Aristotle's "Anger"

I was surprised today to read Aristotle's account of anger, in the Nichomachean Ethics, Book 2, Chapter 7:

In what concerns anger too there is an excess, a deficiency, and a mean;
and although these are pretty much nameless, let us call the mean gentle-
ness, since we speak of the person in the middle as  gentle.  Of those at
the extremes, let he who is excessive be irascible, the vice irascibility, and
let he who is  deficient be a sort of "unirascible" person, the deficiency
"unirascibility." 

That "gentleness" is the mean of "anger" is quite contradictory by our contemporary definitions, is it not?

Certainly I recall reading (I believe in The Art of Happiness) that the Dalai Lama claimed that emotions such as anger and hatred are at the core of violence; thus placing anger in the category of irredeemably negative emotions.

However, it seems that what Aristotle must be talking about here is not anger as we tend to think of it, but rather a sort of 'concern' which can be, in excess hot-tempered and in deficiency apathetic.

We are helped in this change of terminology in the translator's definition of thumos:

SPIRIT, SPIRITEDNESS (thumos): The seat of anger andof"natural courage"; it is also translated as "heart" in the quotation from Hesiod in book  I  (1095 b13). (p.315)

 Aristotle goes on in Book 4, chapter 5:

The person who gets angry at the things and with whom he ought, then, and, further, in the way, when, and for as much time as he ought, is praised. Hence this person would be gentle, if indeed gentleness is praised. The gentle person wishes to be calm and not led by his passion, but rather  as reason may command, and so to be harsh regarding the things he ought and for the requisite time.

...

For those who do not get angry at the things they ought are held to be foolish, as are those who do not get angry in the way they ought or when or with whom they ought. For such a person seems to lack perception and even not to feel pain; since he does not get angry, he seems not apt to defend himself against an attack. Yet to hold back in this way after having been treated insolently, and to overlook such treatment of one's kin, is held to be slavish. 

The wikipedia page on the topic gives us:

Concerned with	Mean	Excess	Deficiency
anger (orgē)	Gentleness (praotēs)	Irascibility (Rackham), Irritability (Sachs) (orgilotēs)	Spiritlessness (aorgẽs

Just some thoughts.

Deontology in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

For simplicity, hard lines are often drawn between Aristotle, Kant, and Mill, as ideal exemplars of virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism. However, whenever we look more closely, we will find a mixture of these 'systems' of ethics in each thinker. Or at least we can, depending on how we define our terms.

I have before me the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, which on pp.200-201 defines deontological ethics. It begins:

1. According to deontology, certain acts are right or wrong in themselves. ... Note that deontology is not the same as absolutism, according to which certain acts are wrong whatever the consequences. 

The second part of this will be addressed later. But the first part, that certain acts are right or wrong in themselves can be found almost verbatim in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, Chapter 6, where Aristotle discusses virtues in terms of means between extremes:

But not every action or every passion admits of the mean, for some have names that are immediately associated with baseness-for example, spitefulness, shamelessness, envy, and, when it comes to actions, adultery, theft, and murder. For all these things, and those like them, are spoken of as being themselves base, rather than just their excesses or deficiencies. It is never possible, then, to be correct as regards them, but one is always in error; and it is not possible to do what concerns such things well or not well-by committing adultery with the woman one ought and when and as one ought. Rather, doing any of these things whatever is simply in error. 

 I think we can take "in error" to mean the same thing as "wrong". 

Prudence

From Philosoph-L, a summary of worthy contemporary and recent work on the concept of Prudence. Kant and Aristotle were mentioned a few times so I figured it's worth posting.

