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Aristotle on Shame and Learning to Be Good
OXFORD ARISTOTLE STUDIES
General Editor
Lindsay Judson
    
Doing and Being
An Interpretation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Theta
Jonathan Beere
Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life
Sylvia Berryman
Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning
The Posterior Analytics
David Bronstein
Aristotle and the Eleatic One
Timothy Clarke
Time for Aristotle
Physics IV. 10–14
Ursula Coope
Passions and Persuasion in Aristotle’s Rhetoric
Jamie Dow
Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology
Allan Gotthelf
Aristotle on the Common Sense
Pavel Gregoric
The Powers of Aristotle’s Soul
Thomas Kjeller Johansen
Aristotle on Teleology
Monte Ransome Johnson
How Aristotle gets by in Metaphysics Zeta
Frank A. Lewis
Aristotle on the Apparent Good
Perception, Phantasia, Thought, and Desire
Jessica Moss
Priority in Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Michail Peramatzis
Aristotle’s Theory of Bodies
Christian Pfeiffer
Aristotle on Shame and
Learning to Be Good
MARTA JIMENEZ

1
 3
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DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198829683.001.0001
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To my grandfather, Mateo Agustín, who was a citizen soldier in the
Spanish civil war. And to my parents, who taught me about it.
 Acknowledgments

This book is a distant descendant of a doctoral thesis that I completed at the

University of Toronto. My gratitude is due first and foremost to my supervisor
and friend, Jennifer Whiting. I could not have hoped for a better person to guide
my work and help me during my early academic life. I am extremely grateful for
her continued support, encouragement, and challenge. Rachel Barney and Brad
Inwood were also part of the original conception of this project and helped me to
shape many of the central ideas. I thank them for challenging many of my initial
thoughts on the matter, for fruitful discussions, and for their extensive feedback.
This project has been in gestation for such a long time that I have incurred
many large debts of gratitude. It is a great pleasure to acknowledge the help of
those friends, mentors, and colleagues who gave me comments on parts or
sections of the material (whether in conversation or via written feedback) or
helped me through discussion on particular matters at various points: Julia
Annas, Samuel Baker, Juan Pablo Bermúdez, Alessandro Bonello, Sarah Broadie,
David Bronstein, Klaus Corcilius, Willie Costello, Jamie Dow, Zoli Filotas, Emily
Fletcher, Alessandra Fussi, Corinne Gartner, Paula Gottlieb, Devin Henry,
Sukaina Hirji, Douglas S. Hutchinson, Dhananjay Jagannathan, Monte Johnson,
Rusty Jones, Rachana Kamtekar, Aryeh Kosman, Danielle Layne, Stephen
Leighton, Mariska Leunissen, Patricia Marechal, Jessica Moss, Tim O’Keefe,
Chistiana Olfert, Richard Patterson, Francesca Pedriali, Christof Rapp, Gurpreet
Rattan, Krisanna Scheiter, Clerk Shaw, Brooks Sommerville, Matt Strohl, Jacob
Stump, Jan Szaif, Iakovos Vasiliou, David Wolfsdorf, and Joel Yurdin. Their
questions, objections, and comments at different stages of the project have been
essential for improving the final result and for helping me bring it to conclusion.
I especially wish to thank those who made comments or raised objections after
presentations which I gave about parts of the book at the University of Toronto,
the Humboldt University, Princeton University, the University of Vermont-
Burlington, Wellesley College, the University of California-Riverside, the
University of Tennessee-Knoxville, the University of Arizona, Haverford
College, and Virginia Tech University, and to the audiences of my talks on topics
from the book at general meetings of the American Philosophical Society, the
Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, the Ancient Philosophy Society, the
Canadian Philosophical Association, and the European Philosophical Society for
the Study of Emotions.
I am particularly grateful to the participants of the Institute for the History of
Philosophy Summer Workshop that I co-organized with Christoph Rapp at
x 

Emory University in June 2015 on “Aristotle on the Emotions”: Jamie Dow, Craig
Henchey, Corinne Gartner, Paula Gottlieb, Stephen Leighton, Hendrik Lorenz,
Jozef Müller, Tim O’Keefe, Rachel Parsons, Clerk Shaw, Krisanna Scheiter,
Melpomeni Vogiatzi, and Marco Zingano. This workshop provided an ideal
environment to test some of my ideas about the role of emotions in Aristotle’s
ethics and to discuss my main view about the centrality of shame. More recently
I owe also thanks to Lucas Angioni for generously organizing in May 2018 a
workshop on a penultimate version of my manuscript at the University of
Campinas in São Paulo, Brazil, where I received insightful comments from
Lucas, João Hobuss, Fernando Mendonça, Inara Zanuzzi, and Raphael Zillig.
I sincerely thank the participants in this workshop for their valuable comments
and questions, and Lucas in particular for his warm hospitality and for many
stimulating exchanges about topics from the book.
Special thanks are due to Julia Annas and David Konstan, who generously read
whole drafts of this book and provided me with invaluable comments and
suggestions.
I worked out many of the ideas in this book while teaching courses on
Aristotle’s ethics and emotion theory at Emory University. I am grateful to my
students for their interest, their questions, and their insight as we worked together
through Aristotle’s texts and the work of modern commentators.
I would like to extend my gratitude also to my colleagues at the philosophy
department of Emory University for their encouragement and support. A Junior
Post Fourth-Year Review Leave from Emory allowed me to focus exclusively on
my research during the Spring and Fall semesters of 2016. I am grateful to the
university for this generous support.
Thanks are due for the many useful comments of anonymous reviewers at Oxford
University Press and, before that, for the comments of the anonymous reviewers
and editors of the journals where parts of these chapters first appeared as articles.
I also thank the editors at Oxford University Press for their guidance and patience.
I thank my research assistants and good friends, Chad Horne and Jacob Stump,
whose comments on the final drafts helped me clarify some key ideas and saved me
from several mistakes. John Proios and Andrew Culbreth provided last-minute vital
assistance compiling the indexes. I am of course responsible for any errors.
Lastly, I thank my parents, Joaquín Jiménez and Isabel Rodríguez-Valdés, to
whom this book is dedicated, and my wife, Stu Marvel, without whom I would not
have been able to finish anything and to whom I owe it all.
Chapter 1 is a revised version of my paper “Aristotle on Becoming Virtuous by
Doing Virtuous Actions,” Phronesis 61.1 (2016): 3–32. I thank Koninklijke Brill
NV for permission to reprint this material.
Parts of Chapter 2 draw on sections from my paper “Aristotle on ‘Steering the
Young by Pleasure and Pain’,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29.2 (2015):
137–164. I thank Penn State University Press for permission to reprint this
material.
 Introduction

Shame is a complex and multifaceted emotion and its contribution to our ethical
lives is difficult to pin down. For some, shame is a valuable emotion that helps us
to improve our character, motivating individuals and even communities to
achieve higher moral standards. But shame is also often seen as a feeling we are
better off without, insofar as it is a painful experience that can be used as a tool for
social manipulation or oppression, and it can be paralyzing or even lead to self-
destructive behavior.¹ This ambivalence about shame is on display not only in
contemporary discussions, but also in a good portion of the ancient Greek
literature.² In many ancient Greek texts, shame (aidōs, aischunē) appears to be
used in at least two senses, typically including both a good sense of shame as
virtue, or at the very least as a stepping-stone to virtue, and a bad sense of shame as
an oppressive emotion that unduly limits our agency.³ In Aristotle’s ethical
writings we also find both positive and negative aspects of shame: it is praise-
worthy in young people and crucial to their moral development, while it is alien to
the virtuous because it is linked to moral failure and excessively dependent on
what others think. My aim in this book is to show how Aristotle reconciles these
apparently conflicting aspects of shame in a single unified account, and to dispel
shame’s bad name by exploring Aristotle’s views on the nature of shame and its
positive role in our early ethical lives.
My central claim is that shame for Aristotle is not just a helpful aid to learning
to be good, but an essential part of that process. Shame is, I contend, the proto-

