The Ethics of Emily

We acquire moral virtues by first exercising them. We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.

It is the repeated performance of just and temperate actions that produces virtue.

Like activities produce like dispositions. It is our actions that determine our dispositions.

Virtue is concerned with pains and pleasures.

Pleasure has a way of making us do what is disgraceful; pain deters us from doing what is right and fine.

Moral goodness is a quality disposing us to act in the best way when we are dealing with pleasures and pains, while vice is one which leads us to act in the worst way when we deal with them.

It is the good man who is most likely to go right, and then bad man who tends to go wrong, and that most notably in the matter of pleasure.

Heraclitus says it is hard to fight against anger, but it is harder still to fight against the pleasure.

-Aristotle, from The Ethics of Aristotle