 So with this selection of ratings, Aristotle is continuing the work that we looked at with the excerpts from Book 1. As with these other philosophers, these ancient Greek philosophers, he's asking this question, what is the happy life? He says it's not, and remember if you remember from the Book 1, it's not an sensuality, it's not an honor, rather it's rather in contemplation, it's rather in developing what it means to be human. Now, let's look at some questions perhaps, but in this excerpt from Book 2, he's going to elaborate more on what he means here. Now to be clear for Aristotle, he's asking what does it mean to live this good life, and this answer is going to involve the virtues. It's going to be the habits that make one excellent, and this excellence is going to be understood in terms of the kind of thing that you are. And things it's found, when he starts out right from the beginning, found in either two main kinds of excellence for him, excellence for the intellect, and moral excellence. So, he's telling us that our happiness, the good life, is found in the habits that we develop. So what habits are important for Aristotle? What habits do you have to develop? Now Aristotle is really clear. He said that the virtues have pleasure and pain as their object, and the virtuous actions are the ones that cultivate the most pleasure. Now this might sound weird given what he just had to say about Sardinopoulos in the excerpts of Book 1, but he doesn't mean pleasure and pain just simply in terms of situality, right? That would just be for the body. If all we are were bodies, then yeah, you'll probably just go be Sardinopoulos, sure. But we're not just bodies. We're also minds, we're also emotion. So you have to develop those habits that result in the greatest, you know, that result in this pleasure, this state of well-being overall when all three, at least the three parts of you, are working well. You're developing a pleasant life, a good life. Okay, so how do you figure this out? Well, you know, some habits, it's not hard to see this, some habits are very much excessive, right, where they get too much of what you're aiming at. So, you know, a really great way to start thinking about this is in terms of food, right? And this is just the body, right? This is just the body. But there are other habits that deal with the mind and emotions as well. So it's really easy to think about an habit of excess of food, right? It's, you know, the all-you-can-eat buffet and staying there for six hours, right? Until somebody finally tells you, you need to go, you have eaten us out of business, right? That would be one habit that's in the excess. And not just like one instance, but like doing that all the time, that's in the excess. A deficiency, there are habits for deficiency as well, right? So we can think about not enough food or not eating at all. If you want to put this in terms of just pure caloric intake, right, just in terms of calories, right, in excess would be what? 4,000 or 6,000, right? Let's say 6,000 calories, which is actually not that hard to do with today's diet. 6,000 calories. And your deficiency would be zero calories, right? You'd die pretty quickly if you did that. Or even you might just say 1,000 calories, right? 1,000 calories. That's probably too little. Okay. Well, to find the right habit, you have to find the relative mean. Now this isn't the absolute mean. The absolute mean is, you know, what's equal distance between those two. So if we say 6,000, did we say, yeah, 6,000 or, yeah, say 6,000 calories was the excess and 1,000 calories is, you know, too little is the deficiency. Then the absolute mean would be what? 3,500 calories. That's the absolute mean. Well, that's probably not right. I think 3,500 calories is probably still too much. What you have to find is the relative mean. The relative mean is going to take practice. It's going to take experience. It's going to take a lot of thought and a lot of, you know, lack of a better word, scientific investigation. You got to take good records and know what you're doing. Okay. So the, you know, for somebody my size of my age to, you know, either maintain or lose weight, I have to have about 2,000 calories. 2,000 calories a day. And of course it matters what I have too. But, you know, we can, those are other habits as well. So, you know, the relative mean has to be found. It's this golden mean. That's what he calls this golden mean. It has to be figured out. You have to sit down and say, okay, so here's what I've done. What's the result? Is this better or worse in terms of pleasure and pain? So the habits that you have to develop are ones that you either develop through your own experiences or maybe you rely upon the experiences of others. All right. Now, virtue ethics, what Aristotle is talking about, virtue ethics is still objective. And we'll get to that in a second. But there is still some, you know, there's going to be some differences between individuals. I mean, that doesn't mean that there's just completely out of bounds, right? I mean, you can just do whatever you want. No, no, that's not the case, right? Nobody can have 10,000 calories a day and be fine, right? They're probably going to keel over real fast. Nobody can have just 20 calories a day and be fine. They're probably going to keel over real fast, too. So there are always going to be limits. And the relative means there's going to be some differences, but it's also always going to be within boundaries as well. Aristotle talks about states, capacities, and feelings. I mean, feelings are pretty straightforward. That's easy to understand. Anger, sadness, joy, pleasure, right? These are your emotional reactions to what happens around you. This is neither good nor bad, right? First of all, whether you have these emotions is not in your control. You're a feeling thing. You can't stop that. You know, it's capacities. Capacities are, you know, that by which you have these feelings, right? Aristotle's day, I'm not sure what they thought was responsible for feelings, but today we look towards the brain and the chemical interactions in our brains. Our capacities are by which we even have the feelings to begin with. This is also neither good nor bad. This is also not in your control. You can't control whether you have these capacities. But there are states in addition to that. Now, states are what, you know, is by that how we react to certain situations, okay? Now, capacities allow us to have emotional reactions to what happens around us, but these states are what determines, you know, the degree of the reaction and maybe even what kind, right? Yeah, even what kind. Now, that is within your control. Now, it's not as if we go walk around saying, oh, I'm going to feel happy. I'm going to feel sad. I'm going to feel angry. No, you can't do that. How you affect these states is how you develop those habits, right? These habits determine your state, what kind of thing that you are. So, you know, I'm walking around in Stonehenge 2 right about now. And it's kind of cool. It really is, right? I'm impressed by the work that's been done here, okay? Now, you know, an excess of enthusiasm would probably be something like, oh my God, wow, this place is so cool. I'm going to move here. That's overboard. That's really overboard, right? You know, deficiency would be something like, meh, I'm going to go spray a paint of stone. That would be a deficiency of enthusiasm or care. Now, you know, the state that I am in, you know, this appropriate reaction, this mean reaction, this middle ground reaction of, wow, this is really neat. I'm enjoying the architecture. I'm enjoying this Stonehenge 2 around me. That's developed out of the habits that I've developed, right? Through time and bitter experience, I've learned that, ah, it's too much and meh, it's too little. And that takes a lot. That takes a lot of experience. It takes a mind. You have to develop your intellectual capacities in order to properly determine the mean for that reaction, right? So the state that I am in is a result of the habits that I've developed. And this is what is good or bad. This is what contributes to the pleasure of pain, the happiness or misery in my life. So this is, and this is in what the virtues lie, is developing these habits so I can develop the kind of state in what I am, which means I will lead a good life.