¹ Contemporary philosophical discussions of shame often open with remarks about the multifaceted
and ambivalent character of this emotion—see e.g. Kekes 1998; Calhoun 2004; Nussbaum 2004; Mason
2010; Tarnopolsky 2010; Deonna et al. 2012; and Thomason 2018. Among contemporary authors who
deal with shame, some underscore shame’s moral relevance and its potential to encourage moral
improvement—see e.g. Aldrich 1939; Rawls 1971, §67: “Self-Respect, Excellences, and Shame” (440–6);
Taylor 1985; Williams 1993; Elster 1999 (149–64); Calhoun 2004; Manion 2002; Arneson 2007; Mason
2010; Tarnopolsky 2010; Appiah 2010; Deonna et al. 2012; Lebron 2013; Fussi 2015; and Ramirez 2017.
Others, in turn, argue against its moral relevance—see e.g. Deigh 1983; while many others warn us against
shame’s potentially damaging effects—see e.g. Adkins 1960; Kekes 1998; Nussbaum 1980 and 2004 (esp.
ch. 4: “Inscribing the Face: Shame and Stigma”); and Thomason 2018.
² An essential study of the complex character of shame in ancient Greek thought, from Homer to
Aristotle, is Cairns 1993. See also Von Erffa 1937; Fisher 1992; Williams 1993; and Konstan 2006 ch. 4
(91–110). North’s 1966 study on sōphrosunē is also relevant.
³ See Chapter 5, Section 5.3, for a brief discussion of this distinction and the ways in which it has
been attributed to Aristotle. Cairns 1993 offers a thorough study of these two senses of shame in ancient
Greek literature and provides numerous examples.

Aristotle on Shame and Learning to Be Good. Marta Jimenez, Oxford University Press (2020). © Marta Jimenez.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198829683.003.0001
2 

virtue of those learning to be good (I shall call them “learners”),⁴ since it is the
emotion that equips learners with the seeds of virtue. Other emotions such as
friendliness (philia), righteous indignation (nemesis), emulation (zēlos), hope
(elpis), and even spiritedness (thumos) may play important roles on the road to
virtue. However, shame is the only one that Aristotle repeatedly associates with
moral progress. The reason, as I argue, is that shame can move young agents to
perform good actions and avoid bad ones in ways that appropriately resemble not
only the external behaviors of virtue, but also the orientation and receptivity to
moral value characteristic of virtuous people.
What, then, is shame, and how can it be seen to figure in our moral develop-
ment? Although shame is not a virtue for Aristotle, it has three connected features
that make it indispensable for the development of a good character: self-
reflectivity, other-relatedness, and responsiveness to moral considerations beyond
pleasures and gains. First, shame promotes our awareness of the connection
betweeen the inside and outside aspects of the self. Specifically, shame focuses
on the intimate connection between the praiseworthiness (or blameworthiness) of
our actions and the praiseworthiness (or blameworthiness) of our character—it
gets us to see our external behavior and, in general, how we seem to be, as a
reflection of who we are. Secondly, shame makes us receptive to the moral
opinions of others and thus enables us to listen to moral reasons. And finally,
third, shame makes agents responsive to a kind of value beyond mere pleasure
(hēdonē) and mere gain (kerdos). More precisely, shame makes agents responsive
to the value of the kalon (noble, admirable, beautiful, or fine), which is the
characteristic goal of virtue.⁵ By turning the agents’ attention to considerations
about honor (timē) and praise (epainos), and thus—as I will argue—turning their
attention to considerations about the perceived nobility and praiseworthiness of
their own actions and character, shame places young people on the path to
becoming good.
Beyond Aristotle, also in contemporary discussions shame is typically charac-
terized as a self-reflective and other-related emotion. Shame tends to be classified,

⁴ This idea echoes the claim in Burnyeat 1980 that shame is for Aristotle “the semi-virtue of the
learner” (78). Deonna et al. 2012 also use the expression “semi-virtue” in their explanation of shame’s
function in contemporary terms (178). I prefer “proto-virtue” because it has the connotations of being a
precursor of virtue, which I think is more accurate, as it preserves the Aristotelian point that shame puts
learners on the path towards virtue.
⁵ I will translate kalon for the most part as “noble,” but occasionally as “admirable,” “beautiful,” or
“fine,” or will leave it untranslated as seems most appropriate to the context. See note 11 in Chapter 1,
Section 1.2, below for the list of texts where Aristotle claims that doing virtuous actions “for the sake of
the noble” (tou kalou heneka) is characteristic of virtue. Some relevant discussions of the notion of the
kalon in Aristotle are Owens 1981; Rogers 1993; Cooper 1996; Richardson Lear 2006; Irwin 2010; Kraut
2013; and Crisp 2014.
  3

like pride and guilt, as one of the self-conscious or self-reflective emotions.⁶ The
self-reflectivity of shame is special, however, because it always includes a reference
to the gaze of the other. Central to any episode of shame is the apprehension,
imaginary or actual, of oneself as being seen or exposed in a negative light, as being
inadequate or failing in some way.⁷ Thus, shame is a response to the kind of
exposure that leads to loss of esteem in the eyes of others, as when we fail to
conform to social norms and ideals. The other-relatedness of shame is due to its
direct connection to our common human concern with status, respect, and
recognition—a concern that is also behind our appreciation of honor, reputation,
and praise and behind our aversion to contempt, disrepute, and blame. But shame
is also a self-reflective response to the exposure (or potential exposure) of our
failing to achieve goals and ideals that we ourselves think important and insepar-
able from what we are or what we aspire to be in life.
The self-reflectivity of shame, then, directly involves self-evaluation, and is
closely associated with self-esteem.⁸ Specifically, shame is an emotional response
to a kind of unwanted exposure that directly affects our sense of self-worth by
reminding us of the connection between who we are and who we seem to be
through our actions and, in general, through what is visible of us. This explains
why shame is relevant to moral development—especially for someone who, such
as Aristotle, holds that we learn to be good by doing good actions. If our sense of
shame is appropriately cultivated, it will motivate us to avoid doing what is
shameful and pursue instead what is genuinely noble and praiseworthy by tapping
into our aspirations to be the best we can.
From Bernard Williams’ Shame and Necessity (1993) to Anthony Appiah’s The
Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen (2010), and Chris Lebron’s The
Color of Our Shame: Race and Justice in Our Time (2013), shame has been at the

⁶ For the self-reflective or self-conscious character of shame see e.g. Taylor 1985; Tangney et al.
1995; Elster 1999; Calhoun 2004; Manion 2002; Nussbaum 2004; Deonna et al. 2012; and
Thomason 2018.
⁷ The locus classicus for the connection between shame and exposure is Sartre’s famous analysis of
the shame one experiences at being discovered in an embarrassing situation (Sartre 1956, Part 3, ch. 1).
More recent discussions of the connection between shame and exposure are e.g. Williams 1993, who
holds that “the root of shame lies in exposure . . . in being at a disadvantage: in . . . a loss of power” (220);
Velleman 2001, for whom the key events that provokes shame are failures of privacy and “unintentional
self-exposure” (38). Sherman 2016 reminds us that the Greek etymology of aidōs (shame), which is
related to aidoia, genitals, underscores this connection between shame and exposure; as she puts it “to
be ashamed is to be caught without your fig leaf” (128). For the connection between shame and failure
see e.g. Deigh 1983 (following Piers 1953): “shame is occasioned when one fails to achieve a goal or an
ideal that is integral to one’s self-conception. [ . . . ] Shame is felt over shortcomings, guilt over wrong-
doings” (225).
⁸ The self-evaluative character of shame is discussed by e.g. Taylor 1985 (who calls pride, shame, and
guilt “emotions of self-assessment”); Tangney et al. 1995 and 2007 (who claim that shame, guilt, and
embarrassment are “evoked by self-reflection and self-evaluation,” 347); Elster 1999; Manion 2002;
Nussbaum 2004; Deonna et al. 2012; and Thomason 2018 (who characterizes shame as “an experience
of tension between one’s identity and one’s self- conception,” 11). A classic defense of the connection
between shame and self-esteem appears in Rawls 1971 (440–6), while Deigh 1983 argues against the
existence of such a connection.
4 

