In Aristotle’s Nico­machean Ethics, moral virtues and their extremes are dis­cussed. That is to say, per­sonal char­ac­ter­is­tics and the extremes thereof. These extremes — or vices — are two of the three pil­lars of virtue, the third of which is The Golden Mean, or the Vir­tu­ous Mean. This mean is the posi­tion on the ‘scale’ where a well-balanced, morally vir­tu­ous per­son would lie.

Here’s that scale:

Vice of Deficiency Vir­tu­ous Mean Vice of Excess
Cow­ardice Courage Rash­ness
Insen­si­bil­ity Tem­per­ance Intem­per­ance
Illib­er­al­ity Lib­er­al­ity Prodi­gal­ity
Pet­ti­ness Munif­i­cence Vul­gar­ity
Humble-mindedness High-mindedness Vain-gloriness
Want of Ambition Right Ambi­tion Over-ambition
Spir­it­less­ness Good Tem­per Iras­ci­bil­ity
Surli­ness Friendly Civil­ity Obse­quious­ness
Iron­i­cal Depreciation Sin­cer­ity Boast­ful­ness
Boor­ish­ness Wit­ti­ness Buf­foon­ery
Shame­less­ness Mod­esty Bash­ful­ness
Cal­lous­ness Just Resent­ment Spite­ful­ness

Adapted from the Inter­net Ency­clopae­dia of Philosophy’s Gen­eral Intro­duc­tion to Aris­to­tle.

An abridged ver­sion of Aristotle’s Nico­machean Ethics is avail­able from Squashed Philoso­phers; a site I’ve writ­ten about pre­vi­ously.