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Listening to: From the Choirgirl Hotel. Not for long, though... it's not really matching my mood quite like I was expecting it too.

Currently Reading: Just barely started Jonathan Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music. Kind of saving it for the train, as well as a stack of others (both fiction and non). Also, I recently read Laurie Notaro's I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies): True Tales of a Loudmouth Girl (again) in like two days, and peed myself laughing. Highly recommended. I also devoured The Broke Diaries by Angela Nissel in, like, a mere few days. Laughed until I peed. Also highly recommended.

Wishing: income. Lots of it. Other than that, life's pretty good.

I couldn't be more The current mood of ronkc@diaryland.com at www.imood.com right now.

Buy "Civilised Conversation..." Merchandise! Please? All the cool kids are doing it....

Please help me pay for college by purchasing items from Amazon.com through this link!!

Do you love me?

26 November 2001 | 1:39 AM

Pray for me!!

Okay.

I'm going to fail my ethics class. Here is all I could come up with for my 4-5 page paper on Aristotle, due tomorrow. I just remembered the damned assignment an hour ago. Here it is.

Aristotle�s �doctrine of the mean� is not really a difficult concept to understand. Essentially, states of character can be placed on a continuum. A deficiency, an excess, and temperance can be placed on the continuum as such:

(Diagram here. A big one.)

Deficiency and excess are vices, whereas temperance is a virtue. Examples of the �deficiency - temperance - excess� model include the following: �undue humility - proper pride - empty vanity,� �fearlessness - courage - cowardice,� and �not irascible - good tempered - irascible.� Almost every state of character can be put in context of deficiency and excess, or vice and virtue.

The doctrine of the mean, then, suggests that somewhere, between excess and deficiency lies temperance, the mean. This mean represents moral virtue in relation to the deficiencies and excesses.

Courage is a virtue, according to Aristotle. While it may not make complete sense at first, it does make sense that courage is a virtue. Courage represents neither a deficiency nor an excess. In regards to courage, too much courage can be thought of as rashness. Too little courage equates with fearlessness. Both rashness and fearlessness are states of character, which could lead to harm, and thus are vices. The mean between fearlessness and rashness, (the virtue to these vices), is courage.

Where does justice fit into all of this? Justice is clearly a virtue, but what vices are the excess or deficiency of justice? It becomes quite clear that there is no such thing as too much justice. This is the only virtue that does not have an excess. (A deficiency in justice, however, is quite probable.) Aristotle�s continuum does not fit the idea of justice.

What of justice, then? Do we deny justice the title of �state of character,� simply because it doesn�t fit on a line somewhere? This seems rather ridiculous. Something must be done so that justice can still be a state of character, but so that the continuum is not rendered faulty or useless.

For Aristotle, then, justice becomes a sort of perfect virtue. It is a virtue that has no excess. Aristotle comes to refer to justice as the �virtue entire.� So far, another perfect virtue has not been generally accepted. Justice is obviously a very special case, and must be given some sort of special status.

Yeeeah. Could everyone please say a little prayer to Saint Catherine (patron saint of students), and Saint Jude (patron saint of hopeless causes), that I might fool my Ethics professor with my BS-ing and pass the course, after all is said and done? Thank you.

I mean, after all, the woman is 18 inches around, max. She doesn't pronounce all of her vowels, and she says things like, "Because, at the end of the day..."

Seriously, you guys, pray for me!!

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