Aristotle on Improving One’s Character Author(s): Gianluca Di Muzio Source: Phronesis, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Aug., 2000), pp. 205-219 Published by: Brill Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4182646 Accessed: 11-03-2019 02:27 UTC

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Anthony 2
Aristotle on Improving One’s Character

GLANLUCA DI MUZIO

ABSTRACT

Contrary to what most interpreters hold, in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle is

not committed to the view that people of established vicious character could

never become good. The present paper proves this result (1) by giving a better

reading of 1114 a 12-21, a passage which has traditionally been taken to assert

that unjust and self-indulgent people are doomed to a lifetime of vice; (2) by show-

ing that when Aristotle refers to self-indulgent people as “incurable”, he does not

mean that they could never change, but only that they could not change as a result of external influences such as persuasion or punishment; (3) by proving

that although Aristotle regards the desires of vicious people as determined by

their character, there is room within Aristotelian moral psychology for the pos-

sibility that people of corrupt character become motivated to begin a process of moral reform.

In chapter 5 of Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues

that character is voluntary. He supports this conclusion by pointing out

that (1) engaging in activities of a certain kind produces corresponding

states of character (1114 a 7); and (2) everybody knows that (1) is true

(1114 a 9-10). In Aristotle’s view, those who routinely do, say, unjust

actions tend to produce in themselves an unjust character. Since they are

aware of the long-term effects their actions will have on their character,

then if in the end they acquire a permanent disposition to act unjustly, they can fairly be said to have acquired it voluntarily. There is thus a clear

sense in which unjust or self-indulgent people wish to be unjust or self-

indulgent (1114 a 11-12).

Then comes a passage in which Aristotle appears to suggest that those

who have acquired a morally corrupt character cannot change it or act

contrary to it:

But if without being ignorant a man does the things which will make him unjust, he will be unjust voluntarily. Yet it does not follow that if he wishes he will

cease to be unjust and will be just. For neither does the man who is ill become

well on those terms. We may suppose a case in which he is ill voluntarily,

through living incontinently and disobeying his doctors. In that case it was then

open to him not to be ill, but not now, when he has thrown away his chance,

just as when you have let a stone go it is too late to recover it; but yet it was

in your power to throw it, since the moving principle was in you. So, too, to the

unjust and to the self-indulgent man it was open at the beginning not to becomeread the article and I agree with the article’s opinion, what are the implications of this argument? 500 words