The following difficulties were sent by a friend. I'll reply later.
"(1) Your parenthetical reference to 1114b27 suggests you think the definition in II.6 only states the genos of virtue. This is problematic. At the end of II.5 Aristotle claims to have stated what virtue is in respect of its genos, namely that it is a hexis. Then, at the beginning of II.6, he claims that this isn’t enough: we also, he insists, need to say what sort of hexis virtue is, and he then proceeds to discuss the Milo example, etc. Then, notably, shortly after the definition in II.6, he claims that the definition provides virtue’s substance (ousia), i.e. (epexegetic kai) the account that states the essence (ton logon ton to ti ên einai legonta) (1107a6-7). He certainly seems to think he has given a definition that supplies the essence, not merely the genos.
"(2) I don’t agree that ‘what counts as too much or too little?’ has not been raised (as you claim in the previous post). That seems to me to be the force of the Milo example. When read as Lesley Brown wisely guides us to read it, i.e. that it is the trainer who aims at the mean, not Milo, we can see that there has already been a tacit reference to the phronimos: just as how much Milo should eat would be determined by the trainer who follows right reason, so too what is intermediate for us (as human beings) is determined by the moral expert (sc. the phronimos) who follows right reason. But, on your account, the phronimos determines the definition of virtue, not anything about what is intermediate.
"(3) In fact, the account of virtue that is given at 1114b26ff is prima facie problematic for you, since Aristotle there claims that part of the account he has already provided is that virtue is ‘as right reason states’ (29-30). But, on your account of the definition, he hasn’t mentioned this at all, since you take the ROT’s ‘this being determined by reason’ to mean: ‘when virtue is marked out by its formal definition’."
And the response:
My replies to the three difficulties sent by a friend.
A couple of general points. First, I don’t claim that interpretations of the passage offered in the past are impossible; I claim simply that my alternative is more elegant, makes sense of everything, and 'clicks'.
If what I have proposed is correct, then the earlier interpretations of the bracketed words should be put aside, then, on the precise grounds that they are based on a complete misunderstanding of what those words are meant to say. --A misunderstanding is not a less preferable interpretation.
(By the way, this is not to say that other texts in NE, apart from the 'definition', aren’t relevant for figuring out the role of reason or phronēsis in moral virtues.)
Second, of course orthos logos gets mentioned before the definition, and I overstated the point if I suggested that this was not so. However, I would count the definition’s reference to virtue as an ‘intermediate trait’ (mesotēs) as sufficiently capturing this, i.e. insofar as virtue is being defined as a trait and not with respect to particular actions.
Some specific points.
1. My mention of genos was in reply to an anticipated objection. Someone might have said that if the bracketed bits are interpreted as being about the definition, rather than within it, this would make the definition too general, and perhaps, then, not serviceable as definition at all. I simply wanted to point out that later Aristotle, when he restates just these elements of this 'general' definition, calls it a definition of a genos, suggests that it needs greater determination, and then proceeds to do so through an examination of the particular virtues. (The two uses of genos wouldn't be inconsistent, because that is a relative term.)
2. As regards the use of the term phronimos, note that it costs Aristotle much labor in book VI to get clear about what this term means. One might wonder, then, whether he thought himself in a position to employ it in a somewhat technical sense ('a man who possesses the virtues of practical reason of phronesis') in book II. On the other hand, in its only other occurrence before book VI (I.5.1095b28), it is used in a non-technical sense ('someone with good insight into character and virtue').
3. See my point above about my appearing to overstate something. As regards 1114b27-30: note that there orthos logos is assigned a role only in relation to actions, not traits of character (consistent with Gomez-Lobo's observation about that it is said to 'state' or 'order' or 'dictate' the meson of an action, not the mesotes which is a virtue). So that later passage is actually consistent with my interpretation of the II.6 definition and tends to support it, rather that count against it.
(Something else that might be mentioned is Aristotle’s consistent use elsewhere of terms such as legei and keleuei for the activity of logos or orthos logos. That it play a role of defining the mean seems not to be acknowledged elsewhere. Admittedly ‘determine’ may in English be used in the sense of ‘discover’—but I take it that that is not the natural or obvious sense in the II.6 definition.)
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