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Notes -
"Spite" may be an appropriate emotional reaction in certain situations, in the sense that it was what we would expect the average person to reasonably feel in that situation. That's quite a ways from saying it's the virtuous emotional reaction. The whole point of virtue as a concept lies in recognising that many times our instinctual emotional reactions to situations are both morally wrong and often counterproductive.
Not only is being spiteful not virtuous almost by definition, in many cases it's counterproductive from the perspective of pure pragmatism - hence the phrase "cut your nose to spite your face". It's an ugly and irrational emotion.
Hard disagree. The virtuous thing to do in that situation is to defend yourself from home invasion using no more than force than is strictly necessary (which, yes, can escalate into lethal force depending on the specifics of the situation). In the hypothetical situation in which you can point a gun at the criminal, force him to surrender and wait for the police to take him away, what do you stand to gain by using additional force beyond that?
The malicious thing to do would be to maim the criminal breaking into your house and then sadistically torture him for hours on end. Your immediate response to hearing someone breaking into your house in the middle of the night should be concern for your and your family's welfare, not "oh goody, now I have a blank cheque to be as vicious and cruel as I please!"
"Bullshit - if someone breaks into my house, beating the shit out of him is a totally understandable, even reasonable response." No argument here. We're not discussing what's understandable - we're discussing what's virtuous. The standards are higher, by design. I can't even truthfully say that this is a standard of behaviour I would succeed in meeting in the heat of the moment - but this is a failing on my part, not a failing of the moral standard I've set myself.
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