Acquiring Character: Becoming Grown-Up
Gavin Lawrence
In Michael Pakaluk & Giles Pearson (eds.), Moral Psychology and Human Action in Aristotle. Oxford University Press (2011)

"The Nicomachean Ethics is a work of '*practical* philosophy'. Its concern is Praxis, action, but action in a sense somewhat obscure to the ear of modern philosophy. It is action in a narrower sense than the merely voluntary, or intentional, action of which animals and children are also capable (to hekousia). Its concern is action whose arche is prohairesis, action that comes from, or expresses, the human agent's *preferential choice* (3.2, 1111b6-8). Such action expresses the agent's values - in the sense that it is viewed *as* being what is unqualifiedly *best or wisest* to do, as being the appropriate (prepon) or fine (kalon) way to go on, as successfully in their situation - about what about response is appropriate or merited (EE 2.10, 1227b5ff; see NE 2.6, 1106b5-8; b27-28; b36-07a2; 2.9, 1109a22-23, 6.1 1138b18-25). It is thus revealing of what they take to be good and bad, fine and base (see 3.2, 1111b5-6; Poet 1450b8-10)." (LAWRENCE-2011, pp. 236-237)

"Character ... is ... something we develop as we grow from merely liking and disliking things to valuing them *as* good and bad, *as* fine and base. For us to grow up is for us to shift from living kata pathos to living kata prohairesis: from living by natural prompt to living by rational design.... in so shifting, we therein take control of our lives - make living into living a life, that is, start to see and evaluate things in the widening context of a life to be achieved, constructed, arranged, and shaped." (LAWRENCE-2011, p. 237)

"[S]uch a life is constructed around the individual's own sense, or view, of order, of beauty or the fine (to kalon), or the situationally appropriate, and, if successfully constructed ... it will indeed have that beauty, that radiant fineness, the agent takes it to have, the beauty of Human Life, a wonderful life. As such it would be a life whose arc, the arc of chosen feeling and action, is described by the proper exercise of the human excellences, and is so taken by the agent. This may be an unqualifiedly perfect, or successful, human life." (LAWRENCE-2011, pp. 237-238)

"An animal is by its nature set up to pursue and avoid certain things as immediate ends, and these are things it *enjoys* or *disenjoys*. It can be naturally well or badly disposed in these regards. But the human is a species whose nature is to develop full excellence, by habituation and socialization. And, by contrast, the end in full excellence (and defect) is the kalon - the *beautiful*, the *noble* or *fine* - where agents feel and act in ways they *take* it are *correct* and merited, as constituting the best way to live, as a *recognizably ordered* way of living." (LAWRENCE-2011, p. 256)

"But what sort of end, or ground, is the fine? This is complex and Aristotle is indebted to his philosophical past. Crudely, I take the contrast between doing something merely because one likes it, and doing it because one supposes it fine, to be one between taking something as an end, and taking it as a *valued* end - as the thing one *should* be pursuing, should *unconditionally*, in full practical rationality: that is, should if one is to be doing well or conducting one's life as is best. Animals are incapable of this." (LAWRENCE-2011, p. 263) [PSA: this "supposing" is one aspect of taking action "with an account", i.e., meta logou.]

"To find something fine is to appreciate or perceive an order, a proper arrangement of things (EE 1.8, 1218a15-24)." (LAWRENCE-2011, p. 263)

"In the realm of human passion and action, the sense of the fine becomes the sense of the proper ordering of a life: that an action is ordered to, or proper or fitting to, the situation, looked at from the widest context or perspective (i.e. of constituting a life properly lived). We can think of a situation as meriting - as calling for or giving opportunity for - some response, action, or feeling, that would in a sense *complete* or *perfect* it, that brings a proper or fitting *order* to it, as someone saying 'thank you' properly when presented with a gift - thus producing, in a small way, something fine, beautiful, and admirable, lacking which the situation would be incomplete, be it unfulfilled, marred, or even ugly. This aspect of acquiring a sense of the fine - as detecting the need for, and achieving, order, as completing or perfecting - is related to the notion of following a rule (to entering a world of 'natural unintelligibility')." (LAWRENCE-2011, pp. 263-264)

