danger of> losing money.4

§5  Again, if someone is afraid of committing wanton aggression on children or women,5 or of being envious or anything of that sort, that does not make him cowardly. And if someone is confident when he is going to be whipped for his crimes, that does not make him brave.

§6  / Then what sorts of frightening conditions concern the brave person? Surely the most frightening; for no one stands firmer against p. 48 terrifying conditions. Now death is most frightening of all, since it is a boundary, and when someone is dead nothing beyond it seems either good or bad for him any more.  §7  Still, not even death in all conditions—on the sea, for instance, or in sickness, seems to be the brave person’s concern.

§8  In what conditions, then, is death his concern? Surely in / the finest conditions. Now such deaths are those in war, since they occur in the greatest and finest danger.6  §9 This judgment is endorsed by the honours given in cities and by monarchs.  §10  Hence someone is called fully brave if he is intrepid in facing a fine death and the immediate / dangers that bring death. And this is above all true of the dangers of war.

§11  / Certainly the brave person is also intrepid on the sea and in sickness, but not in the same way as seafarers are. For he has given up hope of safety, and objects to this sort of death <with nothing fine in it>, but seafarers’ experience makes them hopeful.  §12  Moreover, we act like brave men on occasions / when we can use our strength, or when it is fine to be killed; and neither of these is true when we perish on the sea.

7

[Bravery: its characteristic outlook]

[c10] Now what is frightening is not the same for everyone. We say, however, that some things are too frightening for a human being to resist;1 these, then, are frightening for everyone, at least for everyone with any sense. What is frightening, but not irresistible for a human being, varies in / its seriousness and degree; and the same is true of what inspires confidence.

§2 The brave person is unperturbed, as far as a human being can be. Hence, though he will fear even the sorts of things that are not irresistible, he will stand firm against them, in the right way, as reason prescribes, for the sake of the fine, since this is the end aimed at by virtue.2

§3  It is possible to be more or less afraid of these frightening things, and also possible to be afraid of what is not frightening / as though it were frightening.  §4 The cause of error may be fear of the wrong thing, or in the wrong way, or at the wrong time, or something of that sort; and the same is true for things that inspire confidence.

§5  Hence whoever stands firm against the right things and fears the right things, for the right end, in the right way, at the right time, p. 49 and is correspondingly confident, is the brave person; for the brave person’s actions and feelings accord with what something is worth, and follow what reason prescribes.

§6  / Every activity aims at actions in accord with the state of character. Now to the brave person bravery is fine; hence the end it aims at is also fine, since each thing is defined by its end.3 The brave person, then, aims at the fine when he stands firm and acts in accord with bravery.

§7  Among those who go to excess / the excessively fearless person has no name—we said earlier that many cases have no names.4 He would be some sort of madman, or incapable of feeling distress, if he feared nothing, neither earthquake nor waves, as they say about the Celts.5

The person who is excessively confident about frightening things is rash.  §8 The rash person also seems to be a boaster, / and a pretender to bravery.6 At any rate, the attitude to frightening things that the brave person really has is the attitude that the rash person wants to appear to have; hence he imitates the brave person where he can.  §9 That is why most of them are also rash cowards; for, rash though they are on these <occasions for imitation>, they do not stand firm against anything frightening. {{ §12  / Moreover, rash people are impetuous, / and wish for dangers before they arrive, but shrink from them / when they come. Brave people, on the contrary, are eager when in action, but keep quiet until then.7 }}

§10  / The person who is excessively afraid is the coward, since / he fears the wrong things, and in the wrong way, and so on. / Certainly, he is also deficient in confidence, but his excessive pain distinguishes him more clearly.  §11  Hence, since he is afraid of everything, he is a despairing sort. The brave person, on the contrary, is hopeful, since <he is confident and> confidence is proper to a hopeful person.

