3.9 Character and the virtues

You should now read the sections ‘Virtue of character: its genus’ and ‘Virtue of character: its differentia’, ‘The particular virtues of character’, ‘Relations between mean and extreme states’ and ‘How can we reach the mean?’ in the Aristotle reading guide. As always the Aristotle workbook forum is there to help you should you need it.

Acquiring the virtues takes time. As we grow older each of us will constantly be faced with situations in which we must decide what we should or shouldn’t do.

Each such situation is an opportunity to do, or fail to do, the virtuous thing. In each we can do, or fail to do, the right thing for the right, or for the wrong, reason.

Each time we choose an action we are also choosing our own future characters. If we consistently make the right choices for the right reasons we will be acquiring good characters. In acquiring good characters we are raising the probability that others will respect us, we will respect ourselves and we will achieve eudaimonia.

If, of course, our family is wiped out in an accident; if, just before we retire, all our savings are lost; if the spouse we love is unfaithful, we will not achieve eudaimonia. Virtue is not, unfortunately, sufficient for happiness. But it is necessary.

This is not, of course, to say virtue is a means to the end of happiness. Anyone who strives to do the right thing in order to make themselves happy has missed the point.

It is rather that in living a virtuous life a person successfully fulfils his human potential and to do this is to be happy. Virtue is its own reward.