Acquiring Character Traits -- Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

August 10 - We are reading NE VII.5, which is about being beastly. This chapter 5 attempts to draw a sharp boundary between being humanly bad and being humanly animalistic with respect to the sort of pleasurable things someone can pursue. A boundary on this dimension of measurement enables Aristotle troubleshoot the problem of lacking self-control. A lack of self-control about something humanly bad can be remediated. By contrast, there can be no such thing as a lack of self-control about something humanly animalistic--which is beastliness.
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So what is being beastly, according to Aristotle? I have questions about applicability. What sexual deviancies (if any) may be considered beastly? What about food? Is eating dog meat being beastly? What about eating insect larvae or insects themselves? What about the extremes of being a vegan or a cannibal?
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My summary of chapter 4 can be found here to help you catch up to us. https://mega.nz/file/fih1SKKJ#d64NUslCeZQRRmlNvnWjBGuCsdWXhi2eSVkxWpqq4PA Bring your own questions about the text if you are interested in joining this Sunday's meeting.
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We are live-reading and discussing Aristotle's ~Nicomachean Ethics~, book VII, which is about troubleshooting the virtues.
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The prerequisite to this book is our answering for ourselves these questions from the prior books, to which we will briefly review:
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1. What is a virtue of character {ēthikē aretē}?
2. How does one come to acquire it? (E.g. [Aristotle’s], ambition, bravery, gentlemanliness, generosity, candor, …)
3. From a first-person perspective in being virtuous, how does one feel and what does one see (differently, discursively) in a given situation of everyday living?
4. From a third-person perspective, how is the virtuous person (of a specific virtue) to be characterized?
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The project's cloud drive is here, at which you'll find the reading texts, notes, and slideshows.