§12  / Hence the coward, the rash person, and the brave person are all concerned with the same things, but have different states related to them; the others are excessive or defective, / but the brave person has the intermediate and right state. [[ Moreover, . . . until then. ]]

§13 [c11] / As we have said, then, bravery is a mean about what inspires confidence and about what is frightening in the conditions we have described; it chooses and stands firm because that is fine or p. 50 because anything else is shameful. Dying to avoid poverty or erotic passion or something painful is proper to a coward, not to a brave person. For shirking / burdens is softness, and such a person stands firm <in the face of death> to avoid an evil, not because standing firm is fine.8

8

[Conditions that resemble bravery]

Bravery, then, is something of this sort. But five other sorts of things are also called bravery.1

The bravery of citizens comes first, since it looks most like bravery. For citizens seem to stand firm against dangers with the aim of avoiding reproaches and legal penalties and / of winning honours; that is why the bravest seem to be those who hold cowards in dishonour and do honour to brave people.  §2 That is how Homer also describes them when he speaks of Diomede and Hector: ­‘Polydamas will be the first to heap disgrace on me’, and / ‘For sometime Hector speaking among the Trojans will say, “The son of Tydeus fled from me.”’2  §3 This is most like the <genuine> bravery described above, because it results from a virtue; for it is caused by shame and by desire for something fine, namely honour,3 and by aversion from reproach, which is shameful.

§4  / In this class we might also place those who are compelled by their superiors. However, they are worse to the extent that they act because of fear, not because of shame, and to avoid pain, not disgrace. For their commanders compel them, as Hector does: ‘If I / notice anyone shrinking back from the battle, nothing will save him from being eaten by the dogs.’4  §5  Commanders who strike any / troops who give ground, or who post them in front of ditches and suchlike, do the same thing, since they all compel them.5 The brave person, however, must be moved by the fine, not by compulsion.

§6  Experience about a given situation also seems to be bravery; / that is why Socrates actually thought that bravery is scientific knowledge.6 Different people have this sort <of apparent courage> in different conditions. In wartime <professional> soldiers have it. For there seem to be many groundless alarms in war, and the profession-als are the most familiar with these;7 hence they appear brave, since others do not know that the alarms are groundless.  §7  Moreover, their experience makes them most capable in / attack and defence, p. 51 since they are skilled in the use of their weapons, and have the best weapons for attack and defence.  §8 The result is that in fighting non-professionals they are like armed troops against unarmed, or trained athletes against ordinary people; for in these contests also the best fighters are the strongest and physically fittest, not / the bravest.

§9  <Professional> soldiers, however, turn out to be cowards whenever the danger overstrains them8 and they are inferior in numbers and equipment. For they are the first to run, but the citizen troops stand firm and get killed; this was what happened at the temple of Hermes.9 For the citizens find it / shameful to run, and find death more choiceworthy than safety at this cost. But the <profes-sionals> from the start were facing the danger on the assumption of their superiority; once they learn their mistake, they run, since they are more afraid of being killed than of doing something shameful. That is not the brave person’s character.

§10  Spirit is also counted as bravery; for those who act on / spirit also seem to be brave—as beasts seem to be when they attack those who have wounded them—because brave people are also full of spirit.10 For spirit is most eager to run and face dangers; hence Homer’s words, ‘put strength in his spirit’, ‘aroused strength and spirit’, and ‘his blood / boiled’.11 All these would seem to signify the arousal and the impulse of spirit.

§11  Now brave people act because of the fine, and their spirit co-operates with them. But beasts act because of pain; for they attack only because they have been wounded or frightened (since they keep away from us in a forest). They are not brave, then, since distress and spirit drives / them in an impulsive rush to meet danger, foreseeing none of the terrifying prospects. For if they were brave, hungry / asses would also be brave, since they keep on feeding even if they are beaten;12 and adulterers also do many daring actions because of lust. [[ The <bravery> . . . the goal. ]]

