Aristotle Open-Handedness

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics focuses on how to be an ideal citizen in ancient Greece. In it, he claims that the best way to achieve eudaimonia is to live a life of moderation in regards to the virtues. In the text, he goes over a vast selection of virtues, including, but not limited to, courage, greatness of soul, mildness, justice, and intellectual virtue. One of the most interesting virtues that Aristotle covers in this text however, is the virtue of open-handedness. His exploration of this specific virtue, unfortunately, seems to create some problems for him. These problems seem to be rather daunting, as they have the capability to complicate his understanding of the virtue of open-handedness quite a bit. To find where Aristotle touches

From line 1119b20 to line 1119b26, Aristotle states that the open-handed person is one who is intermediate in their relation to money. More specifically, he claims that it relates to the actions of giving and taking money. He also states as well as the two vicious behaviours associated with open-handedness. He states that the two types of vicious people in regards to money are those who are wasteful and those who are avaricious. Those who are avaricious, according to Aristotle, are those who consider themselves with money more than they ought to, and they let it take control of their life as they are always more concerned with money, as opposed to pursuing the other virtues (1119b30). He has a little more difficulty properly describing the person who is wasteful. He must first take into consideration that a person can be wasteful in regards to other virtues. He claims that those who are wasteful can be wasteful to a point in which they “spend lavishly on self-indulgence” (1119b33). So then, for Aristotle, the person who is wasteful in regards to money is the person who destroys their own substance through autonomous action (1120a1). In this context, substance refers to the accumulated wealth and other possessions with monetary value attached to them. With this understanding of the two vicious behaviours, it becomes clear how the intermediate person would act in regards to money. The intermediate person then, would not be stingy with their money, and be willing to spend it, more specifically, give charitable donations to friends, organizations and families, and not spend all their money