Guided Practice Makes Perfect: Habituation into Full Virtue in Aristotle's Ethics 1

Abstract

Aristotelian habituation is frequently thought to train the non-rational part of the human soul only. In this paper, I challenge this assumption, and argue that habituation is a form of guided practice. Thinking that the nature of habituation is “better known to us” than the nature of virtue, those who defend the non-rational notion of habituation use their assumptions about habituation to guide their analyses of virtue. Specifically, they argue that, since the process of habituation trains the non-rational part of our soul only, virtue of character must be a non-rational state. I reverse the order of explanation, and use Aristotle's extensive discussion of virtue to illuminate his remarks about habituation.