center of different important proposals on how to reformulate modern ethics

which have brought to the fore the relevance of moral emotions. My book is a
contribution to this conversation. I think that the views of Williams, Appiah, and
Lebron concerning the potential transformative powers of shame are in line with
Aristotle’s understanding of the role of this emotion in moral development.⁹ From
very different angles, these authors converge in seeing that by mobilizing people’s
concern for how they look, how they appear, and whether they are living up to
some ideal, shame (and, for Appiah, love of honor) can encourage people to act in
ways that more closely correspond to their individual and social standards of
decency, and ultimately to live better lives and be better.
Many modern readers, however, are suspicious of shame and maintain that we
do better without it, particularly in the context of a theory of moral formation.¹⁰
Shame’s connection with honor and praise (and with contempt and blame), plus
shame’s concern with how we appear in the eyes of others, provokes two worries:
heteronomy and superficiality. According to the first worry, insofar as shame
makes us depend on the opinions of others, it may seem that shame is an obstacle
to the development of moral autonomy. Agents who respond to shame are seen as
moved by external incentives and societal pressures instead of being guided by
their own internal motivations and reasons, and consequently they are seen as
excessively heteronomous.¹¹ According to the second worry, insofar as shame
tracks how we appear to others, it seems superficial—concerned with reputation
and mere appearance rather than reality.¹² These reservations tend to undermine
or obscure the positive aspects of shame that Aristotle identifies. How can we
square the central role of shame in Aristotle’s theory of moral development with
these more questionable features?
Part of the aim of this book is to argue that the complex nature of shame, its
responsiveness to the moral views of others, and its direct responsiveness to praise
and blame, are precisely the features that make shame a good catalyst for moral
development. Both the self-reflective and the other-related aspects of shame are
key in our progress towards virtue. Against the heteronomy objection, I argue that
shame’s connection with love of honor, reputation, and praise, and with aversion
to disrepute, disgrace, and reproach, is not an obstacle to the development of

⁹ In fact, both Appiah 2010 and Lebron 2013 emphasisize the Aristotelian roots of their views.
Appiah 2010 claims that his study of the relevance of honor in a successful human life “is a contribution
to ethics in Aristotle’s sense” (xiv), while Lebron 2013 appeals to Neo-Aristotelian virtue theory, and
concretely cites the work of Sherman 1989 and Hursthouse 2001 in support of his analysis of how
shame is relevant to contemporary politics (see “Shame and Politics?,” 22–6, and notes 8–9 at 170).
¹⁰ See e.g. Adkins 1960; Kekes 1988; Nussbaum 1980 and 2004; Baron 2017; and Thomason 2018.
Tarnopolsky 2010 presents an insightful review of some of these critics in her Introduction at 2–4 and
discusses the views in more detail in Chapters 5 and 6.
¹¹ See a list of commentators who hold the view that shame is a potential obstacle to autonomy and
my arguments against it in Chapters 4 and 6.
¹² See my characterization of the classic attack on shame (and “shame culture”) and my arguments
against it in Chapter 4 (especially section 4.3).
  5

autonomy. Rather, the attention to other people’s views explains why shame can
help us acquire the intellectual and affective maturity of autonomous moral
agents, who live in a social context where giving and taking reasons for one’s
behavior and choices is part of moral life.¹³ Against the superficiality objection,
I argue that shame’s connection with love of honor and responsiveness to praise
and blame does not entail a superficial concern with appearance over reality. For
Aristotle, love of honor and concern with praise and blame are not just based on
the joy of merely appearing to be good in the eyes of others, but on the joy of
getting others to truly see virtue (or the potential for virtue) in oneself through
one’s actions. Because of its self-reflective character, shame turns our attention to
the intimate link that connects the things we do, and how those things make us
appear in our social world, with the kind of people that we are (or will become). As a
consequence, the aversion to what is shameful, as well as the aspiration to shine in
the eyes of others, are typically indications that learners are attending to consider-
ations about the nobility or shamefulness of their actions as a reflection of who they
are (or who they will become), and have a true interest in doing what is right.
As Aristotle reminds us in Rhetoric (Rhet) II 6, 1383b13–1385a15, the kinds of
things that produce shame are those that are “due to bad character” (apo kakias,
1383b18) or those actions that are generally “signs” (sēmeia) of defective traits of
character (1383b29–1384a4 and 1384b17–20).¹⁴ By producing in us aversion to
displaying signs of bad character or vice, and by making us alert to those signs and
their connection with true vice, shame makes us veer away from the kinds of
actions that make us worse precisely because they make us worse (as opposed to
veering away from bad actions on account of the mere fear of the potential harms
or unpleasant consequences that might follow). Consequently, shame puts learn-
ers on the right path towards true virtue. Far from moving learners to simply fake
virtue until they acquire stable virtuous dispositions of character, shame makes
learners genuinely responsive to the value of the noble, and to how that value is
expressed in what they do and what they are.
Although it is not controversial that shame plays a relevant role in Aristotle’s
theory of ethical formation, the texts that explicitly support this claim are scarce
and scattered throughout the ethical treatises, so any attempt to specify the role of
shame must confront substantial obstacles. Aristotle himself does not provide us
with a direct and detailed explanation of the process of moral development; rather,
in his ethical treatises he offers a schematic account. Thus the reader is left to
decipher the nature of the practices that lead learners to become virtuous agents

¹³ See e.g. Calhoun 2004 and Sher 2006 for insightful discussions of this point. In agreement with
these authors, Aristotle’s view is—as I argue throughout this book, and especially in Chapter 4 below—
that responsiveness to shame equips learners with a sensitivity to blame (and praise) which is clear
expression of a concern with moral issues and an aspiration to getting things right.
¹⁴ Unless otherwise noted, all translations of passages from Aristotle’s Rhetoric are from Rhys
Roberts (in Barnes 1984), sometimes substantially modified, and the Greek text used is Ross 1959.
6 

from a limited number of remarks on habituation and good upbringing.

Moreover, although Aristotle devotes two long discussions to shame—at
Nicomachean Ethics (NE) IV 9, 1128b10–35, and Rhet II 6, 1383b12–1385a15—
both are incomplete and fragmentary, and fail to spell out the details of how
shame is an integral part of young people’s transition into mature moral agents.
To build a more complete and unified account of the role of shame in moral
development, then, we will have to look beyond these texts. Some of the crucial
passages that help build a deeper story about shame are the discussions of moral
development and the relationship between actions and dispositions at NE II 1–4
and Eudemian Ethics (EE) II 1; the characterization of shame as one of the
emotional praiseworthy means between extremes at NE II 7, 1108a30–35, and
EE III 7, 1233b16–1234a34; the treatment of voluntariness and praise in NE III
1–5, 1109b30–1115a3, and EE II 6–11, 1222b15–1228a19; the discussions of the
pseudo-courage based on shame at NE III 8, 1116a15–29, and EE III 1,
1230a16–33; and the final remarks on the ideal audience of ethical lessons at NE
X 9, 1179b4–16, where Aristotle directly associates shame with receptivity to
ethical arguments. As I will show, these passages offer sufficient textual evidence
to establish shame’s relevance to the question of moral education in Aristotle and
to make apparent how shame equips us with the necessary orientation for learning
to be good.

