Virtue through Vice
In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle admits that Evil is indeterminate and the Good, determinate. This is perhaps why, there is a multiplicity of ways for performing vice but only one for virtue.
However, the Godël point of virtue is the relative mean. Not to mention, that there are some acts which carry no mean. The mean is non existent. Aristotle provides us with the example of adultery, where there is no deficit or excess to adultery. In other words, there is no “right way” to commit adultery.
The implicit conditions for virtue are ironically the same conditions for vice. Excess and deficiency must be possible, without either, virtue is not possible. Returning back to adultery, there is neither vice nor virtue. According to Aristotle, such acts are blatantly wrong.
The only possible excesses and deficiencies within such an act is pleasure. But then we would be caught in the bind of how little and how much the act was enjoyable to us. Absolutes eliminate our capacity for hexis ( habits, disposition, characteristics). If there is only moral absolutes, virtue and vice are no longer possibilities.
The irony of Aristotle's position is that the indeterminacy of the mean demands the appearance of Evil, for without such multiplicity the one way of virtue becomes impossible. He even goes so far to suggest, that sometimes we must lean on the side of excess or deficiency to possibly stumble upon the mean.
Virtue is acquired by doing and only through this repetitive doing, does it becomes a part of something we possess. However, we must first risk the possibility of doing evil (which is different than doing evil for evils sake) before we discover virtue, a necessary appearance.
