 So right away, you might wonder, okay, well then, what is virtue? Aristotle's trying to give us this answer, how do you acquire eudaimonia? He just says virtue. All right, now this word has been used in a wide variety of ways. Let's just try to stick with what Aristotle is talking about. So one thing he wants to contrast virtue to is feelings, capacities, and states. So a feeling is, well, that's pretty straightforward, right? Mad, glad, sad, scared. These are our four basic feelings. We could probably try to talk about them in that way. A mad, glad, sad, scared. And this is how you react to a variety of situations. So right now I'm pretty glad to be out here. I like being outside. I saw some javelina earlier and I wasn't terribly afraid of them because, you know, they're javelina, they're not mountain lions. So I wasn't, you know, very scared of them. I'm not mad because there's no air conditioning. These are a variety of feelings and, you know, people can feel a variety of different ways given different states of the world or different ways that the world can be. Well, this is not virtue. This is not contributing to virtue. It doesn't make you virtuous or un-virtuous, anything like that. It doesn't necessarily determine your pneumonia. So you're saying virtues are not feelings. Virtues are not feelings. It's not a capacity. A capacity is just that by which you can feel. And maybe even, you know, the intensity of feeling or something like this. So I'm not sure exactly what Aristotle will consider a capacity. I mean, today we just talk about our nervous system and our brains. Even to some extent our upbringing, right? Nature versus nurture sort of thing. Okay, this is also not virtue. This is not virtue. This is not what Aristotle is dealing with. So virtues are not feelings nor the capacity to feel. Okay, what about states? You know, states are, you know, the kind of person you are, right? Now this is important, right? States are important, whether you're a liar or whether you're honest, whether you're dependable, whether you're flake, whether you're brave or you're a coward. You know, states determine how you behave. And this is important. This is related to eudaimonia. But states are themselves not virtues, right? States determine how you behave. And that's important for eudaimonia. But you don't just make yourself one state or another. I can't just decide, aha, from now on I'm going to be honest. It'd be nice if we could do something like this. And this is probably the mistake that we make with New Year's resolutions, right? We think, aha, I made my decision at this one point of the year. And from here on out I am going to be just fine. It doesn't really work that way. You cannot make yourself a particular state, a particular kind of person, just by a decision. And states are important. They will in part determine whether you have actually achieved eudaimonia. Now states are brought about, are determined by virtue. By virtues, okay? And what a virtue is, is a habit, right? A virtue is a habit. So you can't, you know, you can't actually, also by just a mere decision, you can't just make yourself have a habit. It requires a lot of work. You've got to put the work into it. Intentional, deliberate, cumulative actions, right? Making the decision to act according to this, you know, according to this habit for a period of time is eventually what adjusts your behavior. Virtues are hard to acquire. Habits are hard to acquire. And habits are hard to break. You're probably going to have to break a few habits along the way in order to acquire good ones. And that's, that's where the hard work comes in. It's also not virtue of a, it's also not just because of a single decision. It's cumulative, intentional, repeated decisions until you acquire that state where you no longer have to think about it. Where you no longer have to think about it. And these states are affected by the virtues. Okay. So virtues are not feelings. They're not capacities. They're not states. States are important. Feelings and capacities are not virtues. They're not really the topic of eudaimonia. States are related to eudaimonia. You have to be in the right state in order to acquire eudaimonia. But in order to get to that state, you have to adopt the virtue. And as I said, virtues are habit. Okay. Well, which habits matter? Well, not just any habit counts when it comes to a virtue. Now, the question is, what sorts of habits do you develop? Well, you can answer, well, the virtuous ones. Oh, that doesn't help. And it doesn't even help identifying, you know, particular named habits. Like honesty, you should be honest. That should be your habit. Okay. I mean, I think we all know what it means to tell the truth, but it's just not quite simple as that. You can say you should have a healthy diet. Okay. But it's not as simple as that. A name doesn't tell us what the habit is. Habits are intentional, cumulative actions, repeated actions. So when we're talking about a habit, we got to talk about an act. And health is not an act. It might be a quality of an act. It might be what you get out of an act. Okay. But that doesn't tell us what the act is. So to help us out with this, Aristotle tries to identify, you know, a range of actions, right? A range of actions, a range of habits, so to speak. And you can have an excess, a habit that has an excess. Okay. And these are, you know, too much of a good thing, too much of what is good. Too much, you know, acquired or whatever by the act. All right. You can also have a deficiency where it's not enough. Okay. And what you're looking for, though, is what's between that. Now, not in, you know, a mathematical sense, right? We're not looking for the middle part. We're looking for the relative mean. Because this is going to vary from person to person, depending upon what constitutes that person. Okay. So here's an example. And this is kind of a simple one, right? So we talked about different parts of what you are, and you're, amongst other things, you're at least a body, right? You have a body. And there is this goodness of the body, this, you know, when the body is doing well. Now, one of the, you know, this good that we talked about of the body is health. We've