0.1 The “Moral Upbringing Gap” and Shame

as the Bridge to Virtue

Let me start by presenting the problem that the proposal of shame as the proto-
virtue of the learner is designed to solve. Aristotle offers an account in the NE of
how we become good that seems, at first sight, relatively straightforward. He
famously claims that we become just, temperate, and courageous by performing
just, temperate, and courageous actions, and in general, that we become virtuous
agents by doing virtuous actions; I call this the learning-by-doing thesis. Yet
Aristotle also makes clear that virtuous actions performed virtuously, i.e. virtuous
actions done in the right way or as the virtuous person does them, must be
performed both with knowledge and with a proper aim, which he often expresses
as “for the sake of the noble” (tou kalou heneka).¹⁵ The tension between these
claims produces a serious difficulty: How can learners be expected to perform
virtuous actions in the right way—and thereby learn virtue “by doing”—unless

¹⁵ The claim that doing virtuous actions “for the sake of the noble” (tou kalou heneka) is charac-
teristic of virtue (and virtuous people) is expressed by Aristotle on numerous occasions throughout the
discussion of the particular virtues of character in NE III 6 to IV 8, 1115a6–1128b9. See Chapter 1, note
11 for a list of passages where Aristotle makes this claim.
 “  ”        7

they are already virtuous? For if learners are already in such condition as to be able
to do virtuously-performed virtuous actions, then they would have the kind of
knowledge and motivational tendencies that characteristically belong to virtuous
people. The answer is, I propose, that learners are not blank slates, but have
instead proto-virtuous resources that allow them to perform virtuous actions in
the right way before having the relevant dispositions. And crucially, I argue, the
emotion of shame is the key proto-virtuous resource for learners to be able to do
virtuous actions aiming at the right goal.
Aristotle’s solution to the learning-by-doing puzzle in NE II 4 is cryptic, and as
I show in Chapter 1, it has been read in many ways. Some interpretations take the
actions of the learners of virtue to be merely externally similar to those of virtuous
people—this is sometimes called the “mechanical view,” according to which
learners perform the actions in an unthinking and almost automatic way.¹⁶ This
view, as many modern commentators recognize, is unsatisfactory because it fails
to provide the relevant continuity between the actions of the learners and the
dispositions that those actions produce. Specifically, it leaves us with the need to
bridge the gap between the learners’ mechanically performed virtuous actions and
the reliably virtuous dispositions that such actions are supposed to produce—this
is what I call “the moral upbringing gap.”
To achieve continuity in the process of learning by doing—i.e. to make the
learners’ actions truly conducive to virtue—it is required not only that the learners’
actions are virtuous (in the sense of being the right thing to do in the circumstances),
but also that they are done in the right way, i.e. exercising the relevant capacities. The
reason is that, the weaker the link between the manner in which the actions of
learners are performed and the manner in which truly virtuous agents act, the more
difficult it will be to understand how the repeated performance of the learners’
actions can produce genuinely virtuous dispositions of character.
Attention to this requirement of continuity has led most contemporary com-
mentators to agree that habituation is not a mindless process and that learners
must exercise the relevant cognitive capacities in their practices towards virtue.
Concretely, learners must not just perform actions that are right in the circum-
stances, but must also do them with awareness of what they are doing and
involvement of their perceptive and deliberative capacities. By adding this “know-
ledge requirement” to the practices of the learners, most recent interpretations
succeed in maintaining a sufficient continuity in the development of the cognitive
powers relevant to the exercise of virtue.
For many of these commentators, however, the actions of the learners still differ
from those of virtuous people because, they assume, learners do not perform
virtuous actions with virtuous motivation—or more precisely, they do not

¹⁶ See a discussion of this view and a list of authors who defend it in Chapter 1, Section 1.2.
8 

do virtuous actions for the sake of the noble. Unfortunately, as I argue, this
deflationary interpretation of the actions of the learners—this time, deflationary
regarding their goal—leaves Aristotle’s view open to a second problem of discon-
tinuity like the one found in the mechanical view. To fully close this second gap
and provide continuity to the process of moral development, learners must also
have the ability to perform virtuous actions in the right way with regard to their
motivation. Their actions must contribute not only to the formation of cognitive
capacities that enable them to adequately deliberate about practical situations, but
must also lead to the formation of a reliable motivational tendency to orient their
behavior towards the noble and consistently act for the sake of the noble.
Put briefly, not all instances of virtuous actions are conducive to virtue, but only
those that engage both the relevant cognitive capacities and the relevant affective
tendencies in the learner. To be successful, then, learners will have not only to
learn how to determine what kind of behavior is appropriate to each practical
situation, but also to practice the proper ways of being affected, since the goal is to
become the kind of person who not only reliably does virtuous actions, but does
them out of the right stable disposition, i.e. virtue.
For Aristotle, as I will argue, when learners of virtue behave reactively, just
following orders, out of mere familiarity, enticed by the prospect of rewards, or
simply to avoid punishments, they fail to exercise the relevant ethical capacities,
even if they do the right thing; instead, they learn to attend to situational features
that distract their attention from the noble and the good. When people are guided
by their fears or their appetites, they attend to considerations about self-
preservation or self-satisfaction that often take them away from aiming at the
noble and the good. In contrast, the feeling of shame turns agents towards
considerations about the public recognition (approval or disapproval) of their
actions, and thus it tracks a value that is different from pleasure or gain—a value
that, as I will argue, is directly related to nobility and praiseworthiness. Moreover,
when learners are guided by their sense of shame, they focus on how their actions
reveal their character, and consequently they can exercise their agency more fully,
and strive to act in ways that are expressive of nobility and goodness, avoiding to
act in ways that express baseness.
Although behavior moved by shame might appear externally similar to behavior
moved by fear, appetite, etc., there is in fact a significant difference regarding the
cognitive and affective capacities being exercised in each case, and a significant
difference in the kind of character being built. By focusing on questions about the
perceived nobility and praiseworthiness of their actions, or about how to avoid
shameful conduct, learners guided by their sense of shame exercise a capacity for
responsive awareness to the ethically relevant features of their situations. Thus, as
the emotion that spurs agents to perform actions because of their nobility and
praiseworthyness and to avoid those actions that are shameful or reprehensible,
shame provides learners with the sort of malleable pre-habituated orientation
       -    9

towards the noble that allows them to perform virtuous actions with the relevant
motive before they have acquired practical wisdom or stable virtuous dispositions.
This is why shame is crucial to solving our initial puzzle about moral
development.

0.2 Finding Space for Shame as the Proto-Virtue of the Learner

Since the early 1980s there have been numerous attempts to understand Aristotle’s
account of moral upbringing and to determine the steps that, according to
Aristotle, lead towards the acquisition of virtue, with particular attention to the
interplay of cognitive and non-cognitive elements.¹⁷ Thanks to Myles Burnyeat‘s
seminal paper, “Aristotle on Learning to be Good” (1980), much attention has
been paid to two important features of Aristotle’s theory of moral development:
first, the claim from NE II 1 that practice, not teaching, generates virtue of
character; and second, Aristotle’s contention, against Socratic intellectualism,
that moral development requires attention to both cognitive and affective factors.¹⁸
These two basic Aristotelian tenets, which I call the learning-by-doing thesis and the
non-intellectualist thesis respectively, occupy a central place in most modern
accounts of Aristotle’s theory of moral education and are at the core of the argument
of this book.
A third basic tenet that Burnyeat’s interpretation stresses is that there is an
intimate connection between Aristotle’s understanding of the process of acquisi-
tion of virtue and his conception of virtue. As Nancy Sherman puts it, “if full
virtue is to meet certain conditions, then this must be reflected in the educational
process.”¹⁹ Aristotle himself expresses a similar thought in NE II 3, when he states

¹⁷ Much of the literature aims at rethinking the contrast between cognitive and non-cognitive
elements (sometimes expressed in terms of “rational” vs. “non-rational”) and highlight the intertwined
character of those elements. See e.g. Sorabji 1973–4; Burnyeat 1980; Kosman 1980; Engberg-Pedersen
1983; Hursthouse 1984, 1988, and 2001; Sherman 1989 (esp. ch. 5), 1997 and 1999a; Broadie 1991 (esp.
ch. 2); Cooper 1996; McDowell 1996; Vasiliou 1996 and 2007; Kraut 1998 and 2012; Achtenberg 2002;
Curzer 2002 and 2012; Fossheim 2006; Kristjánsson 2006; Lorenz 2009; Lawrence 2009 and 2011; Moss
2011, 2012 (esp. ch. 8), and 2014; and Coope 2012. (This interest in the non-rational and in the role of
emotions in our moral psychology is reinforced by a renewed interest in Aristotle’s theory of emotions
and their role in persuasion as it appears the Rhetoric (see e.g. Fortenbaugh 1970 and 1992; Leighton
1982/1996; Cooper 1993 and 1996b; Striker 1996; Nussbaum 1996; Rapp 2002 and 2012; and Dow
2007, 2009, 2011, and 2015.)
¹⁸ The so-called “Socratic intellectualism,” a label used to indicate that Socrates underestimates the
importance of the affective side of human nature and focuses solely on the intellectual, is probably an
exaggeration that we owe to Aristotle, who sometimes aims at characterizing his view as radically
opposed to that of Socrates in this regard. Although this interpretation of Socrates has been dominant
until recently, an emerging consensus is that at least the Socrates from Plato’s dialogues pays close
attention to the effects of emotions in our intellectual and moral development. See Nehamas 1999 and
Segvic 2000 for careful discussions of the history and the limits of the interpretation of Socrates as a
model of intellectualism, and Blank 1993 for an insightful overview on the relevance of emotions in the
Socratic conversations.
¹⁹ Sherman 1989, 159. See also Burnyeat 1980, 69.
10 

