too little.[1] Virtues are psychic conditions and dispositions which are mid-way between two reprehensible extremes, one of which is characterized by an exaggeration, the other by a deficiency.[2] Good deeds are the product of these dispositions. To illustrate, abstemiousness is a disposition which adopts a mid-course between inordinate passion and total insensibility to pleasure. Abstemiousness, then, is a proper rule of conduct, and the psychic disposition which gives rise to it is an ethical quality; but inordinate passion, the extreme of excess, and total insensibility to enjoyment, the extreme of deficiency[3], are both absolutely pernicious. The psychic dispositions, from which these two extremes, inordinate passion and insensibility, result—the one being an exaggeration, the other a deficiency—are alike classed among moral imperfections.
Likewise, liberality is the mean between sordidness and extravagence; courage, between recklessness and cowardice; dignity, between haughtiness and loutishness[4]; humility, between arrogance
- ↑ הממוצעים, the mean (Aristotelian μέσον). Nic. Eth., II, 6, “By an objective mean, I understand that which is equidistant from the two given extremes, and which is one and the same to all, and by a mean relatively to the person, I understand that which is neither too much nor too little.”
- ↑ Cf. ibid., “Virtue, then, is a disposition of the moral purpose in relative balance, which is determined by a standard, according as the thoughtful man would determine. It is a middle state between two faulty ones, in the way of excess on one side, and defect on the other; and it is so, moreover, because the faulty states on one side fall short of, and those on the other side exceed, what is right, both in the case of the emotions and the actions; but virtue finds, and, when found, adopts the mean.” Cf. H. Deot, I, 4, and II, 2.
- ↑ הקצה הראשון, is the extreme of excess (Aristotle's ὐπερβολή), and הקצה האחרון the extreme of deficiency (ἔλλειψις). Cf. H. Deot, I, 5; III, 1; ואתרחק לצד האחרון עד שלא יאכל בשר ולא ישתה יין וכ׳, where צד האחרון clearly means the extreme of the too little.
- ↑ See Hebrew text, c. IV, pp. 19—20, n. 17. On the gloss והגחת ממוצעת וכ׳, introduced here in some Mss. and edd., see Hebrew text, c. IV, p. 20, note. This gloss seems to go back to Eth. Nic., II, 7, “He that is as he
equal, the normal, or equibalanced); cf. Moreh, II, 39, “It is clear, then, that the Law is normal (משוױה) in this sense; for it contains the words, ‘Just statutes and judgments’ (Deut. IV, 8); but ‘just’ is here identical with ‘equibalanced’ (שוױם).”
