Pop Quiz One: Model Answers

1. A virtuous act is one done because the agent judges it to be the noble thing to do in the circumstances, and desires to do what is right or noble for its own sake. We acquire this desire by practicing right acts, at first for other reasons, which helps control desires for pleasure and advantage that can conflict with virtuous action. Thus we acquire the habit of choosing our acts based on their intrinsic moral value.
   
2. Temperance is the virtue of moderation in bodily appetites and physical pleasures. The intemperate person lacks self-control and is indulgent, driven by gluttony, sexual appetite, or addictive desires for various other pleasures. They may want too much of something good in moderation, or they may crave something that should not be wanted at all (perverse desire). We do find people who are "insensitive" to pleasures they ought not to ignore in life. Perhaps if Freud is right about repression, many people fear some pleasures too much, and indulge in others too much by way of sublimation?
   
3. Friendships of utility, which are based on need for some benefit the other provides, can be short-lived. Friendships of based on the desire for pleasure are also subject to chance, since they depend on the friend remaining humorous or attractive. The perfect kind of friendship for Aristotle is between persons of virtuous character, who love each other for their own sake, because of the other's good qualities. This kind of friendship is stable and lasting, and essential to happiness.
   
4. [various answers are possible to this question but I got all kinds of unusual answers!]. Aristotle says that bad men (or persons) cannot love each other's character; they can at best have a friendship of pleasure or utility. They are bad because they do not want what is noble or good for its own sake, and hence they cannot take any interest in their friend just for the friend's sake. Rather they can only take something from their friend for their own benefit. Moreover, Aristotle would say that vice is not something anyone can love for its own sake; this would be too perverse an attitude to form the basis of any friendship, on his view.
   
5. All friendships require justice between the parties to continue (either equality between virtuous friends, or proportionate division of costs/benefit between unequals). Justice requires a greater consideration to friends and relatives than it requires to strangers. The political community may be regarded as an extended friendship of utility, for the common advantage. The political community is the context making possible other forms of association for pleasure and advantage. It depends on men who are virtuous in friendship to fellow citizens, willing to promote the public good.