that “the actions from which [virtue] arises (ex hōn egeneto) are those in which
[virtue] actualizes itself (peri tauta kai energei)”²⁰ (1105a15–16). And in EE II 1,
1220a29–32: “Virtue, then, is a disposition of this kind, which is brought about
(ginetai) by the best movements of the soul and which produces (prattetai) the
best functions and affections of the soul.”²¹ This rule, which I call the continuity
principle, is the third main precept behind the argument of this book, and will be
crucial to explain the role that shame plays in our moral development.
One of the fortunate consequences of paying close attention to the details of
Aristotle’s learning-by-doing thesis has been the total abandonment of the old
mechanical view of habituation, according to which the practices of the learners of
virtue are understood simply as the mechanical repetition of behavior that exter-
nally resembles the actions of virtuous people. By contrast, contemporary inter-
pretations highlight that the practices which lead towards the acquisition of virtue
are not mere drills but in fact engage the learners at a cognitive level.
In relation to Aristotle’s non-intellectualist stance, Burnyeat famously points
out that perhaps the most remarkable feature of the Aristotelian account of ethical
upbringing lies in the fact that Aristotle, unlike Socrates, allows non-rational
factors to occupy a preferential place in moral development. For Aristotle,
Burnyeat claims, these non-rational factors are “the fabric of moral character”
(1980, 80).²² This overturning of the Socratic intellectualistic model means, as
Burnyeat puts it, that Aristotle achieves a “grasp of the truth that morality comes
in a sequence of stages with both cognitive and emotional dimensions” (1980, 70–1).
In brief, Aristotle’s learners of virtue find themselves at an intermediate stage in
which both rational and non-rational factors play an important role.
Thus, a second auspicious consequence of Burnyeat’s intervention in the debate
has been a focus on the role of the emotions. Nancy Sherman’s The Fabric of
Character (1989), which offers a general study of Aristotle’s views on the non-
rational sources of virtue, represents a good example of this trend, with a remark-
able attempt to take seriously the role of emotions in moral education.²³ However,
since the main goal of Sherman’s account of moral development is to argue for a
conception of habituation as “reflective and critical,” her focus remains primarily

²⁰ καὶ ὅτι ἐξ ὧν ἐγένετο, περὶ ταῦτα καὶ ἐνεργεῖ. (Unless otherwise noted, all translations of passages
from the NE are from Ross-Urmson (in Barnes 1984), sometimes substantially modified, and the Greek
text used is Bywater 1894.)
²¹ καὶ ἡ ἀρετὴ ἄρα ἡ τοιαύτη διάθεσις ἐστίν, ἣ γίνεταί τε ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρίστων περὶ ψυχὴν κινήσεων καὶ
ἀφ’ ἧς πράττεται τὰ ἄριστα τῆς ψυχῆς ἔργα καὶ πάθη. (Unless otherwise noted, translations of the EE are
from Inwood-Woolf 2013, sometimes substantially modified, and the Greek text used is from Susemihl
1884.) See also NE II 2, 1103b29–31 and 1104a27–29; NE II 3, 1104b19–21; and NE III 5, 1114a6–7, all
quoted in Chapter 1. Section 1.3 below.
²² This phrase would later be the title of Sherman’s 1989 monograph on Aristotle’s theory of virtue.
²³ See especially Sherman 1989, 44–50. See also e.g. Fortenbaugh 1969 (repr. 2006); Kosman 1980;
and Sherman 1997 and 1999a. For a treatment of this issue from a broader perspective see
Kristjánsson 2007.
       -    11

on “how we refine the discriminatory capacities included in the emotions”

(1989, 160).
My goal here is to contribute to this study of the emotional dimension of moral
development by offering an account of the role of shame as the emotion that
provides the minimal starting conditions that make moral progress possible. On
my interpretation, shame, which was considered to be a fundamental civic virtue
in the tradition from Homer to Plato, does not lose its force and relevance in the
works of Aristotle. Although Aristotle, like Plato, partly breaks with the tradition
that precedes him by giving shame a reduced role in the life of the virtuous person,
his strategy is to transfer the central role of shame from the virtuous life to earlier
stages in moral development, and to regard it as a requirement for the acquisition
of mature virtue.²⁴ Shame, then, is not less important in Aristotle’s work than it
was in the work of his predecessors; on the contrary, for Aristotle shame is an
indispensable notion in the explanation of how the acquisition of full virtue is
possible.
Contemporary commentators often reject that shame can play a positive role in
moral development because they assume that Aristotle understands shame as a
desire for mere reputation and a fear of mere disrepute.²⁵ For them, Aristotle has
strong reasons to reject shame’s role in the development of a fully virtuous agent
because shame’s dependence on the opinion of others and its concern with
appearance make it incompatible with the sort of orientation towards the noble
that is characteristic of a virtuous agent. In other words, they attribute to Aristotle
the heteronomy and superficiality worries that we find in contemporary literature
about shame. My goal is to show that for Aristotle shame is directly linked with a
concern with nobility and praiseworthiness—a concern with being seen as noble
and expressing nobility (or avoiding shamefulness) in one’s actions because one
aspires to genuine nobility and goodness—and I argue that such a link places
shame at the center of Aristotle’s understanding of our moral development.
There are some scholars who recently, and as part of the renewed interest in the
role of emotions in our intellectual and moral lives, have taken a more sympa-
thetic conception of the relationship between shame, virtue, and the noble in
Aristotle’s work.²⁶ Some of them have opened promising avenues for a positive

²⁴ Thus, views like that of Irwin 1999, who sees in the fact that Aristotle denies to shame the
condition of being a virtue a sign that he “rejects a long Greek tradition” (347) are exaggerated in my
opinion. On the contrary, I hold that Aristotle does not reject the long tradition that considers shame a
central element in the regulation of moral conduct. He merely refines this view by limiting the positive
role of shame to the sphere of moral development rather than moral maturity.
²⁵ Some representative examples of this negative interpretation of Aristotle’s view of shame (as
excessively other-dependent and superficial) are Irwin 1999; Broadie 1993; Richardson Lear 2004;
Taylor 2006; and Hitz 2012. This view will be discussed in detail in Chapter 4 below.
²⁶ This is particularly the case since Burnyeat 1980. Other authors who explicitly acknowledge that
shame has an important place in Aristotle’s account of moral development are: Cairns 1993; Curzer
2002 and 2012; Grönroos 2007; and Raymond 2017. For challenging arguments against this strategy see
Hitz 2012.
12 

role of shame in moral development, and the approach that I propose in this book
is greatly influenced by their insights.
My view on the centrality of shame in moral progress is most indebted to
Burnyeat’s account of habituation and learning to be good in Aristotle, and a
major part of this book can be seen as a development and defense of his view. For
Burnyeat, shame is crucial in moral progress because it is the emotion that turns
learners towards the noble by initiating them in the proper appreciation of the
pleasures of the noble. Concretely, Burnyeat underscores how shame helps to
transform the learners’ motivational outlook by shifting their attention from
appetitive pleasures to the pleasures of noble activities. I believe Burnyeat’s
account is fundamentally right and provides the right clue to solve the problem
of the gap in moral development: the learners’ ability to feel shame—which
Burnyeat calls “the semi-virtue of the learner” (78)—is precisely what gives
them initial access to the new pleasures of the noble. What I set as my goal to
explain, is exactly how shame does that.
My view aims at complementing Burnyeat’s initial proposal by explaining how
shame gives learners access to the value of the noble through a more basic concern
with honor, reputation, and praise. This concern with honor, reputation, and
praise performs a double function: on the one hand, it turns the agents’ attention
away from the lure of mere pleasure and mere advantage, and makes them able to
resist the temptation of shameful pleasures and gains; on the other hand, it turns
agents towards considerations of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, and thus
puts them on the track of the noble and away from the shameful.
My defense of shame, then, requires that we pay close attention to Aristotle’s
crucial distinction between three objects of choice at NE II 3, 1104b30–31, namely
the noble, the advantageous, and the pleasant, and that we acknowledge that while
these objects of choice are often aligned in the eyes of virtuous people, agents can
be motivated by each of them separately from early on in life. Crucially, young
people can be moved by the motive of the noble before they have been fully
formed in virtue, and this capacity enables them to perform virtuous actions in the
right way and to choose the noble over the merely pleasant and the advantageous
in ways that have a transformative effect on their character.
A second wave of inspiration comes from some of Burnyeat’s critics (such as
Curzer 2012) who propose models of moral education that focus on conditioning
strategies, where the weight is placed in associating pleasures or pains to the right
objects. I show that these models fail to confer sufficient continuity to the process
and are unable to explain how actions guided by appetitive pleasures and pains
can yield dispositions to act for the sake of the noble and in avoidance of the
shameful. Instead, I argue that young people have from the start a basic appreci-
ation of nobility and a repulsion towards the shameful and that moral upbringing
consists in the cultivation of that initial appreciation of the noble—especially
       -    13

