Liberality

Aristotle

Liberality is a virtue that involves finding a balance between being too generous and too stingy when spending money for others.

The academic work Virtuenomics: Aristotle's Liberality and the Creation of a Sustainable Economic System indicates:

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Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean is his signature framework for developing a virtuous life. By canting one’s behavior toward the mean between the extremes of excess and deficiency, the resulting attitudes, and the habits generated by repeating those behaviors, create virtue in the soul... In Book IV of the N.E., liberality and its attendant extremes are defined as follows: Prodigality (over-spending/giving) Liberality (generous giving/proper acquisition) Meanness (giving very little, and/or taking from improper sources) In accordance with the doctrine of the mean regarding wealth, aiming for the balance of giving generously to the right people while not depleting one’s own resources or taking from improper sources, creates the possibility of making one a liberal, and therefore virtuous, man. Why only the possibility? It is because Aristotle says that virtue requires not only that the proper acts be undertaken, in the proper degree, and toward the proper people; it also requires that acts be undertaken in the right way. That is, the acts must stem from a firm and abiding disposition to act in certain ways; one’s acts must, in other words, be the results of and reflect one’s character. Aristotle says that, “virtuous actions are noble and done for the sake of the noble. Therefore the liberal man, like other virtuous men, will give for the sake of the noble, and rightly; for he will give to the right people, the right amounts, and at the right time… Nor is he liberal who gives with pain; for he would prefer the wealth to the noble act.”

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