What is Just? What is Virtue?

Men must do just actions to become just. Men of self-mastery do such actions to acquire the habit of self-mastery.

People are confused by this because they say that virtuous people do virtuous acts because they have virtue already, just as grammarians or musicians do grammar and music because they know grammar and music already.

I reply that this is not so.

A man may produce something grammatical either by chance or the suggestion of another.

But he will only be a grammarian when he produces something grammatical but also in virtue of his grammatical knowledge.

The cases of the arts and the virtues are not parallel.

Those things produced by the arts have their excellence in themselves.

But those which are produced by the virtues are actions of a certain kind such as of Justice or Self-Mastery.

These require:

1. A certain state of mind
2. Deliberate preference for their own sake.
3. Consistency

These 3 are not needed in the arts, except for the knowledge of the art.

Whereas to have the virtues knowledge has little or no use.

Virtues are not habits. A person who does virtuous acts by habit is not the same as being virtuous.

These virtues are formed in a man by his doing the actions. But these virtues can also be undone if he stops doing those actions.

Yet people do not perform these virtuous actions. They merely talk about them and flatter themselves they are philosophising, and that they will so be good men.

They act like those sick people who listen to the doctor with great attention but do nothing that he tells them.

Chapter 4

What is Virtue? [9]

Three kinds things come to mind:

1. Feelings
2. Capacities
3. States

Virtue must belong to one of the three classes.

Examples of Feelings are lust, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, friendship, hatred, longing, emulation, compassion, in short all such as are followed by pleasure or pain.

Capacities, those in right of which we are said to be capable of these feelings; as by virtue of which we are able to have been made angry, or grieved, or to have compassionated; by States, those in right of which we are in a certain relation good or bad to the aforementioned feelings; to having been made angry, for instance, we are in a wrong relation if in our anger we were too violent or too slack, but if we were in the happy medium we are in a right relation to the feeling. And so on of the rest.

Feelings neither the virtues nor vices are, because in right of the Feelings we are not denominated either good or bad, but in right of the virtues and vices we are.

Again, in right of the Feelings we are neither praised nor blamed,[10] (for a man is not commended for being afraid or being angry, nor blamed for being angry merely but for being so in a particular way), but in right of the virtues and vices we are.

Again, both anger and fear we feel without moral choice, whereas the virtues are acts of moral choice, or at least certainly not independent of it.

Moreover, in right of the Feelings we are said to be moved, but in right of the virtues and vices not to be moved, but disposed, in a certain way.

And for these same reasons they are not Capacities, for we are not called good or bad merely because we are able to feel, nor are we praised or blamed.

And again, Capacities we have by nature, but we do not come to be good or bad by nature, as we have said before.

Since then the virtues are neither Feelings nor Capacities, it remains that they must be States.