Section 4: Differences between acquiring virtues and learning skills

The question might be asked, what do we mean by saying that we must become just by doing just actions, and temperate by doing temperate actions? For if people do just and temperate actions, it seems they are already just and temperate people, just as if people write and play music in a way that accords with the rules of grammar _[20] or music, they already know grammar or music.

Or is this true even of skills [like grammar or music]? After all, it’s possible to write in accord with the rules of grammar either by chance or by following the instruction of another person. A person will only know grammar, then, when he has both written something grammatical and written it in the way someone with grammatical knowledge would; and this means writing it in accordance with the knowledge of grammar he has in himself. _[25]

Further, skills and virtues are not similar. For the things produced by skills have their goodness in themselves, so that it is enough that they should have a certain character. [For example, table produced by the skill of carpentry has its goodness in itself if it is well-made.] But if actions that are in accordance with the virtues have themselves a certain character, it does not follow that they are done justly or temperately. [For someone could do something that is externally a just or temperate action, but have bad intentions for doing it, which means it’s not really a just or temperate action.] The person doing the action must also be in a certain condition _[30] when he does the action. In the first place, he must have knowledge. Secondly, he must deliberately choose the action and choose it for its own sake. Thirdly, his action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character.

When it comes to skills, these factors are not relevant, _[1105b1] except the knowing itself. But when it comes to possessing the virtues, mere knowing has little or no relevance, while the other factors count for everything, and these are the factors that come from frequently doing just and temperate actions.

Actions, then, are called just and temperate _[5] when they are done in the way the just or the temperate person would do them. The person who simply does just and temperate actions it not the just or temperate person, but rather the person who does just and temperate actions as just and temperate people do them. Thus, it is rightly said that a person becomes a just person by doing just actions and that a person becomes a temperate person by doing temperate actions. _[10] Without doing virtuous actions no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.

Yet most people do not do virtuous actions but instead take refuge in theories, arguments, and beliefs about virtue, and think they are being philosophers and will become good like this. But these people are behaving kind of like patients who listen attentively to their doctors [and develop all kinds of beliefs and theories about how to be healthy], but don’t actually do _[15] any of the things they’re doctors tell them to do. Just as such people won’t become healthy in body since the don’t actually do the things that will improve their health, so also those do philosophy in a merely theoretical way, without actually acting virtuously, will not acquire virtue and become healthy in soul.