Aristotle: how do we become virtuous?

Aristotle's idea of habituation is still tremendously popular today

Aristotle (384-322 BC), in the Nicomachean Ethics, puts forward an answer to a question that virtually everyone wants to know the answer to: how do I become a good person?

The short version of the answer is that we have to practice at it.

The longer version requires us to discuss what virtues are. In general, we can think of virtues as beneficial character traits, although Aristotle himself tends to put it like this: a virtue is the best or optimal state of a thing. When a car is virtuous, it runs well. When an ear is virtuous, it hears well.

Of course, it is weird for us to use the English word ‘virtue’ to describe ears or cars. We tend to apply the word more to humans. And Aristotle would generally agree with our list of virtues: when a human is virtuous, he or she is just, courageous, generous, etc.

Aristotle thinks that we need to divide the list of virtues into two: character virtues and intellectual virtues. We achieve these virtues differently, he thinks. That’s why we have to make this distinction.

Let’s talk about what this distinction is and how we achieve the two kinds of virtues.

We can think of intellectual virtues as the set of virtues that we can achieve by learning about something. We all know that just as a car that runs well (and is therefore virtuous) needs wheels. Well, for a human being to be virtuous, we need some kind of knowledge. Someone who was totally clueless would never be totally virtuous, even if they might somehow have some other virtues.

So, we need to learn things. I won’t turn this post into a long discussion of all the intellectual virtues, but it is easy to get the idea by looking at an example: practical wisdom, which is also sometimes called or translated as ‘prudence’.

Someone with the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom knows how to deliberate well; they know which sorts of things are worth choosing and avoiding. If you ever have to choose between your friendship with your best friend and 5$, practical wisdom gives you the knowledge of which one to choose. You know that your best friend will make your life go better than 5$ ever could.

How do you know that? Well, you learned it!

Aristotle considers scientific knowledge a kind of intellectual virtue, too. It’s important for a well-lived life, and we learn it.

You won’t find among the list of intellectual virtues the more recognizable virtues, such as justice, courage, generosity, etc.

Those are character virtues instead. Character virtues are very different from intellectual virtues, and this post isn’t a good place to survey all the differences. But let’s focus on just one: we don’t learn them. In fact, we can’t. We cannot learn how to be courageous or just, for instance.

Character virtues are character traits that we develop by practicing them. We have to develop them by acting like we already have them. Think about the phrase ‘fake it until you make it’. It’s a lot like that.

Let’s say this: you are a hot-tempered person, and you know that your life would go better if you were calmer. You want the virtue of calmness: someone who gets riled up when the situation is right for it, but otherwise you keep a cool head. It’s like knowing that your car would be better if you added wheels to it. You know that your life would be better if you added calmness to it and removed the hot-headedness.

So, what do you do? Well, you have to develop the habit of calmness. This process is called habituation, and it is the process of making something be a habit.

You learn to play the guitar by practicing. No matter how bad you are at it, eventually the movements of your fingers that once felt so unnatural to you will begin to feel natural.

You learn to play a sport or speak a foreign language the same way. At first, it’s super unnatural to you, but then you develop the habit.

You have to learn to be calm the same way. Repeat actions that characterize the type of person you want to be, no matter how unnatural and foreign to you they feel at first. They’ll eventually be second nature to you.

After all, you don’t get praised for being a just person simply because you did a just action once. You don’t get recognized for being courageous just because you did a courageous action once. You get praised because these things are character traits that you have inculcated in yourself.

Virtuous actions flow naturally from someone who has a praiseworthy habit. You did a generous thing because that’s the sort of person you are, not because you’re typically stingy and you forced yourself to be generous in this one occasion. Being a generous person means that you’re the type of person who generally and naturally does generous things.

That’s why you could never learn the character virtues. Learning scientific knowledge is a matter of simply coming to know certain things. Probably, to have the relevant intellectual virtue, you’d need to understand the things in question, and while that’s a higher bar, it’s still a matter of coming to know things.

But character virtues are different: they require us to be the sort of person who naturally does the right thing. For a lot of us, that would take a tremendous amount of work and effort. Still, it’s possible: we just need to habituate ourselves. That means repeatedly practicing something until we are accustomed to being that kind of person.

That’s how Aristotle thinks that we become virtuous.

Douglas R. Campbell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Alma College. He is the author of An Introduction to the Ethics of Social Media. He is also the host of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast.

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