through our practices of praise and blame—and in the proper integration of that
tendency with our other tendencies to be drawn towards the pleasant or the
advantageous and to move away from the painful and the harmful.
In my argument, I emphasize that to explain how the relevant transformation
in the learners occurs we need an independent account of the origin of the love of
the noble. A good starting point for moral development will have to be a capacity
or tendency that enables learners to appreciate the noble and desire the noble for
its own sake. For this reason, a third crucial counterpoint for my view comes from
Cooper 1996, whose account of moral development has the virtue of providing
exactly that starting point. Cooper holds that thumos (spirit) is the emotion that
equips us with an innate impulse towards the noble, and thus it is thumos that
sows the first seeds of moral progress by enabling learners to have their first
experience of moral value. The idea of a natural emotional tendency that enables
learners to identify and be motivated by the noble is, I think, the best way to
ensure that there is motivational continuity between the practices of the learners
and the dispositions that they are aiming to acquire. In this regard, Cooper’s
project is attractive because it provides a coherent account of Aristotelian moral
development without any gaps. However, Cooper locates the first impulse towards
the noble in the wrong place. The Aristotelian discussion of thumos is much
thinner and vaguer than Cooper’s treatment suggests, and it is hard to see how the
limited textual evidence could support thumos’ robust orientation towards the
noble. In fact, Aristotle’s view of the place of thumos in our psychology is less
defined than in Plato, and he tends to characterize thumos as a reactive emotion
without a clear object.
To further Cooper’s view, some authors (such as Richardson Lear 2004 and
Grönroos 2007) have proposed to emphasize the thumoeidetic nature of shame,
and conceive of shame as an emotion inseparably linked to thumos and associated
with thumoeidetic desires. This move strengthens Cooper’s proposal by adding the
important textual support from the passages on shame. However, Aristotle never
explicitly associates thumos and shame, and when he deals with these two emotions
in the same discussion (as in NE III 8, 1116a15–29 and 1116b23–1117a9, and in EE
III 1, 1229a20–29 and 1230a16–33), he keeps the two emotions clearly separated and
attributes different roles to each of them.
My account of shame’s role in moral development is indebted to these attempts
to find in Aristotle a first natural tendency towards the noble, and my view on the
role of shame has many features in common with these thumos-centered views.
I think, however, that disentagling shame from thumos has important textual and
theoretical advantages.
Moreover, I have found essential support for my view that shame is at the
center of Aristotle’s account of moral development in Cairns’ 1993 comprehensive
study on the history of the term from Homer to Aristotle. Much of what I say
14 

about the nature of shame and its aptness to guide learners in their path to virtue is
in tune with Cairns’ analysis. In contrast with his interpretation (and with
Raymond 2017), however, I argue that Aristotle has convincing reasons for
conceiving shame as a proto-virtuous emotion, and not as a virtue.
While Cairns sees as a failure Aristotle’s reluctance to give shame the status of
disposition, I believe that shame can perform a central role in moral development
precisely because it is an emotion only appropriate in young people and indeed
not a disposition at all. In my view, Aristotle establishes a division between
emotions (pathē), capacities (dunameis), and dispositions or states (hexeis) pre-
cisely because he is interested in differentiating between the conditions of those
who are in the process of acquiring virtue and those who have already succeeded
in doing so. For this reason, Aristotle is rightly invested in classifying shame as an
emotion and not as a virtue. Shame is appropriate only for those who are in the
intermediate stages of moral development, i.e. for those who do not yet have fully
formed dispositions in their soul.
In sum, my claim that shame is the key emotional factor in the process of moral
development stands in harmony with those authors who contend that obedience
to one’s sense of shame is what enables learners to make progress towards virtue.
Where my analysis differs, however, is in regard to details concerning the rela-
tionship of shame with pleasure and pain, the relation between shame and spirit,
the nature of shame as a peculiar emotion, and shame’s relationship with honor,
with the noble, and with virtue.
Finally, my view that shame is at the heart of Aristotle’s account of moral
development is not incompatible with accounts that explore the value of musical
education to explain our initial steps in learning to appreciate the value of the
noble. It is uncontroversial that musical education plays a crucial role in
Aristotle’s explanation of how we learn to properly appreciate and enjoy the
value of the noble. A number of recent accounts offer rich material to support
this point, and I believe that the view I present is in harmony with that important
part of Aristotle’s model of moral upbringing.²⁷ In this regard, I depart from the
view of Hitz 2012, where musical education is presented as an alternative to
education through shame. Yet my contribution aims not at competing with the
accounts of moral development through music and imitation, but at highlighting a
complementary part of the process, by arguing that we have a natural impulse
towards nobility and aversion to the shameful that emerges directly in the context
of our social interactions and guides us on the path of learning to be good.

²⁷ For recent discussions of different aspects of Aristotle’s account of musical education and its role
in initiating us in the appreciation of the noble see e.g. Fossheim 2006; Hitz 2012; Brüllmann 2013;
Cagnoli Fiecconi 2016; and Hampson 2019.
     15

0.3 Plan of the Book

The first step in my argument is to examine the account of habituation as

learning-by-doing in NE II 1–4, 1103a14–1105b18, the locus classicus of
Aristotle’s account of how virtue of character is acquired through habits. In
Chapter 1, “Becoming Virtuous by Doing Virtuous Actions,” I look at the details
of the learning-by-doing thesis and propose a new way of thinking about the
conditions that learners of virtue must meet for their habituation to be successful.
The gist of my proposal is that there should be continuity between how learners
and virtuous agents act. If the actions of the learners are to be conducive to virtue,
then learners need to perform them in ways that appropriately resemble how
virtuous people act. For that reason, learners cannot be blank slates, but should at
least partly fulfill the requirements for knowledge, motivation, and stability that
NE II 4 establishes as necessary for doing virtuous actions in the right way (i.e.
virtuously). Becoming good, then, requires the proper exercise of both the cogni-
tive capacities and the affective tendencies that anticipate in the learner the way in
which virtuous agents think and feel.
I argue that to achieve the relevant continuity between the learners’ actions and
the resulting dispositions, learners need to perform virtuous actions not just with
sufficient awareness but also with the right motivation. This means that learners
should be equipped with some initial minimal affective tendencies that enable
them to perform virtuous actions for the sake of the noble. Only then, I think, will
their actions be conducive to virtue.
Chapter 2, “Learning through Pleasure, Pain, the Noble, and the Shameful,”
offers a first step towards explaining how the learners’ motivational outlook is
shaped in habituation. Specifically, in this chapter I explore the role that pleasures
and pains play in the learners’ capacity to be attracted to the nobility of virtuous
actions and to aim at the noble in action before they are virtuous.
In the view that I propose, moral development is not the acquisition of a taste
for the new pleasures of the noble, but a reorienting and shaping of the already-
present capacity to enjoy nobility and be pained by the shameful—a reorienting
and shaping through which learners of virtue become better able to appreciate the
comparatively superior value of nobility over mere pleasure or mere gain. My
main point is that the taste for the noble and the capacity to appreciate it is present
in us from the start, just as the desire for pleasure and the desire for benefit. Moral
upbringing is the process in which we learn to align those desires and tendencies
correctly and to give priority to the noble over all other considerations.
In Chapter 3, “Pseudo-Virtuous Practices, Pseudo-Virtuous Conditions,”
I analyse a number of possible sources for our pre-habituated taste for the
noble. My goal in this chapter is to find a natural condition that can equip learners
with resources to be able to perform virtuous actions on account of their nobility.
16 