§12  / Human beings as well as beasts find it painful to be angered, and pleasant to exact a penalty. But those who fight for these reasons are not brave, though they are good fighters; for they fight because of their feelings, not because of the fine nor as reason prescribes. Still, they have something similar <to bravery>. / {{ The <bravery> caused by spirit would seem to be the most natural sort, and to be / ­<genuine> bravery once it has also acquired decision and the goal.13 }}

p. 52 §13  / Hopeful people are not brave either; for their many / victories over many opponents make them confident in dangers. They are somewhat similar to brave people, since both sorts are confident. But whereas brave people are confident for the reason given earlier, the hopeful are confident because they think they are stronger and nothing could happen to / them;  §14  drunks do the same sort of thing, since they become hopeful. When things turn out differently from how they expected, they run away. The brave person, on the contrary, stands firm against what is and appears frightening to a human being; he does this because it is fine to stand firm and shameful to fail.

§15  Indeed, that is why someone who is unafraid and unperturbed in emergencies seems braver than <someone who is unafraid only> when he is warned in advance; for / his action proceeds more from his state of character, because it proceeds less from preparation.14 For if we are warned in advance, we might decide what to do <not only because of our state of character, but> also by reason and rational calculation; but in emergencies <we must decide> in accord with our state of character.15

§16 Those who act in ignorance also appear brave, and indeed they are close to hopeful people, though inferior to them insofar as they lack the self-esteem of hopeful people. / That is why the hopeful stand firm for some time, whereas if ignorant people have been deceived and then realize or suspect that things are different, they run. That was what happened to the Argives when they stumbled on the Spartans and took them for Sicyonians.16

§17 We have described, then, the character of brave people and of those who seem to be brave.

9

[Feelings proper to bravery]

[c12] / Bravery is about feelings of confidence and fear—not, however, about both in the same way, but more about frightening things. For someone is brave if he is undisturbed and in the right state about these, more than if he is in this state about things inspiring confidence.

§2  As we said, then, standing firm against what is painful makes us call people brave; that is why bravery is both painful and justly praised, since / it is harder to stand firm against something painful than to refrain from something pleasant.  §3  / Nonetheless, the end p. 53 that bravery aims at seems to be pleasant, though obscured by its surroundings. This is what happens in athletic contests. For boxers find that the end they aim at, the crown and the honours, is pleasant, but, being / made of flesh and blood, they find it distressing and painful to take the punches and to bear all the hard work; and because there are so many of these painful things, the end, being small, appears to have nothing pleasant in it.

§4  And so, if the same is true for bravery, the brave person will find death and wounds painful, and suffer them unwillingly, but he will endure them because that is fine or because failure is shameful.1 / Indeed, the truer it is that he has every virtue and the happier he is, the more pain he will feel at the prospect of death. For this sort of person, more than anyone, finds it worthwhile to be alive, and knows he is being deprived of the greatest goods, and this is painful. But he is no less brave for all that; presumably, indeed, he is all the braver, because he / chooses what is fine in war at the cost of all these goods.  §5  It is not true, then, in the case of every virtue that its active exercise is pleasant; it is pleasant only insofar as we attain the end.

§6  But presumably it is quite possible for brave people, given the character we have described, not to be the best <professional> soldiers.2 Perhaps the best will be those who are less brave, but possess no other good; for they are ready to face / dangers, and they sell their lives for small gains.

§7  So much for bravery. It is easy to grasp what it is, in outline at least, from what we have said.

10

[Temperance: its scope]

[c13] Let us discuss temperance next; for bravery and temperance seem to be the virtues of the non-rational parts.1 / Temperance, then, is a mean concerned with pleasures, as we have already said; for it is concerned less, and in a different way, with pains. Intemperance appears in this same area too. Let us, then, now distinguish the specific pleasures that concern them.

§2  First, let us distinguish pleasures of the soul from those of the body. Love of honour and of learning, for instance, are among the pleasures of the soul; for though a lover of one of / these enjoys it, only his thought, not his body, is at all affected. Those concerned with such pleasures are called neither temperate nor intemperate. The p. 54 same applies to those concerned with any of the other non-bodily pleasures; / for lovers of tales, storytellers, those who waste their days on trivialities, are called babblers, but not intemperate. Nor / do we call people intemperate if they feel pain over money or friends.

