Quotation
Last reviewed:
“We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”
Aristotle · Aristotelianism · Ancient · c. 340 BCE
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that virtues are acquired as skills are: just acts make a just person, not the other way round. A competing reading, already pressed in his own discussion, says a truly just act needs a just motive, so the building story looks circular until habit and understanding come apart in stages. The sentence opens the account of moral virtue in Nicomachean Ethics II.1. It is not Will Durant's line about being what we repeatedly do.
Did Aristotle really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Close to the standard English of a passage Aristotle plainly wrote. It is not the same sentence as 'we are what we repeatedly do', which is Will Durant's.
Where it comes from
Nicomachean Ethics II.1, 1103a–b
Approximate date: c. 340 BCE.
How to use it
Fairness about a shared bill after a pub quiz is not a mood you wait to feel; it is the next specific act, who paid the deposit, who is skint this week, who always forgets. Schedule that act. Aristotle's order is the doing first, and the settled state later.
A mindset reading
Waiting until you feel like a fair or brave person reverses the order he describes. Feelings follow practice more often than they lead it. The habit is to pick the action that would count, and to do it before the self-image arrives.
Understand the philosophy
Aristotle is answering whether we are good by nature, by teaching, or by practice. His answer is habit, ethismos, from the same root as ethos, character. Moral virtue is a state concerned with choice, built by doing the acts, later steered by practical wisdom. The circularity worry is why he distinguishes acting in accordance with the virtues from acting as the virtuous person does.
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FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that virtues are acquired as skills are: just acts make a just person, not the other way round. A competing reading, already pressed in his own discussion, says a truly just act needs a just motive, so the building story looks circular until habit and understanding come apart in stages. The sentence opens the account of moral virtue in Nicomachean Ethics II.1. It is not Will Durant's line about being what we repeatedly do.
Did Aristotle really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Close to the standard English of a passage Aristotle plainly wrote. It is not the same sentence as 'we are what we repeatedly do', which is Will Durant's.
Which work is it in?
Nicomachean Ethics II.1, 1103a–b Approximate date: c. 340 BCE.