# Moral Virtue explained — Nicomachean Ethics

> Chapter companion for Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle.

## What happens

This chapter defines moral virtue as a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, determined by reason. It emphasizes that virtue is acquired through habit and practice, not by nature, and that it is concerned with pleasures and pains. The chapter also distinguishes moral virtue from intellectual virtue, and discusses the importance of acting with knowledge, choice, and a stable character.

## Themes in this chapter

### Virtue and Character

Moral virtue is defined as a habit acquired through practice, not innate, and requires a stable character to act justly and temperately.

### Pleasure and Pain

Virtue is concerned with pleasures and pains; right feeling and action regarding them is central to moral excellence.

### The Golden Mean

Virtue is a mean between excess and deficiency, as illustrated by courage, temperance, and liberality.

## Character check-ins

### Aristotle

Primary author and philosopher presenting the doctrine of moral virtue as a mean and habit.

### Heraclitus

Referenced for the idea that fighting with pleasure is harder than fighting with wrath.

## Key lines

> the virtues we acquire by doing the acts, as is the case with the arts too. We learn an art by doing that which we wish to do when we have learned it; we become builders by building, and harpers by harping. And so by doing just acts we become just, and by doing acts of temperance and courage we become temperate and courageous.

We develop virtues by repeatedly performing virtuous actions, just as we learn a craft by practicing it.

_Illustrates the habituation process central to moral virtue._

> virtue is a moderation or middle state, but viewed in its relation to what is best and right it is the extreme of perfection.

Virtue is a mean between extremes, yet it is also the highest excellence in terms of what is good and right.

_Defines the golden mean as both moderate and perfect._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/nicomachean_ethics_se/chapters/moral-virtue
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/nicomachean_ethics_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/nicomachean_ethics_se/chapters