Virtue as Habit

Virtue as Habit

The aim of this essay is to examine the following question. Does it make a difference in moral psychology whether one adopts Aristotle's ordinary or Immanuel Kant's revisionist definition of virtue as a moral habit? Suppose it is objected, at the outset, that these definitions cannot be critically compared because their moral theories are, respectively, aposteriori and apriori, and so incommensurable. Two points of commensurability and grounds for comparative evaluation are two basic problems that any theory in moral psychology must address. They are moral ignorance (I don't know what I ought to do) and weakness (I don't do what I know I ought to do).(1)

In the Nicomachean Ethics (hereafter Ethics), Aristotle maintains that the virtues are formed by repetition as are other habits (see book II, chapters 1-5). "[I]t is by doing just acts that a just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man," he explains, and without this kind of habit formation "no one would have even the prospect of being good" (1105b9-12). Further, the "mark" of a good "legislator" and "constitution" is that they: "Make the citizens good by forming habits in them" (1103b4). And in his investigation of the virtue justice, he takes as his "starting point" the ordinary meanings of a "just and an "unjust" man: the latter is "lawless," "grasping," and "unfair"; the former is "law-abiding" and "fair" (V:1129a30-34). In short, Aristotle's intention is to clarify the ordinary meaning of virtue as habit.

In the Metaphysical Principles of Virtue (hereafter Virtue), Kant clearly rejects any concept of moral habit-formation by repetition. He writes:

Skill (habitus) is a faculty of action and a subjective perfection

of ch...

... middle of paper ...

...ichard McKeon. New York: Random House, 1941.

—— Poetics. The Basic Works of Aristotle. trans. Ingram Bywater. ed. and introd. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 1941.

—— Politics. The Basic Works of Aristotle. trans. Benjamin Jowett. ed. and introd. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 1941.

Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Practical Reason. trans. Lewis White Beck. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1983

—— Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Ethical Philosophy. trans. James W. Ellington. introd. Warner A. Wick. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1983.

—— The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue. Ethical Philosophy. trans. James W. Ellington. introd. Warner A. Wick. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1983.

Plato. Republic. The Dialogues of Plato. vol. I. trans Benjamin Jowett. introd. Raphael Demos. New York: Random House, 1937.