talked about this before, health. This is good. What's, what happens when you have good goodness in this body? Okay. So what habits affect health? What actions of repeated intentional cumulative actions affect health? Well, let's just look at one thing, one particular act, you know, eating in terms of calories, right? There's all kinds of ways we can describe eating, right? Actions as eating. You can describe how fast you eat, how many times a day you eat, what you eat. But let's just deal with how much, and we're going to deal with how much you eat in terms of calories. So in excess of calories, and one way to think about it, 10,000 calories. Well, yes, of course, that's an excess. Yes, 20,000 calories a day. Yes. If you do that, you'll likely will not survive for very long. But when we're talking about excess, let's talk about like at that point, right? When it's, you know, try to get at that point where it really starts to become unhealthy. And for somebody, you know, my age, my gender, right? Okay, at my age and my gender, when I start pushing 3,000 calories, it might even be before that, right? Close to 2,500 calories. That's an excess, right? Given my, you know, you would probably also think there are other activities, right? I am not a world-class athlete. I am not, you know, running every day, something like this. You know, my work involves pretty much, you know, being still as bad as that is, right? That's another habit we could talk about. But given my activity level, given my age, given my gender, 3,000 calories, that's really starting to push it, right? It might even be close to like 2,800 calories, 2,500 calories. That's probably starting to push it. That's where the excess is really starting to begin. Okay. The same token, so that's the excess. The calories are good. We're not saying calories are bad. Calories are good that contribute to health of the body. But when I start pushing 3,000 calories, that's the excess. What about the deficiency? Well, okay, so start going the other direction, right? 1,000 calories. If I only have 1,000 calories per day, yeah, that's probably too, that's definitely too little. All right. I could probably even bring it up maybe like 1,500, right? If I start having like 1,500 calories a day. I don't know. That actually may not be terrible, but I wouldn't want to push that for years. But definitely around 1,000 or 1,500,000 calories a day. That's the deficiency. Calories are a good thing. They are good for health, but when you start getting too few of them, that's when we start having the deficiency. The relative mean is, it's not, again, it's not mathematically, and that's the absolute mean. What Aristotle calls the absolute mean. It's not the absolute mean. It's the relative mean. And this is something that has to be discovered usually through trial and error. And yeah, it's about 2,000 calories. If I'm watching, you know, when I watch what, how much I consume, and not only just how much, but what kind, right? That's another thing to consider too. Start watching what I consume. It's right about 2,000 calories, right? That's the relative mean. That's the virtue, right? That habit of having 2,000 calories a day, limiting to right about 2,000 calories a day. That's the virtue. So when I acquire this virtue, again, through repeated, cumulative, deliberate actions, that's when I start to acquire that state of health, and this is what contributes to eudaimonia. This is what contributes to eudaimonia. Now, what other virtues are there? There are other virtues besides diet. There are other goods besides health. To figure out these other virtues, you have to figure out, well, I mean, we talked about this already. What are the goods that you strive for? And to figure that out, you have to figure out, well, what are you? Now, in class, we talked about, well, you're at least a body, you're at least a mind, your emotion, your will. This is part of what makes you what you are. Oh, okay. What are the goods for these things? We got health for body. That's not the only good. We can even talk about strength, endurance, stamina. These are all good. You can't disassociate any one of these from health, but strength is not the same thing as stamina. Strength is not the same thing as diet. Okay. So what are these other goods of the body? What about the mind? Epicure has talked about tranquility. That's certainly a good thing. What other goods are there for, I'm sorry, not the mind, for emotion. What other goods are there for emotion? What habits promote tranquility? Silence tends to help, by the way. What you can do, you can be excessive in your silence, and you can certainly be deficient. And this is going to be a relative mean for different people. What are the habits? What are the goods for the mind? We talked about comprehension. This is certainly a good of the intellect. A good of the mind, okay. What habits promote comprehension? Are there other goods related to comprehension? To understanding the will. You probably can't separate anything in the virtues from the will. After all, you have to make the decision to complete the acts, to perform the acts repeatedly, and tell it becomes part of, well, the phrase is a part, you know, it becomes second nature. And Aristotle speak, this means to be, where you acquire the state, and then you don't have to deliberately perform the act. It's now a habit. We use perseverance as a good of the will, but what else is there? And Aristotle uses the phrase self-mastery. Perseverance is when you continue on, even in the face of adversity or failure. Okay, that's an important thing, but that's slightly different than self-mastery. You probably need self-mastery in order to persevere. And you're going to need perseverance in order to perform the deliberate actions to acquire the virtue, this habit of, sorry, the habits, whatever habits we use to acquire perseverance. None of this is completely distinct from everything else. There's always going to be some kind of effect. But what habits should you pick up? For self-mastery. There's another word for this. We don't like to use it in our culture, but the word that used to be used for this is self-discipline. What do you think those habits are?