Emulation

Dr. Green

Basic Emotional Polarities

• Expectation-Surprise

• Joy-Sorrow

• Fear-Confidence

• Anger-Contentment

• Disgust-Agreeableness

Social Institutions

• Social joys and sorrows– Basis of the social order– Contributing cause of the crisis

• Joy– Being Emulated—Pride

• Sorrow– Emulation– Envy– Contempt

Emulation

• The one who is emulated

• The one who emulates

• The relation between the two

Aristotle’s Analysis of Emulation

• Causes—relation between two

• Objects—within the one emulated

• State of Mind—within the one who emulates

Definition

• Emulation is – pain (material cause)– caused by seeing the presence in persons whose nature

is like our own (efficient cause)– of good things that are highly valued that we can

possibly acquire for ourselves (final cause)– felt because we have not got them ourselves (formal

cause)

• Emulation makes us take steps to secure the good things in question

Objects or Final Cause

• People who have some good– Courage– Wisdom– Public office

• can do many people a good turn

– Moral goodness– Serviceableness to others

Object or Final Cause

• People – whom many people wish to be like– who have many acquaintances or friends; – whom we ourselves admire– who have been praised and eulogized by poets

or prose-writers.

Object or Final Cause

• Anything that honors– ancestors– relatives– personal friends– race– country

Object or Final Cause

• Moral goodness in its various forms must be such an object

• All those good things that are useful and serviceable to others

State of Mind of the One Emulating

• Emulation felt by persons who believe themselves to deserve certain good things that they have not got– felt by the young– felt by persons of lofty disposition

• Looking upon the thing object emulated as really our own, and, therefore, feeling that we deserve to have it.

Envy

• A bad feeling felt by bad persons. – because others have these goods– makes us take steps to stop our neighbor having them.

• Felt by those who possess such good things as are deserved by men held in honor– these are wealth, – abundance of friends– public office

• Felt by those whom all others think deserving

Contempt

• Those who are such as to emulate or be emulated by others are inevitably disposed to be contemptuous of all such persons as are subject to those bad things which are contrary to the good things that are the objects of emulation– the fortunate, when luck comes to them without

their having those good things which are held in honor

Feelings Toward Oneself

• Vanity—One who thinks himself worthy of great things, being unworthy of them, is vain

• Pride—Person who thinks himself worthy of great things

• Undue Humility—One who thinks himself worthy of less than he is really worthy is unduly humble

Pride

• A man is thought to be proud who thinks himself worthy of great things, being worthy of them.

Vanity

• Vain people, on the other hand, are fools and ignorant of themselves, and that manifestly; for, not being worthy of them, they attempt honorable undertakings, and then are found out; and they adorn themselves with clothing and outward show and such things, and wish their strokes of good fortune to be made public, and speak about them as if they would be honored for them.

Undue Humility

• For the unduly humble man, being worthy of good things, robs himself of what he deserves, and to have something bad about him from the fact that he does not think himself worthy of good things, and seems also not to know himself; else he would have desired the things he was worthy of, since these were good. Yet such people are not thought to be fools, but rather unduly retiring.