Citing Anscombe on children's games, Lawrence notes that "In learning to play the game, the child comes to see something as *called for* by the situation - as needing, or meriting, or demanding, this or that contribution on its part to complete or perfect it (or that stage of it). A rule is a kind of *principle of order or pattern* - of *same again*.... In looking for the fine, one looks for a proper arrangement and attainment of human goods, of a life making sense and having a *proper shape*, not disfigured by ugly actions.... In short, to find actions and emotions fine is to appreciate their place and appropriateness in the order of a life attuned to the situations in which it is lived; and this demands the perspective of one faced with a life to live and potentially to order, as open to, and rationally demanding, choice." (LAWRENCE-2011, p. 264)

"[S]ituations of apparently competing appetites, or desires more generally, invite the development of rational preference, of choice, and of calculation about the possibilities of so arranging and scheduling things that both can be satisfied. So there are roots even here for the idea of a life taking a shape, of its taking on an *order*, of a sense of its going well or badly, successfully or frustratingly - of its going, or not going, as it *should*." (LAWRENCE-2011, p. 265) [PSA: this notion of life taking shape is related to eidos as a way of being.]

"[T]here seems to be something special to the case of excellence of character: after all we are not thinking here of a mere habit (stroking the chin), but of a rationally illuminated disposition of will, of one's capacity to value." (LAWRENCE-2011, p. 274)

"One can hold opinions very strongly as Aristotle acknowledges (EN 7.3, 1146b27-31). But there is something different in the strength and fixity of understanding. 'Episteme' is a coming to a stop, a *stand-still*: eph-istemai (an etymology Aristotle explicitly plays with in An. Po. 2.19, 100a3-b5). Taking episteme here to be a matter of understanding, of having *the why* as well as *the that* (for example Meta. A.1), the idea is that when one understands, one has come to a stop: enquiry is now ended, and the soul is stilled and settled, properly stable - not (so) capable of being misled or overturned by a false theory as when someone only has *the thats*. It is as if the translation had been 'at-standing' rather than 'under-standing'.... Now practical wisdom is distinct from episteme and from techne (see 6.5, 1140a33-b4), but in its full form involves knowledge of *why* as well as *that* and in a wider sense is a form of understanding (see 6.7, 1141b12-23)." (LAWRENCE-2011, pp. 274-275)

"Equally as one's experience widens and deepens one moves from accepting *that* one should do such and such to seeing and appreciating more of its point - of *why* it is correct so to go on. This deepening understanding starts to inform and mould the very shape of one's desires: so that one is tempted to say that in the fully virtuous these conative and cognitive aspects above are resolved, melded, in to a unity: it is not simply that one's practical understanding has full 'control' of one's desires, so that the latter 'accord' with (kata) the former (1095a10) but rather that what one desires is now fully shaped by - and transparent to - one's practical understanding, and how one sees the world is infomed by one's proper concerns. One's understanding of the situation precisely expresses itself in part by your wish to comfort them in their need, and so on (see 'meta logou')." (LAWRENCE-2011, p. 275)

"[I]n NE 1.3, 1094b27-1095a11 Aristotle demands two prerequisites from his audience: (i) they need experience of life and its goings-on; (ii) they need to be able to control their desires and conform them to reason, and not live simply by the passion of the moment (kata pathos).... Experience of life in this sense is perhaps a matter of habituation become self-aware and self-guided (a matter of internalization). That is, *habituation* seems like an externally driven, or guided, transition (agoge), or 'induction' (epagoge), from one thing to a similar ('same again'); *experience* like one that is driven or guided internally by the agent now prepared and inclined to notice similarities - and differences - for themselves." (LAWRENCE-2011, p. 278)

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