Aristotles Definition of Virtue - Essay Example

Consequently, ethical virtue unfolds itself in finding the golden mean between vices, which are either excess or scarcity and balancing between them. Therefore, a virtuous person possesses persisting inner disposition to balance between excess and scarcity of certain qualities and actions.

The mean is also called “relative to us”, meaning that the point of balance between excess and scarcity of qualities is attributed to ourselves, to our personalities rather than treated as an abstract notion. Adherence to this mean should be inside of a person and applied to other people. This mean is “defined by reference to reason” (Aristotle, 1107a), thus, this means that the standards of “reason” are settled by some outer objective reasoning force rather than by each person separately.

Otherwise, virtues accepted by different people would be conflicting. However, the last fragment of the definition eventually turns out to address “a prudent person” settling the principles of the golden mean, and this gives grounds to consider virtue the notion created by man rather than existing autonomously because Aristotle sees it as relying on man-made principles. Each of the definition’s fragments helps create a complete vision of virtue, unfolding its essence. Moreover, the former would be inadequate without some of the aspects, for instance, if there were no mention of a “prudent person”, the nature of principles guiding mean concept would be rather blurred.