Virtue as Habit Essay -- Aristotle Kant Moral Psychology Papers

Virtue as Habit The aim of this essay is to picture the following question. Does it make a difference in clean-living psychology whether one adopts Aristotles ordinary or Immanuel Kants revisionist definition of uprightness as a chaste 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 dont know what I ought to do) and weakness (I dont 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). It is by doing bonnie acts that a sightly man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man, he explains, and without this kind of h abit formation no one would have pull down the prospect of being good (1105b9-12). Further, the mark of a good legislator and piece of music 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 un pretty the former is law-abiding and fair (V1129a30-34). In short, Aristotles 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 writesSkill (habitus) is a faculty of action and a subjective perfectionof ch... ...ichard McKeon. modern 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 intro d. Richard McKeon. New York Random House, 1941.Kant, Immanuel. The reappraisal of Practical Reason. trans. Lewis White Beck. Indianapolis Hackett publish Co., 1983 Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Ethical Philosophy. trans. crowd 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.