Literature on Prudence:

Aubenque, ‘La Prudence chez Kant’, Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, 1975
Bloomfeld, P. (ed.) Morality and Self-Interest.
Beiner, R., Political Judgement (Chicago 1983)
Borma, F.J. and C. Schroeder (eds.), Abwaegende Vernunft (de Gruyter 2004)
Bricker, P., ‘Prudence’. Journal of Philosophy 1980 (7)
Churchman, C.W., ‘Kant – a decision theorist?’ Theory and Decision 1, 1970
Davie, W.E., ‘Being prudent and acting prudently’ American Phil. Quarterly
10 (1), 1973
Fleischacker, S., A Third Concept of Liberty: Judgement and Freedom in
Kant and A. Smith (Princeton 1999)
Garver, E. Machiavelli and the History of Prudence (1987)
Grice, Aspects of Reason.
Hariman, R. (ed.), Prudence: Classical Virtue, Postmodern Practice
(Pennsylvania State U. Press 2003).
Hirschman, A., The Passions and the Interests: Arguments for Capitalism
before its Triumph (Princeton 1977)
Luckner, A., Klugheit (de Gruyter 2005)
Mabbot, J.D., ‘Prudence’, Proceedings of the Aristot. Society, suppl. Vol.
XXXVI, 6, (1962)
Mabbot, J.D., ‘Reason and Desire’. Philosophy 28 (1953)
Nagel, T. The Possibility of Altruism (1978).
Nussbaum, M., Liberty of Conscience (2008)
Parellada, R., ‘Moral Judgement in States of Equilibrium’, Revista de
Filosofia 31 (2006).
Parrelada, R., ‘Aristotle’s Theory of Practical Wisdom’, Modern Schoolman:
A Quarterly Journal of Philosophy 83 (2005).
Pieper, J., Cardinal Virtues.
Rotenstreich, N., ‘Prudence and Folly’, American Phil. Quart. 22 (2), 1985
Scmidtz, D., ‘Self-Interest: what’s in it for me? Soc. Phil. & Pol. 14
(1), 1997
Steinberger, P. The Concept of Political Judgement (Chicago 1993)
Sturm, T. Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Paderborn: Mentis 2009)
Wieland, W., Kants Rechslehre der Urteilskraft

Aristotle, Buddhism, Kant, and Happiness

From a Buddhist discussion list I am on, there has been recent discussion of Aristotle's view of happiness:

From the Nicomachean Ethics (book 1):

"We are unwilling to call the living happy because changes may befall them and because we believe that happiness haws permanence and is not amenable to change under any circumstances."

"For it seems that to some extent good and evil really exist for a dead man, just as they may exist for a man who lives without being conscious of them, for example honors and disgraces, and generally the successes and failures of his children and descendents."

"Happiness, as we have said, requires completeness in virtue as well as a complete lifetime."

Additionally, I just found this:

Yet evidently, as we said, it needs the external goods as well; for it is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts without the proper equipment. In many actions we use friends and riches and political power as instruments; and there are some things the lack of which takes the lustre from happiness, as good birth, goodly children, beauty; for the man who is very ugly in appearance or ill-born or solitary and childless is not very likely to be happy, and perhaps a man would be still less likely if he had thoroughly bad children or friends or had lost good children or friends by death. As we said, then, happiness seems to need this sort of prosperity in addition; for which reason some identify happiness with good fortune, though others identify it with virtue. (N.E. Book 1.8 - bolding mine)

This is opposed by Kant, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, wherein what is to be saught is not happiness but a good character (which, Kant assures, leads one to be worthy of happiness):

Good character, he wrote, should not be confused with
four other kinds of things we normally think of as good:
mental talents such as intelligence, wit, and judgment;
desirable temperamental qualities such as courage,
resoluteness, and perseverance; "gifts of fortune," as the
Greeks had called them, like power, wealth, health, and
honor; and, finally, what we all crave, happiness, that is,
"complete well-being and contentment with one’s state."(*)

Both Kant and Aristotle found unique value in the human capacity of reason. This is, at least prima facie, a far different starting point from Buddhism, which seems to focus on the path from suffering to its end (wherein reason Kant and Aristotle understand it lies in that journey is difficult matter to understand). Aristotle gave primacy to theoretical reason (theoria) and Kant to practical reason (morality).

As a Buddhist-Kantian I would suggest that the Buddha's emphasis was also on practical reason, the path to nirvana. But that could be too much splitting of hairs to be useful.

Anyhow, file this under rantings and ravings for now - no real point, just some points, perhaps to ponder.

* Roger Sullivan. The Review of Metaphysics Sept 1995 v49 n1 p77 (15)