VII—The Straight-edge of Virtue: Aristotle on the Rational Significance of Beauty-in-Action

Abstract

Aristotle claims that the virtuous person acts for the sake of to kalon. To understand this idea, I examine the analogy he draws between craft and virtue. I argue that the kalon is a formal feature of well-ordered wholeness and that the virtuous person takes intellectual pleasure in perceiving (or remembering or imagining) the kalon-in-action, akin to pleasure in observing artworks or works of nature. However, the virtuous person’s pleasure in kalon action is primarily a pleasure of practical reason. In these ways, Aristotle’s concept of the kalon is and is not like the modern aesthetic concept of the beautiful.