§3 Temperance, then, will be about bodily pleasures, but not even about all of these. For those who find enjoyment in objects of sight, such as colours, shapes, a painting, are / called neither temperate nor intemperate, even though it would also seem possible to enjoy these either rightly or excessively and deficiently.  §4 The same is true for hearing; no one is ever called intemperate for excessive enjoyment of songs or playacting, or temperate for the right enjoyment of them.

§5  Nor is this said about someone enjoying smells, except / coincidentally.2 For someone is called intemperate not for enjoying the smell of apples or roses or incense, but rather for enjoying the smell of perfumes or cooked delicacies. For these are the smells an intemperate person enjoys because they remind him of the objects of his appetite.3  §6  And / we can see that others also enjoy the smells of food if they are hungry.4 It is the enjoyment of the things <that he is reminded of by these smells> that is proper to an intemperate person, since these are the objects of his appetite.

§7  Nor do other animals find pleasures from these senses, except coincidentally. What a / hound enjoys, for instance, is not the smell of a hare, but eating it; but the hare’s smell made the hound perceive it. And what a lion enjoys is not the sound of the ox, but eating it; but since the ox’s sound made the lion perceive that it was near, the lion appears to enjoy the sound. Similarly, what pleases him is not the sight of ‘a deer or a wild goat’,5 but the prospect of food.

§8 The pleasures that concern temperance and intemperance / are those that are shared with the other animals, and so appear slavish and bestial.6 These pleasures are touch and taste.7

§9  However, they seem to deal even with taste very little or not at all. For taste discriminates flavours—the sort of thing that wine tast-ers and cooks savouring food do; but / people, or intemperate people at any rate, do not much enjoy this. Rather, they enjoy the gratification that comes entirely through touch, in eating and drinking and in what are called the pleasures of sex.  §10 That is why a glutton actually prayed for his throat to become longer than a crane’s, showing / that he took pleasure in the touching.8 And so the sense that concerns p. 55 intemperance is the most widely shared, and seems justifiably open to reproach, since we have it insofar as we are animals, not insofar as we are human beings.

§11 To enjoy these things, then, and to like them most of all is bestial. For indeed the most civilized / of the pleasures coming through touch, such as those produced by rubbing and warming in gymnasia, are excluded from intemperance, since the touching that is proper to the intemperate person concerns only some parts of the body, not all of it.

11

[Temperance: its outlook]

Some appetites seem to be shared <by everyone>, while others seem to be additions that are distinctive <of different people>. / The appetite for nourishment, for instance, is natural, since everyone who lacks nourishment, dry or liquid, has an appetite for it, sometimes for both; and, as Homer says, the young in their prime <all> have an appetite for sex.1 Not everyone, however, has an appetite for a specific sort of food or drink or sex, or for the same things.  §2 That is why an appetite of this type seems to be distinctive of <each of> us. Still, this also includes a natural element, since different sorts of people find different sorts of things pleasanter, and there are some things that are pleasanter for everyone than things chosen at random would be.

§3  / In natural appetites few people are in error, and only in one direction, towards excess. Eating indiscriminately or drinking until we are too full is exceeding the quantity that accords with nature; for <the object of> natural appetite is the filling of a lack. That is why these people are called ‘gluttons’, / showing that they glut their bellies past what is right;2 that is how especially slavish people turn out.

§4 With the pleasures that are distinctive of different people, many make errors and in many ways; for people are called lovers of something if they enjoy the wrong things, or if they enjoy something in the wrong way. And in all these / ways intemperate people go to excess. For some of the things they enjoy are hateful, and hence wrong; distinctive pleasures that it is right to enjoy they enjoy more than is right, and more than most people enjoy them.

