Being Properly Affected
L.A. Kosman
In Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle's Ethics
University of California Press, 1980

"Aristotle's moral theory must be seen as a theory not only of how to *act* well but also of how to *feel* well; for the moral virtues are states of character that enable a person to exhibit the right kinds of emotions as well as the right kinds of actions. The art of proper living, we should say, includes the art of feeling well as well as the correlative discipline to the art of acting well." (KOSMAN-1980, p. 105)

"The doctrine of passive potentiality enables Aristotle to envision a state of character by virtue of which an individual has the power to be affected in certain ways, the capacity to undergo certain passions and avoid others. A moral virtue with respect to feelings or emotions is just such a capacity; it is the power to have and to avoid certain emotions, the ability to discriminate in what one feels. But this suggests only how there might be said to be powers to be acted upon in certain ways; what concerned us was whether such powers might be said to be dispositions involving choice." (KOSMAN-1980, p. 107)

"A person may act in certain ways that are characteristically and naturally associated with a certain range of feelings, and through those actions acquire the virtue that is the disposition for having the feelings directly.... [O]ne recognizes through moral education what would constitute appropriate and correct ways to feel in certain circumstances. One acts in ways that are naturally associated with and will "bring about" those very feelings, and eventually the feelings become, as Aristotle might have said, second nature; that is, one develops states of character that dispose one to have the right feelings at the right time." (KOSMAN-1980, p. 112)

"Although we may in some narrow sense not be responsible for our feelings, we are responsible for our character as the dispositional source of those feelings.... [I]n this sense, feelings are deliberate and chosen, since the hexeis from which these feelings emanate are deliberate and chosen, since (in turn) the actions that lead to their hexeis are deliberate and chosen, and deliberately chosen to make one the kind of person who characteristically will have the appropriate feelings." (KOSMAN-1980, pp. 112-113)

"[W]hy should we not be prepared to say that a person of steadfast and cultivated virtue who exhibits appropriate feelings in circumstances which he understands correctly and in which those are precisely the feelings which he would want to exhibit, taking into account the entire fabric of desires, goals, plans, and hopes for himself - why should we not be prepared to say that such a person has chosen those feelings?" (KOSMAN-1980, p. 114)

"[C]hoice for him is not a concept having to do with individual moments in an agent's life, nor with individual single actions, but with the practices of that life within the larger context of the character and intentions of a moral subject, ultimately within the context of what it has become fashionable to call one's life plan." (KOSMAN-1980, p. 115) [PSA: I prefer to speak of a *commitment* to being a certain kind of person.]

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