world of the Greek city-state out of which Aristotle's thinking emerged was in some respects a far cry from the world inhabited by today's global business enterprises. The oikonomia of the ancient world was centered on home management and agriculture and the political sphere involved persistent threats of Athenian invasion from Persian neighbors. Yet Aristotle's line of reasoning touches what is unchanging about our essential nature as human beings. His philosophy is directed at uncovering what we need in order to live well today, at illuminating the moral features we draw upon in all facets of life that enable us to attain the excellence and state of flourishing for which we are destined by our design. As we saw in our earlier discussion of Aristotle, virtues are dispositions, acquired in part through emulation and practice, yet ultimately engaging the whole person in a dynamic deeper than just a Pavlovian stimulus-response mechanism.
As a person of virtue, not only are you developing greater discipline, but also you are cultivating better and more satisfying moral motives. What makes you a courageous person is not a developed ability to simply mimic the conduct of a courageous individual. Imitating some virtuous person's actions doesn't cut it because you cannot possibly know beforehand what any such person's actions would require you to do. When you are a genuinely courageous individual, your soul is stirred by the yearning for honor and excellence, irrespective of the toll to personal comfort and security. One of the things that is so striking about virtue is the dependability it carries. In large part, what makes you a person that others can place their trust in is that you have the right sorts of motivations and dispositions to act in certain ways. When dangerous circumstances arise, others will turn to you—the person of courage—because they place confidence in your deep disposition to elevate concern for the common good over narrow worries about self-protection.
Moral Virtues
Reason carries an intellectual part together with a component governing the appetites. Hence, Aristotle differentiates two kinds of virtue. On the one hand are intellectual virtues, connected to the ways the soul arrives at the truth through activity that uses reason's apprehensive strength. On the other hand are moral virtues associated with regulating desire.
Virtue…is distinguished into kinds…for we say that some of the virtues are intellectual and others moral, philosophic wisdom and understanding and practical wisdom being intellectual, liberality and temperance moral. For in speaking about a man's character we do not say that he is wise or has understanding but that he is good-tempered or temperate; yet we praise the wise man also with respect to his state of mind; and of states of mind we call those which merit praise virtues.36
Among the moral virtues are courage, temperance, self-discipline, moderation, modesty, generosity, friendliness, truthfulness, honesty, and justice. Rather than just learning the moral virtues, Aristotle says that we acquire them from persistent practice. Laying stress on the requirement of relentless rehearsal to produce virtuosity brings to mind the gag about the disoriented Manhattan visitor who asks how to get to Carnegie Hall and is bluntly admonished “practice, practice, practice!” “The virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g., men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”37 It is optimal if such practice is started when young, continuing to the point of becoming habitual and second nature. As Aristotle puts it, “It makes no small difference then, whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference.”38 Because there are persistent temptations toward vice, however, Aristotle claims that laws are needed to buttress what was instilled through youthful instruction. In his words:
It is difficult to get from youth up a right training for virtue if one has not been brought up under right laws; for to live temperately and hardily is not pleasant to most people, especially when they are young. For this reason their nurture and occupations should be fixed by law; for they will not be painful when they have become customary. But it is surely not enough that when they are young they should get the right nurture and attention; since they must, even when they are grown up, practice and be habituated to them, we shall need laws for this as well, and generally speaking to cover the whole of life.39
Moreover, Aristotle claims that “most people obey necessity rather than argument, and punishments rather than the sense of what is noble.”40 There is a suggestion here that, no matter how much importance we attach to moral virtue and character, attention still needs to be given to the question of the appropriate degree of legal regulation. The point is further spelled out when Aristotle, alluding to Plato's Laws, continues with this assertion:
This is why some think that legislators ought to stimulate men to virtue and urge them forward by the motive of the noble, on the assumption that those who have been well advanced by the formation of habits will attend to such influences; and that punishments and penalties should be imposed on those who disobey and are of inferior nature, while the incurably bad should be completely banished. A good man (they think), since he lives with his mind fixed on what is noble, will submit to argument, while a bad man, whose desire is for pleasure, is corrected by pain like a beast of burden. This is, too, why they say the pains inflicted should be those that are most opposed to the pleasures such men love.41
Intellectual Virtues
The intellectual virtue of phron
Now it is thought to be the mark of a man of practical wisdom to be able to deliberate well about what is good and expedient for himself, not in some particular respect, e.g. about what sorts of thing conduce to health or to strength, but about what sorts of thing conduce to the good life in general. This is shown by the fact that we credit men with practical wisdom in some particular respect when they have calculated well with a view to some good end which is one of those that are not the object of any art. It follows that in the general sense also the man who is capable of deliberating has practical wisdom.42
Aristotle observes that prudence will be exercised by a statesman and the head of a household (oikos) alike. As he expresses it, “We think Pericles and men like him have practical wisdom, viz. because they can see what is good for themselves and what is good for men in general; we consider that those can do this who are good at managing households or states.”43 The type of prudence exercised in these instances is especially praiseworthy to Aristotle, as compared to self-focused applications of this virtue. The reason is that overseeing both households and public associations impose stepped up demands and duties, that is, helping others and not just oneself. Today's stations of leadership within business enterprises provide a myriad of chances for exercising this type of prudence in connection with social and economic affairs.44
The other intellectual virtue is wisdom or sophia. Wisdom engages the part of reason equipped to apprehend necessary truths as opposed to the contingent ones that prudence grasps. Wisdom deals with theory rather than practice. A wise person has intuition along with scientific knowledge. Through intuition one discerns first principles upon which scientific results rest. Scientific knowledge enables one to make deductive inferences in reaching conclusions in theoretical science. “Therefore wisdom must plainly be the most finished of the forms of knowledge. It follows that the wise man must not only know what follows from the first principles, but must also possess truth about the first principles. Therefore wisdom must be intuitive
