In the previous chapter, I argued that Aristotle's doctrine of the mean is a substantive thesis, and that the substance is to be found in places that have been overlooked. In this chapter, I show how the third aspect of Aristotle's doctrine of the mean, his triadic account of virtue and vices, contributes to his account of the nameless virtues, and I argue that J. L. Ackrill is therefore wrong to claim that “[i]nsofar as Aristotle's accounts of particular virtues embody a particular moral outlook (and that is, perhaps, not far), this is due rather to his acquiescence in the vocabulary and outlook of his time than to his theoretical commitment to ‘the doctrine of the mean’”, a widely held modern view. I argue that the nameless virtues are no less important than their named companions, and that if Aristotle is right about the existence of the nameless virtues, his doctrine of the mean will have resulted in some important discoveries. I also argue that the very existence of nameless virtues in Aristotle's discussion casts doubt on the idea that Aristotle is simply reporting contemporary views. This marks the beginning of an argument, continued in Chapter 4, that Aristotle's account of the ethical virtues depends on his doctrine of the mean and is more innovative than has previously been thought.

In Section 1, I explain which virtues are nameless and what their namelessness consists in. In the next two sections, I explain how the nameless virtues are controversial even within the Aristotelian corpus itself, and yet why there is no reason to exclude them from Aristotle's list of virtues.