§5  Clearly, then, with pleasures excess is intemperance, and is blameworthy. With pains, however, we are not called temperate, as we are called brave, for standing firm against / them, or intemperate for p. 56 not standing firm. Rather, someone is intemperate because he feels more pain than is right at failing to get pleasant things; and even this pain is produced by the pleasure <he takes in them>. And someone is temperate because he does not feel pain at the absence of what is pleasant, or at refraining from it.

§6 [c14] / The intemperate person, then, has an appetite for all pleasant things, or rather for the pleasantest of them, and his appetite leads him to choose these at the cost of the other things. That is why he also feels pain both when he fails to get something and when he has an appetite for it, since appetite / involves pain. It would seem absurd, however, to suffer pain because of pleasure.

§7  People who are deficient in pleasures and enjoy them less than is right are not found very much. For that sort of insensibility is not human; indeed, even the other animals discriminate among foods, enjoying some but not others. If someone finds nothing pleasant, or preferable to anything / else, he is far from being human. The reason he has no name is that he is not found much.

§8 The temperate person has an intermediate state in relation to these <bodily pleasures>. For he finds no pleasure in what most pleases the intemperate person, but finds it disagreeable; he finds no pleasure at all in the wrong things. He finds no intense pleasure in any <bodily pleasures>, suffers no pain at their absence, and has no appetite for them, or / only a moderate appetite, not to the wrong degree or at the wrong time or anything else at all of that sort.3 If something is pleasant and conducive to health or fitness, he will desire this moderately and in the right way; and he will desire in the same way anything else that is pleasant, if it is no obstacle to health and fitness, does not deviate from the fine, and does not exceed his means. For the opposite sort of person likes these pleasures more / than they are worth; that is not the temperate person’s character, but he likes them as correct reason prescribes.

12

[Intemperance]

[c15] Intemperance is more like a voluntary condition than cowardice; for it is caused by pleasure, which is choiceworthy, whereas cowardice is caused by pain, which is to be avoided.1  §2  Moreover, pain disturbs and ruins the nature of the sufferer, while pleasure does p. 57 nothing of the sort; intemperance, / then, is more voluntary. That is why it is also more open to reproach. For it is also easier to acquire the habit of facing pleasant things, since our life includes many of them and we can acquire the habit with no danger; but with frightening things the reverse is true.

§3  However, cowardice seems to be more voluntary than ­particular cowardly actions. For cowardice itself involves no pain, but the particular actions disturb us because of the pain / <that causes them>, so that people actually throw away their weapons and do all the other disgraceful actions. That is why these actions even seem to be forced <and hence involuntary>.2

§4  For the intemperate person the reverse is true. The particular actions are the result of his appetite and desire, and so they are voluntary; but the whole condition is less voluntary <than the actions>, since no one has an appetite to be intemperate.

§5 We also apply the name of intemperance to the errors of / children, since they have some similarity.3 Which gets its name from which does not matter for our present purposes, but clearly the posterior is called after the prior.

§6 The name would seem to be quite appropriately transferred. For the things that need to be tempered are those that desire shameful / things and tend to grow large. Appetites and children are most like this; for children also live by appetite, and desire for the pleasant is found more in them than in anyone else.

§7  If, then, <the child or the appetitive part> is not obedient and subordinate to its rulers, it will go far astray. For when someone lacks understanding, his desire for the pleasant is insatiable and seeks indiscriminate satisfaction. The <repeated> active exercise of appetite increases the appetite / he already had from birth, and if the appetites are large and intense, they actually expel rational calculation. That is why appetites must be moderate and few, and never contrary to reason.  §8 This is the condition we call obedient and temperate. And just as the child’s life must follow the instructions of his guide, so too the appetitive part must / follow reason.4

§9  Hence the temperate person’s appetitive part must agree with reason; for both <his appetitive part and his reason> aim at the fine, and the temperate person’s appetites are for the right things, in the right ways, at the right times, which is just what reason also prescribes.

So much, then, for temperance.