Aristotle’s 12 virtues: from courage to magnificence, patience to wit

Aristotle’s 12 virtues are a great checklist to understand the different morals, values, and virtues that you could cultivate or restrain in your life. It’s like an ancient Greek personality test.

Moderation in all things, including moderation: Aristotle was clear that too much (excess) of any virtue is just as bad as lack (deficiency). You must find the mean, the right balance.

For example, too much courage is foolhardy and could get you killed. Too little courage and you avoid healthy risks and are seen as a coward. Too much modesty and you may be seen as shy and withdrawn. Too little modesty and you become irritating and boastful. And so on.

Aristotle’s 12 virtues:

1) Courage – bravery

2) Temperance – moderation

3) Liberality – spending

4) Magnificence – charisma, style

5) Magnanimity – generosity

6) Ambition – pride

7) Patience – temper, calm

8) Friendliness – social IQ

9) Truthfulness – honesty, candidness

10) Wit – humor, joy

11) Modesty – ego

12) Justice – sense of right / wrong, indignation

Of the twelve above, I find myself struggling the most with a deficiency of #7, patience. All of us struggle with all of the virtues, at least some of the time. But that’s Aristotle’s point: it’s a process, it’s about balance, and it’s not easy.

2020 update:

I left out an important aspect of this list: Aristotle also gave specific labels to each virtue when it was either excessive or deficient.

For example, too much courage is RASHNESS, and too little is COWARDICE.

Too much magnificence is VULGARITY, and too little is PETTINESS.

Here is a great chart below, all credit belongs to Productive Flourishing!

aristotle-12-virtues

5 nice piano songs I’ve been playing recently

In the past I shared a few piano sheet music pdfs and they proved quite popular, so here are more that I’ve been playing recently.

Alan Silvestri’s Forrest Gump theme song [download]

Christina Perri’s Jar of Hearts [download]

Ed Sheeran’s Perfect [download]

Jay Chou’s 青花瓷 aka Blue & White Porcelain [download]

Zelda’s Kass Theme [download]

Knaussgard and his autobiographies


I read the first book in Knaussgard’s series of autobiographical novels several years ago and was immediately taken in by his thoughts, his style, the flow. And last month I began to read the second book and once again I was reminded of why he’s such a special writer, and this a special work. For me, below is such a snippet:

After we came home from Idö I realized that this was all or nothing, I told Linda I was moving into the office, I would have to write day and night. You can’t do that, she said, that’s not on, you’ve got a family, or have you forgotten? It’s summer, or have you forgotten? Am I supposed to look after your daughter on my own? Yes, I said. That’s the way it is. No, it isn’t, she said, I won’t let you. Okay, I said, but I’ll do it anyway. And I did. I was totally manic. I wrote all the time, sleeping two or three hours a day, the only thing that had any meaning was the novel I was writing. Linda went to her mother’s and called me several times a day. She was so angry that she screamed, actually screamed on the phone. I just held it away from my ear and kept writing. She said she would leave me. Go, I said. I don’t care, I have to write. And it was true. She would have to go if that was what she wanted. She said, I will. You’ll never see us again. Fine, I said. I wrote twenty pages a day. I didn’t see any letters or words, any sentences or shapes, just countryside and people, and Linda phoned and screamed, said I was a fairweather father, said I was a bastard, said I was an unfeeling monster, said I was the worst person in the world and that she cursed the day she had met me. Fine, I said, leave me then, I don’t care, and I meant it, I didn’t care, no one was going to stand in the way of this, she slammed down the phone, she called two minutes later and continued to swear at me, I was on my own now, she would bring up Vanja alone, fine by me, I said. She cried, she begged, she pleaded, what I was doing to her was the worst thing anyone could do, leaving her alone. But I didn’t care, I wrote night and day, and then out of the blue she called and said she was coming home the following day, would I go to the station and meet them? Yes, I would.

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders”

Goring told him that most people will go along with whatever their leaders tell them to do without question, whether it’s a democracy or fascist dictatorship.

Naively, Gilber replied, “There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”

But Goring only laughed and said, “Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

Source here.

Reading this, I became scared for America, and I felt – for a moment – that even the so-called pacifists don’t feel peaceful anymore. They are angry, and some of them are turning to violence.

What Goring says echoes what I learned in The True Believer, which is a fantastic book about demagogues throughout history, and how they come to have the power and influence that they do.

Steve Erickson: “Ultimately democracy cannot be translated in terms of the material things it allows us to acquire”

The grand arrogance of America has always been that it would dictate its own terms to history rather than the other way around. Again and again the 20th Century has tried to say no to democracy, and again and again America has answered yes. The final American irony will be if, at the end of the century, with no foes left, having vanquished all those who laid siege to democracy, this country now turns to finish the job. If it succeeds, it will be because we forgot that ultimately democracy cannot be translated in terms of the material things it allows us to acquire, that it was always supposed to be dangerous, idealistic but not innocent, and forged of as many passions as there are voices, among which there is only common rage, and that is the rage for justice.

Alec Baldwin recommended this essay on his podcast. He essentially said it was the best essay he’d read that captured the essence of America during these tumultuous political times.

You can read the full essay here.