Aristotle's "mean" virtues

Wednesday July 8, 2026

• Modesty, between Diffidence and Shamelessness
• Temperance, between Insensitiveness and Profligacy
• Righteous Indignation, between Malice and Envy
• The Just, between Loss and Profit
• Liberality, between Meanness and Prodigality
• Sincerity, between Self-depreciation and Boastfulness
• Friendliness, between Surliness and Flattery
• Dignity, between Stubbornness and Subservience
• Hardiness, between Endurance and Luxuriousness
• Greatness of Spirit, between Smallness of Spirit and Vanity
• Magnificence, between Shabbiness and Extravagance
• Wisdom, between Simpleness and Rascality

Aritstotle, student of Plato, student of Socrates, wrote a lot on ethics. The Nicomachean Ethics is better known, but he actually included a table in the Eudemian Ethics, and that's what is shown here, using the Rackham translation, filling in the suggested "malice" for the single blank cell, and re-ordering to have the virtue first. It's not clear exactly when Aristotle wrote these, but it was somewhere around the 350–340s BCE.

Aristotle really wanted to understand character virtues as "means" between two extremes. The idea sort of rhymes with the Buddhist idea of a "middle way," but isn't quite the same.

You can get different lists depending on which writing(s) of Aristotle you look at, which things you include, which translations you like. From Socrates to Plato to Aristotle, the lists just get longer and longer.