ABSTRACT
The definition of virtue in these three chapters, that virtue concerns pleasures and pains, that it is generated by custom, that it is a habit in the soul, and that it is a mean, are standard Aristotelian doctrine standardly expressed, and little comment is required. Note only that the point in chapter 8 (1186a36–b3) about debauchery or adultery being a vice of excess not by quantity but by its kind shows, as chapter 9 goes on to confirm, that the mean is more to be judged by praise and blame—the praise and blame of decent citizens—than by calculations of amount.
