What Did Aristotle Mean By Boasting?

     As promised in my first post, I will be focusing on Aristotle's discussion of the doctrine of the mean in this post. However, I want to let all of my readers -- both of them -- know that in my next post, I intend to consider an ancient Eastern perspective on moderation.
    My first exposure to the classical Greek thinker Aristotle was in college: I recall reading parts of the Poetics in English class, and some of the Politics in a Philosophy course. In law school, I had a course in which we read the Rhetoric. But the subject of this post is the Nicomachean Ethics, which I only got around to reading in the past decade. Aristotle discusses his concept of the mean in Book II of the Ethics. He makes clear that he is not focusing on the mean in relation to things. In mathematics, by way of illustration, Aristotle observes that between 10 and 2 the mean is 6. Instead, he is concerned with the mean in relation to humans, especially regarding moral virtue. For Aristotle, this virtue is the mean between two kinds of vice: excess and deficiency. He says, for instance, that between the deficiency of cowardice and the excess of rashness lies the mean of courage. However, Aristotle acknowledges that not every action admits of a mean: for example, adultery and murder and theft are evil in themselves.
     One reason that that a philosopher like Aristotle is still being read and published more than 2,000 years after his death is that his ideas still have application to the modern world. So I will end this post with a quote from Book IV of the Ethics, which could have been written about President Trump's character yesterday:

          "Let us now deal similarly with those who exhibit truth and falsehood in their speech and actions, i.e. in their pretensions. Well, the boaster is regarded as one who pretends to have distinguished qualities which he possesses either not at all or to a lesser degree than he pretends. ... Falsehood is in itself bad and reprehensible, while the truth is a fine and praiseworthy thing; accordingly the sincere man, who holds the mean position, is praiseworthy. ... The boaster is considered to be the opposite of the sincere man. ..." 

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References:
     The passage quoted above can be found on pages 105-107 of the Penguin Classics version of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Penguin Books, London, 2004; original translation by Thomson, revised by Tredennick, introduction by Barnes); Aristotle's main discussion of the doctrine of the mean can be found on pages 40-49.