CKTS Annual Lecture
Please join us for a talk by Dr. Antonio Ferro (Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg) titled:
"Learning vis-à-vis Habituation: A New Approach to the So-Called 'Continuity' Problem in Nicomachean Ethics II."
📅 Date: March 5, 2025
⏰ Time: 2:00 - 3:30 PM
📍 Location: HIB 55
Abstract:
Although habituation (ethos, ethismos) plays an important role in the acquisition of virtue, in the second book of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle only spends very few words on the process through which individual actions become stable dispositions, i.e. reliably good actions give rise to the corresponding virtues, and bad ones to the corresponding vices, respectively. As is well known, Aristotle’s answer to the question of how one can become morally good (and why such an acquisition process so often fails) is eminently plausible, but also deceptively simple: One becomes virtuous (e.g. generous) by being habituated from an early age to perform actions of the suitable kind in the given circumstances, that is the actions that the virtuous (e.g. generous) person would perform in the appropriate circumstances.
The aim of my contribution is twofold: Firstly, based on several central passages from Aristotle’s corpus (esp. Posterior Analytics I 1-2; Nicomachean Ethics II 1-5, VI 1-13; X 10; Physics VII 3), I would like to work out a number of essential differences between intellectual learning (dianoetikê mathêsis) and habituation (ethos) with regard to their respective metaphysical status, their role in Aristotle’s theory of the soul and the specific way they affect the agent. Secondly, I would like to explain in more detail the extent to which the success in learning is conditional upon success in habituation, such that the above-mentioned "continuity" problem cannot arise in the first place. My discussion should make it clear why, despite fundamental conceptual differences, humans must carry out both processes in tandem if they are to be successful.