Cause and Effect: Virtue as a Process in Aristotle, Essay Example

With regard to doing virtuous actions and actually being a virtuous person, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics begins by describing processes or formulas applicable to other conditions wherein actions and states of being are concerned. There is, in fact, a sense provided early on that Aristotle will equate virtue of being with virtue of conduct, for he loses no time in asserting that moral virtue evolves from the power of habit. Presumably, as more moral actions are made, the maker of them attains a state of being as a moral or virtuous person. Aristotle emphasizes an important caveat; it is the receptivity of the being to virtue, and not a natural inclination to it, that enables the process. Moral virtue is not necessarily within us, he claims, but rather that potential or ability to create it in ourselves. This being the case, however, the result of being will follow the consistent applications of deeds. While presenting other issues, which will be shortly addressed, Aristotle seems to favor this process as logical, and he reinforces the logic through various examples: “It is by doing just acts that the just man is produced…without doing these no one would even have a prospect of being good” (Aristotle 142). There is then every reason to believe that, for Aristotle, acting in a virtuous way and becoming virtuous are points along a progression. If there is then any distinction between the two, it is essentially temporal; as the accumulation of virtuous actions will produce the virtuous person, only time and the necessary efforts distance these components.

This said, there remains another difference, and one ironically set in place by the same process linking the being and the actions. More exactly, Aristotle goes to great lengths to describe how virtue is intrinsically demanding in terms of actions alone. To begin, he distinguishes between intellectual and moral virtue. Then, and returning to the other issues mentioned, he emphasizes the difficulties in ascertaining what is the virtuous action before the virtuous action may be done. Wanting to do right is one thing; knowing what that right is is another, and Aristotle points to excess as something of a warning. Excess tends to destroy, and this in turn affects our ideas of moral virtue in a linear way; passions of desire, appetite, etc., may be open to the dangers of excess, and such excess than harms or destroys the potential for virtue as developing in the soul. Put another way, Aristotle is very concerned with the various steps along the path by which virtue is actually attained, simply because it must be identified before it can be expressed.

The same “formulaic” approach appears later, in that Aristotle ultimately concludes that a state of virtuous being is a mean achieved between extremes. The mean is, in essence, in place because of the complex nature of virtuous action: “We feel anger and fear without choice, but the virtues are choice or modes of choice” (143). Virtue is a consequence of what choices are made, and this in turn promotes the dependence of virtue as a state on virtuous conduct. Moreover, Aristotle points to virtue as an essence of character that is an evolving disposition; the more a person acts in a virtuous way, the more they will be inclined to be virtuous in other ways.

Just as with passions, he ascribes different qualities to different dispositions. In his entire addressing of virtue, in fact, Aristotle is focused very much on breaking down all the components that dictate or influence all human behavior and being. Pain, pleasure, excess, and deficiency are all powerful forces in Aristotle’s equations regarding behavior.

The philosopher’s intent examination of multiple factors aside, however, there remains in Aristotle a consistent thread of thought. While he is careful to never equate virtuous behavior with virtuous being in the sense that the latter naturally – or easily – follows the former, he nonetheless promotes the thinking that, the greater the amount of moral conduct, the greater the morality or virtue within the individual. Disposition, generated by actions, is akin to passion as a natural state, and this disposition to be virtuous derives from acting virtuously. Ultimately, and as noted, the difference between virtuous action and being in Aristotle lies in how the progress from the action moves to create the being.

Works Cited

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. By W. D. Ross. New York: Oxford University Press,  1998. Print.