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Aristotle therefore describes several apparently different kinds of virtuous person as necessarily having all the moral virtues, excellences of character. Being of "great soul" ( magnanimity ), the virtue where someone would be truly deserving of the highest praise and have a correct attitude towards the honor this may involve.
Aristotle identifies approximately 18 virtues that demonstrate a person is performing their human function well. [7] He distinguished virtues pertaining to emotion and desire from those relating to the mind. [7]: II The first he calls moral virtues, and the second intellectual virtues (though both are "moral" in the modern sense of the word).
Medieval moral authors were well aware of the fact. Actually, the capital vices are more often contrasted with the remedial or contrary virtues in medieval moral literature than with the principal virtues, while the principal virtues are frequently accompanied by a set of mirroring vices rather than by the seven deadly sins. [18]
Aristotle says moral virtues are found at a mean (mesótēs) between deficiency and excess. [40] For example, someone who flees is a coward (with a deficiency of bravery, or an excessive response to fear), while someone who fears nothing is rash (the opposite extreme). The virtue of courage is a "mean" between these two extremes.
Cardinal and Theological Virtues a 1511 portrait by Raphael. A virtue (Latin: virtus) is a trait of excellence, including traits that may be moral, social, or intellectual.. The cultivation and refinement of virtue is held to be the "good of humanity" and thus is valued as an end purpose of life or a foundational principle of be
Mortimer J. Adler described Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as a "unique book in the Western tradition of moral philosophy, the only ethics that is sound, practical, and undogmatic." [ 28 ] The contemporary Aristotelian philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre helped to revive virtue ethics in his book After Virtue .
Thomas Aquinas adopted Aristotle's set of virtues, which included temperance, and built his own scheme on those. He called temperance a "disposition of the mind which binds the passions". [22] [verification needed] Temperance is believed to combat the sin of gluttony. Within Christianity, temperance is a virtue akin to self-control.
Aristotle analyzed the golden mean in the Nicomachean Ethics Book II: That virtues of character can be described as means. It was subsequently emphasized in Aristotelian virtue ethics. [1] For example, in the Aristotelian view, courage is a virtue, but if taken to excess would manifest as recklessness, and, in deficiency, cowardice. The middle ...