Aristotle, habit, and the mean in Nicomachean Ethics, Book II
When I was twelve, I learned that profanity was “just words.” Or at least that was the argument a friend and I had heard and decided to experiment with.
We climbed up into a tree in the park and yelled every forbidden word we knew. The tree was important! It put us safely above the ground and, we thought, beyond adult supervision. If these words did not actually mean anything, then what was the problem?
It was a very twelve-year-old experiment.
Later, one of those words came out at home (under my breath) in front of my mom. She slapped me across the face, as she should have. While I do remember the word (which I will not repeat here), I remember the slap even more. The lesson was clear: whatever argument I had accepted about words being meaningless, my mom was not buying it.
I can laugh about that story now, but it raises a serious question. Why do children need rules before they fully understand the reasons for them? “Do not swear” is simple enough. It gives a boundary. But surely the final goal is not an adult who avoids a list of sounds because his mother might be nearby. We want something more. We want a person who knows how to speak truthfully, kindly, and appropriately without needing a rule for every possible situation.
This idea of following rules to become a certain kind of person is at the centre of Book II of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.
Virtue takes practice
Book I asks what the good life is. Aristotle calls it eudaimonia, usually translated as happiness or flourishing.
Book II asks the next question: if the good life requires virtue, how do we become virtuous?
Aristotle begins by separating intellectual virtue from ethical virtue. Intellectual virtues grow mainly through teaching and experience. Ethical virtues grow through habit. We are not born courageous, generous, patient, or just, but we are born with the capacity to develop these qualities and shape them through practice (II.1, 1103a14–26).
His examples are ordinary ones. People become builders by building and musicians by playing music. In the same way, we become just by doing just actions and courageous by doing courageous actions. This can sound circular. How can I do a courageous action if I am not already courageous? Aristotle’s answer is that we learn virtue much as we learn a skill. At first, we act under instruction. Over time, the action becomes part of our character.
This is also why Aristotle says the point of studying ethics is not simply to know what virtue is. The point is to become good (II.2, 1103b26–29). Reading about patience does not make me patient; instead, I find out whether I am patient when somebody tests it.
Our actions train our desires
Habit is more than doing something over and over again until it becomes automatic — it is not like building an AI model or training Pavlov’s dog. Instead, Aristotle thinks our repeated choices shape what feels normal to us while also shaping what we enjoy.
This is an uncomfortable thought because it means that my actions are never entirely isolated. The way I respond when I am criticized or the tone I use when I am angry all make the next choice a little easier or harder.
My friend and I were not only shouting words from a tree. We were enjoying the feeling of crossing a boundary. We were practising a small kind of rebellion and telling ourselves that the boundary was foolish because we did not understand it. Aristotle pays close attention to pleasure and pain for this reason. A person’s pleasures reveal something about his character. A temperate person does not simply grit his teeth while endlessly wishing he could give in. His desires have been trained so that he can take pleasure in what is good. That does not happen quickly, but it is the goal (II.3, 1104b3–1105a16).
This makes moral education more complicated than rule enforcement. Rules matter, especially at the beginning. Consequences matter too.
Doing the right thing is not the same as being virtuous
Aristotle knows that a person can do the right thing for the wrong reason. A child might tell the truth because he is afraid of being caught, or an adult might give money because he wants to be praised. The action may still be useful or even good, but it does not yet show a fully formed virtue.
For an action to be truly virtuous, Aristotle says the person must know what he is doing, choose the action for its own sake, and act from a firm and settled character (II.4, 1105a17–1105b18).
This helps explain the place of rules. A rule can direct me toward the right action before I am able to choose it from a settled character. The rule is a starting point. If I follow it often enough, with good teaching and correction, I may begin to understand the good that it protects. But the rule is not the finish line. If the only lesson I learned from my mother was not to swear within slapping distance, then I had learned very little. The larger lesson was about the kind of speaker I was becoming. Rules, then, are not the enemy of virtue but the scaffolding around it.
The mean is not simply the middle
Book II is probably best known for Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean. Virtue often lies between two errors: one of excess and one of deficiency. Courage lies between cowardice and recklessness. Generosity lies between stinginess and wastefulness. Proper anger lies between exploding at everything and never becoming angry when anger is appropriate (II.6–7, 1106b16–1108b10).
The obvious danger is to turn this into a slogan: everything in moderation, but that is not quite Aristotle’s point.
The mean is not always the exact middle, and it is not the same for every person. The right amount of food for an athlete is different from the right amount for someone who is sedentary (or the right amount for a teenager is definitely not the amount I should be eating). In the moral life, we also have to consider the person, the situation, the timing, the motive, and the way an action is carried out. Aristotle describes virtue as feeling and acting at the right time, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right reason, and in the right way (II.6, 1106b18–24). And there is no simple formula for that.
Aristotle also makes clear that some actions do not have a virtuous mean. We cannot speak of a moderate amount of murder or adultery. Some actions are wrong in themselves (II.6, 1107a8–27).
We usually miss in our favourite direction
There are many ways to miss a target and fewer ways to hit it. Most of us also have a favourite way of missing.
One person tends toward fear and needs to practise stepping forward while another tends toward recklessness and needs to slow down. One person avoids conflict at almost any cost while another seems to find conflict wherever he goes. The right correction will not look identical for both people.
Aristotle compares this to straightening bent wood. To make it straight, we may need to bend it in the opposite direction (II.9, 1109a20–1109b26). In other words, I need to know where I tend to go wrong.
He also warns us to be especially careful about pleasure because pleasure can distort our judgment because we are good at renaming the things we already want. Recklessness becomes courage. Stinginess becomes responsibility. Anger becomes honesty. Aristotle asks us to look again.
What are my habits making of me?
Book II does not give us a neat list of rules for every situation. Instead, it leaves us with a harder question: what kind of person am I becoming through the things I repeatedly do?
Character is being shaped in small morning routines, in the ordinary conversations we have with our family members, and in choices at work that seem unimportant at the time. One word in a tree probably did not determine the course of my life, but Aristotle would say that no action is entirely disconnected from character. Each action leans somewhere.
As a parent and teacher, I find that both helpful and unsettling. I want children to know the rules that protect what is good. They need clear boundaries before they have the wisdom to navigate every situation. At the same time, I do not want rule-following to be the final goal. I want them to become people who can recognize the good, choose it for the right reasons, and perhaps even learn to love it.
The same is true for me. It is easier to ask whether I technically broke a rule than to ask what my habits are teaching me to enjoy. Aristotle will not let us stop at the first question.
At twelve, I thought words were “just words.” Book II helps explain why they were also practice. Actions become habits, and habits form character. The question then is not only, “What am I allowed to do?”, but “What kind of person am I practising to become?”
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