To this end, I explore the causes of the different kinds of apparent courage (or
“pseudo-courage”) introduced by Aristotle in NE III 8 and EE III 1. These passages
are testimony to the complexity of Aristotle’s understanding of the relationship
between agents, actions, behavioral tendencies, and dispositions of character. By
exploring the “missing ingredients” in each of the causes of pseudo-courage—
shame (aidōs), fear (phobos), experience (empeiria), spirit (thumos), hope (euel-
pis), and ignorance (agnoia)—we gain a clearer idea of the requirements that the
learners’ actions must fulfill to bring them closer to virtue, as well as a clearer idea
of the preconditions which learners themselves must meet in order to perform
virtuous actions properly.
The analysis of these passages reveals that the variety of pseudo-courage based
on shame—the best of the two kinds of political courage—is the most promising
candidate to equip learners with a proto-version of the conditions for virtuously
performed virtuous actions, and consequently, as a potential proto-virtue. Agents
with shame, although not yet virtuous, perform virtuous actions on account of
their nobility and avoid base actions on account of their shamefulness. For this
reason, shame stands out as a good candidate to bridge the moral upbringing gap.
There are, however, widely accepted objections against the claim that shame is a
good guide to perform virtuous actions on account of their nobility. Many
commentators fall prey to a modern prejudice against shame and hold that for
Aristotle shame orients people towards the superficial goal of honor, not the
noble, and away from what brings discredit, rather than from what is truly base.
Chapter 4, “Connecting Shame with Honor and the Noble,” is devoted to showing
that the interpretation of shame as a superficial concern with reputation or
external recognition comes about as a result of overlooking the connections that
Aristotle makes between love of honor and love of the noble.
Indeed, Aristotle has a complex view of the role that our sense of shame, as a
sensitivity to honors and reproaches, plays in the social practices of praise and
blame, a view that enables him to establish a robust link between love of honor and
the concern with one’s own virtue and with the nobility of one’s actions. As a
result, learners with a sense of shame can perform actions that are not only
externally indistinguishable from those of virtuous people, but are also ultimately
oriented towards the same noble goals and are similarly done for the sake of the
noble. They therefore fulfill at least partially the core motivation requirement for
virtuously-performed virtuous action, and for this reason their actions constitute
the right kind of practice towards the acquisition of virtue.
If the conclusion of Chapter 4 is correct and shame plays a beneficial role in
orienting learners towards virtue and the noble, then it becomes harder to see why
Aristotle considers shame to be a “proto-virtue” and not a proper virtue.
Chapter 5, “The Mixed Nature of Shame,” explores why Aristotle insists on the
“mixed” character of shame in his ethical treatises, where he characterizes it as a
sui generis emotion that is only in some respects like a virtue. I argue that he has
     17

good reasons to maintain that shame is a special kind of emotion—concretely, one

of the praiseworthy emotional means (EE III 7, 1233b16–1234a34; cf. NE II 7,
1108a30–35)—but not a virtuous disposition of character.
Appealing to the Aristotelian scheme of capacities, emotions, and dispositions,
I show that shame’s peculiar status as a praiseworthy emotion is a necessary
feature for it to be able to operate as a bridge towards virtue in young people.
For only if shame is an emotion and not a stable disposition of character can he
attribute shame to those young people who are not yet virtuous but are on the path
towards virtue.
A final obstacle against shame’s crucial role in moral development is the
apparent tension between the two main texts on shame in the NE, IV 9,
1128b10–35, and X 9, 1179b4–16. In Chapter 6, “Shame as the Proto-Virtue of
the Learners,” I present my interpretation of the nature and function of shame and
show that these passages complement each other. Together, they offer support for
my view that agents who are responsive to their sense of shame already have both
a grasp of the noble and the shameful, which allows them to produce value
judgments in the right terms. They have also an attachment to the noble and
aversion to the shameful, which enables them to be properly affected by the
relevant features of their practical situations and act in ways that are conducive
to virtue. In other words, in these passages shame emerges as a genuine love of
noble things and hatred of shameful ones that allows young people to perform
virtuous actions in the right way and make reliable progress towards virtue.
Learners who are responsive to shame are in a much better condition than
those who have no shame at all (the “shameless”) or those who have excessive
shame (the “timid”), not only because they are able to do virtuous actions in the
right way, but also because they are able to properly exercise their agency. They are
aware that they can shape who they are (and who they become) through their own
actions, and thus see their actions as expressions of their selves and as opportun-
ities for becoming better. Although they are not yet virtuous, these learners of
virtue can appreciate the value of noble activity and can guide their actions by a
true interest in doing the right thing for its own sake.
In conclusion, my interpretation provides a genuinely intermediate place for
the learners of virtue with respect to both the cognitive and affective dimensions of
moral development, and is thus better able to explain the process of becoming
virtuous without any gaps.
 1
Becoming Virtuous by Doing Virtuous
Actions

1.1 The Problem of the Gap in Moral Development

How do we develop a good character? Although Aristotle often claims that

becoming virtuous is a matter of three factors, namely nature, habit, and reason,
he clearly holds that good habits are what makes all the difference.¹ He famously
opens his discussion of the virtues of character in the NE with the assertion that
the virtues of character are in us through habituation:

Virtue, then, is of two kinds, of thought and of character. Virtue of thought arises
and grows mainly from teaching; that is why it requires experience and time.
Character virtue, on the other hand, comes about from habit; that is why also its
name is one that is formed by a slight variation from the word for ‘habit’ (ethos).²
(NE II 1, 1103a14–18)

While good habits are clearly the core of his account, Aristotle does not deny that
nature plays an important role in the acquisition of character virtues. On the
contrary, he claims that “we are adapted by nature (pephukosi) to acquire them,
but are made perfect (teleioumenois) through habit”³ (NE II 1, 1103a25–26). His
view is that we become just by doing just actions, courageous by doing courageous
actions, and in general, virtuous by doing virtuous actions. And we are naturally
equipped to become good by doing such actions. What kinds of habits lead
learners towards virtue? And what are the conditions that make learners ready to
receive the virtues and allow them to succeed in becoming good? In this chapter I

¹ For the claim that virtues of character are the result of a combination of nature, habit, and reason
see e.g. Politics (Pol) VII 13, 1332a38–b11, and the closing remarks of the NE at X 9, 1179b18–31. In EE
I 1, 1214a14–30, Aristotle mentions these factors, adding also chance, as the causes of happiness. As
Burnyeat 1980 indicates, the question about the origin of virtue was a “well-worn topic of discussion” in
Aristotle’s time, and the beginning of Plato’s Meno (70a) offers a typical example of the usual way of
framing the debate.
² Διττῆς δὴ τῆς ἀρετῆς οὔσης, τῆς μὲν διανοητικῆς τῆς δὲ ἠθικῆς, ἡ μὲν διανοητικὴ τὸ πλεῖον ἐκ
διδασκαλίας ἔχει καὶ τὴν γένεσιν καὶ τὴν αὔξησιν, διόπερ ἐμπειρίας δεῖται καὶ χρόνου, ἡ δ’ ἠθικὴ ἐξ ἔθους
περιγίνεται, ὅθεν καὶ τοὔνομα ἔσχηκε μικρὸν παρεκκλῖνον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἔθους.
³ πεφυκόσι μὲν ἡμῖν δέξασθαι αὐτάς, τελειουμένοις δὲ διὰ τοῦ ἔθους.

