Moral Habituation: a prerequisite for Aristotle's ethics class

Brennan McDavid (University of Melbourne)

Aristotle says at Book 1, Chapter 4 of the Nicomachean Ethics that “the adequately prepared student of lectures in ethics must be someone who has been raised well in his habits.” This talk will explore just what Aristotle means in making this claim. Specifically, we will explore Aristotle’s conception of the relationship between moral habituation and acquisition of practical wisdom. Insofar as he is committed to the idea that we must be “raised well”—i.e. habituated well—as a prerequisite to ethical theorizing, we must wonder what the psychological mechanisms are by which the non-rational learning that is habituation can be foundational to the very muchrational learning that is ethical theorizing. I will briefly explain Aristotle’s theory of moral habituation and his theory of ethical epistemology and then delve into the sticky question of where the two meet.