(Previous: Eudemian Ethics II.1.)
Clearly, then, excellence of character is all about pleasures and pains. Because character (as the name suggests) develops from what we characteristically do, acquiring a certain character happens not by being born into it but by being guided into it through repeated changes, and only then being activated in that way. (We don't see this in inanimate things, for you can throw a stone upwards ten thousand times but it will never do so except by being forced to.) Thus let character be a quality of the unthinking aspect of personhood that has the ability to heed thought and that is directed by the orders of reason.
Next we must articulate what it is in personhood by which character traits have the qualities they do. And these are our capacities for the feelings - for being sensitive, as it's said - as well as our traits, by which we are said to be affected or unaffected by these feelings in a certain way. After that there is the distinction, already settled, between feelings, capacities, and traits. By feelings I mean things such as anger, fear, shame, craving, and in general things which in themselves are accompanied by an awareness of pleasure or pain. With regard to these there arises no particular quality but instead they are something we undergo, whereas with regard to capacities a quality does arise. I mean those capacities by which we are said to be activated with regard to feelings, such as being belligerent, stolid, amorous, bashful, or shameless. Traits are the things responsible for these capacities, either guided by reason or the opposite, such as courage and moderation or cowardice and dissipation.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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