The Nicomachean Ethics

Virtues begin as habits The first, ‘Ethics’, derives from Aristotle’s habit of calling virtues ‘virtues of character’ (ēthikai aretai) and moral goodness ‘goodness of character’ (ēthikē aretē).

But the most famous consequence of his view that the virtues have a major non-rational component is his idea that we also acquire them by a non-rational process. He thinks that you become a good person by habituation – which is to say, by training your emotions, your likes and dislikes, without knowing too much about why you’re acting that way. He

Aristotle, by contrast, tells us (in VI.1) that truths about right and wrong, and indeed all ‘practical truths’, i.e. all truths about what we should do, wouldn’t even exist without desire. It is desire (broadly construed), not reason, that gives us our goals and pushes us in any direction at all. ‘Thought on its own doesn’t move {or motivate} anyt