Virtue as Habit Essay -- Aristotle Kant Moral Psychology Papers

Virtue as Habit The aim of this essay is to examine the by-line question. Does it make a difference in moral psychology whether one adopts Aristotles ordinary or Immanuel Kants revisionist definition of virtue as a moral clothe? Suppose it is objected, at the outset, that these definitions cannot be critically compared because their moral theories are, respectively, aposteriori and apriori, and so incommensurable. Two points of commensurability and grounds for comparative evaluation are two basic problems that any speculation in moral psychology must address. They are moral ignorance (I dont know what I ought to do) and weakness (I dont do what I know I ought to do).(1)In the Nicomachean morality (hereafter Ethics), Aristotle maintains that the virtues are formed by repetition as are other habits (see book II, chapters 1-5). It is by doing righteous acts that a just man is produced, and by doing restrained acts the temperate man, he explains, and without this kind of habit form ation no one would have even the prospect of being broad(a) (1105b9-12). Further, the mark of a good legislator and constitution is that they Make the citizens good by forming habits in them (1103b4). And in his investigation of the virtue justice, he takes as his starting point the ordinary meanings of a just and an unjust man the latter is lawless, grasping, and unfair the former is law-abiding and fair (V1129a30-34). In short, Aristotles intention is to clarify the ordinary meaning of virtue as habit.In the Metaphysical Principles of Virtue (hereafter Virtue), Kant clearly rejects any concept of moral habit-formation by repetition. He writesSkill (habitus) is a faculty of action and a subjective nonpareilof ch... ...ichard McKeon. New York Random House, 1941. Poetics. The Basic Works of Aristotle. trans. Ingram Bywater. ed. and introd. Richard McKeon. New York Random House, 1941. Politics. The Basic Works of Aristotle. trans. Benjamin Jowett. ed. and introd. Richard McKeon. N ew York Random House, 1941.Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Practical Reason. trans. Lewis White Beck. capital of Indiana Hackett Publishing Co., 1983 Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Ethical Philosophy. trans. James W. Ellington. introd. Warner A. Wick. Indianapolis Hackett Publishing Co., 1983. The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue. Ethical Philosophy. trans. James W. Ellington. introd. Warner A. Wick. Indianapolis Hackett Publishing Co., 1983.Plato. Republic. The Dialogues of Plato. vol. I. trans Benjamin Jowett. introd. Raphael Demos. New York Random House, 1937.