Aristotle on Moral and Intellectual Virtues
Virtue, for Aristotle, means different types of excellence. They are robust character traits that once acquired and developed lead to good behaviour. There are two types of virtues, intellectual and moral. Intellectual virtues are the excellence of thinking and use of reason. While moral virtues are excellence in relating our reason to our appetites and desires, our feelings and emotions. A virtue is a skill, a way of living, something that can only really be learned through experience. The intellectual virtues are acquired by teaching. The moral virtues can be acquired by instruction and training but only truly developed by habit.
We are not born with our virtues, but we are born equipped with the ability of capacity to receive these virtues. Brought up by habits which relate to characteristics, bad and good characteristics can develop but once we acquire certain characteristic it becomes easier to carry out the activity. When virtue is fully realized, the action becomes effortless and the virtue is engrained on you and you can manifest it every time you need it. We can preserve these virtues in our characters by never stopping to exercise them. If you stop to exercise your virtues after they are acquired, they may as well not be part of your character anymore, since a habit is a regular practice.
The intellectual virtue involves the rational part of our soul, on its subdivision that possesses reason in a strict sense, it is engaged in pure thinking (contemplation). The moral virtues also involve the rational part of the soul but in the subdivision that listens to the reason (our free will), that uses reason to figure out what we should do, how we should act and how to apply that to reality to govern our choices.
Ideal role models are virtuous people that help us to know what is the right thing to do when we don’t have a formula for morality, and it’s said by Aristotle to be very hard to attain due to the degree of exactness we have when dealing with Ethics. The ideal role models do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, in the right amount, towards the right people. They have good judgement and know what to do, and take pleasure in their actions because it comes naturally to them. They see things for what they truly are, the elements of their soul are in alignment and we are built with the ability to recognize them and desire to emulate their actions.To practice intellectual virtues we don’t need external goods, its the most self-sufficient virtue. Moral virtues need more external goods at our disposition, e.g to donate money for the less fortunate we need money to give away.
Aristotle seems to prefer intellectual virtues. That is due to the facts that his definition of men is “ rational animal” and he disagrees with the vulgar of the “three lives” and their definition of happiness not including rationality, and describes that life as for “ grazing animals” because it doesn’t differentiate us from other animals, and he thinks we need to be differentiated because of our reason. The reason is very important to Aristotle. His definition of happiness is an activity of the rational part of the soul in accordance with virtue. He is also a philosopher and shares that point of view in happiness (three lives), that it is related to theoretical knowledge.
Intelligence is our highest activity. Theoretical wisdom brings more than moral wisdom, because it has the highest objects of knowledge. Learning eternal truths makes the kinds of pleasures that arise from contemplation and studies to be the best pleasures. They are also the most self-sufficient. And Aristotle finds theoretical wisdom divine because for contemplation we can perform some kind of activity that the unmoved mover does.
In conclusion, moral virtues are excellence in relating our reason to our irrational part that we have in common with other animals, it is acquired through habit. While intellectual virtues are excellence in reason and acquired by teaching. Ideal role models are virtuous people.Aristotle seems to privilege intellectual virtues because he leads his life as a philosopher and considers reason to be our function.