Aristotle on Shame and Learning to Be Good. Marta Jimenez, Oxford University Press (2020). © Marta Jimenez.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198829683.003.0002
 --,  , &   19

present the beginning of an answer by paying attention to how Aristotle deals with
a potential gap in his explanation.
The claim that we become virtuous by doing virtuous actions is open to a
familiar objection concerning the priority of actions over dispositions: How can
we perform virtuous actions unless we are already virtuous? My goal is to explore
Aristotle’s response to this “priority objection” in NE II 4, with special attention to
how considerations of continuity between the practices of the learners and those of
virtuous people affect his understanding of the process of moral upbringing. My
main concern is to keep track of the fact that the learners’ actions need to be
continuous with the dispositions that those actions produce, so I argue that proper
habituation involves doing virtuous actions in a way that can count as an exercise
of the cognitive and motivational capacities and tendencies that constitute virtue,
even though those capacities and tendencies are not fully developed or activated in
the learners. To explain how the proper exercise of those capacities and tendencies
is possible for the learners, I argue, we need to have a robust account of what
Aristotle means when he says that we are naturally able to receive the virtues of
character.
In the central sections of the chapter, I explain and reject a common reading
of Aristotle’s response to the priority objection, a reading that I call the
motivationally-neutral view because it offers a deflationary account of the learners’
actions in relation to motivation. The problem with this view is, I argue, that it
fails to provide continuity between the learners’ actions and the resulting disposi-
tions to act for the sake of the noble. To conclude, I lay out an alternative proposal,
inspired by a parallel text from Metaphysics (Metaph) IX 8, 1049b29–1050a2, that
enables us to understand moral development as a continuous process, where the
dispositions do not arise in agents ex nihilo so to speak, through the practice of
fully non-virtuous capacities and tendencies, but instead, they grow out of the
learners’ proper use of proto-virtuous resources that they already have.
My goal is to show that (and explain why) Aristotle alludes in his ethical
treatises to emotional resources available to learners that could allow them to
somehow aim at the noble in their actions and grasp the value of virtuous actions
before they possess virtuous dispositions of character. Because learners can make
use of such emotional resources before having virtue, their practices can resemble
those of virtuous people not simply in their external outcomes, but also in the
relevant internal motivational aspects.

1.2 Learning-by-Doing, Priority Objection,

and Virtue Acquisition

NE II 1 presents Aristotle’s familiar view that virtues of character come about “as a
result of habit” (ex ethous, 1103a17). Virtues of character are dispositions that are
20      

neither present in us from birth nor arise in us as part of our natural development,
but instead require our active involvement for their coming into being and their
completion—we are born only with the ability to form them “through habit” (dia
tou ethous, 1103a26). Although this view seems straightforward in its initial
formulation, Aristotle’s explanation in the lines which immediately follow, in
terms of the learners “having exercised” (energēsantes) and “doing” (prattontes)
virtuous actions before possessing the corresponding dispositions, involves some
complications.⁴
The complications of the account become apparent in NE II 4, 1105a17–21,
where Aristotle himself admits that the claim that learners perform virtuous
actions before having virtue gives rise to a potential objection concerning the
priority of actions over dispositions: How can learners perform virtuous actions
unless they are already (ēdē) virtuous? In other words, how can learners become
virtuous by doing virtuous actions, if one must be virtuous prior to doing virtuous
actions? Aristotle responds to this priority objection by denying that having virtue
is a requirement for all cases of doing virtuous actions. His strategy is to distin-
guish between (a) simply doing virtuous actions, i.e. doing actions that are “in
accordance with the virtues” (kata tas aretas); and (b) doing virtuous actions
virtuously (or ‘justly’ (dikaiōs), ‘temperately’ (sōphronōs), etc.), which requires the
agent to fulfill three further crucial requirements concerning knowledge, motiv-
ation, and stability (NE II 4, 1105a26–b12).
But Aristotle’s response to the priority objection seems to generate a new
problem—this time a problem of discontinuity. If we take his view to be that
learners become virtuous by doing virtuous actions, but in a different way than how
virtuous people do them—i.e. not virtuously—then it is hard to see how actions
performed in that way can contribute to the formation of truly virtuous dispositions.
Indeed, the more deflationary the characterization of the way that learners perform
virtuous actions, the more difficult it is to find any significant continuity between
those actions and the virtuous dispositions they are expected to yield.

⁴ NE II 1, 1103a26–b2 (quoted and discussed in detail in Section 1.7.3 of this chapter). The puzzling
claim, as discussed below, is “we acquire the virtues by first having exercised them” (τὰς δ’ ἀρετὰς
λαμβάνομεν ἐνεργήσαντες πρότερον, 1103a31). The explanation in the final section of EE II 1 might be
susceptible to similar complications, although it is not explicitly formulated in terms of exercise-before-
possession: “Virtue, then, is a tendency of this kind, which is brought about by the best movements of
the soul and which produces the best functions and affections of the soul” (καὶ ἡ ἀρετὴ ἄρα ἡ τοιαύτη
διάθεσις ἐστίν, ἣ γίνεταί τε ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρίστων περὶ ψυχὴν κινήσεων καὶ ἀφ’ ἧς πράττεται τὰ ἄριστα τῆς
ψυχῆς ἔργα καὶ πάθη, 1120a29–32) and “a thing gets habituated as a result of a pattern of conduct that is
not innate, by repeated movement of one sort or another, so that eventually it is capable of being active
in that way” (ἐθίζεται δὲ τὸ ὑπ’ ἀγωγῆς μὴ ἐμφύτου τῷ πολλάκις κινεῖσθαι πώς, οὕτως ἤδη τὸ
ἐνεργητικόν, 1120b1–3).
 --,  , &   21

Many recent commentators have highlighted this difficulty,⁵ and many have
proposed accounts of habituation that aim at finding continuity in the process.⁶
Precisely for this reason, most commentators have abandoned the so-called
mechanical view of habituation, according to which habituation is conceived as
a mostly non-rational process of shaping—typically through repetitions, punish-
ments, and rewards—the learners’ emotional responses and their relationship to
pleasure and pain.⁷ On the mechanical view, the actions of learners are externally
similar to those of virtuous people but nonetheless lack the intellectual and
affective components that characterize virtuous people’s actions. Against this
view, numerous scholars assert that habituation is not mindless repetition, but
instead involves from the start the cultivation of the learners’ perceptive and
critical powers.⁸ These scholars argue that if learners do not exercise their

⁵ Many commentators worry that Aristotle’s response in NE II 4 seems at first to make mysterious
the formation of mature moral character through practice and that we need further explanation. For
example, Broadie writes: “the more he stresses the differences, the more one is entitled to wonder how
merely performing the actions leads to moral character” (1991, 104); Curzer 2012 finds Aristotle’s
response lacking as he takes it to be presented in NE II 4, and he rightly locates the problem in the fact
that habituation (as repetition of merely virtuous acts not done virtuously) does not seem to explain
how learners acquire the knowledge and motivation required for virtue: “It is easy enough to see how
performing virtuous acts can provide dispositions of virtuous action. . . . But the acquisition of the two
remaining components of virtue seems mysterious. How do we acquire the ability to identify virtuous
acts? How do we come to desire virtuous acts for their own sake?” (318–19, my emphasis). Similarly,
Taylor 2006 finds Aristotle’s explanations in NE II 4 unsatisfactory and claims that “Aristotle seems to
have slipped away from addressing the crucial problem, at least as it arises from the formulation in
chapter 1. . . . If that is still his problem in this chapter, he does not solve it by distinguishing between
exercising a skill and doing the things prescribed by the skill without possessing it. For the latter is not
exercising the skill; hence the distinction contributes nothing to answering the question ‘How is it
possible to acquire a skill by exercising it?’ ” (82).
⁶ As I advance in the Introduction (Section 0.2), an explicit concern for continuity is present, for
example, in Burnyeat‘s characterization of Aristotle’s views on moral development, where he relies on
the basic rule that there must be an intimate dependence between Aristotle’s understanding of the
process of acquisition of virtue and his conception of virtue (1980, 69). See also Sherman 1989
(esp. 159), quoted above in Section 0.2.
⁷ The expression “mechanical theory” is used by Grant 1885 to refer to the view that there is no
significant involvement of reason in habituation (480). This expression is later taken up by Sherman
1989 in her rejection of this theory and her defense of the view she calls “critical habituation” (157–9).
Early defenders of the mechanical view of habituation are Grant 1885; Stewart 1892; and Joachim 1951.
This view has also modern defenders, e.g. Engberg-Pedersen 1983, although his position is only
moderately mechanical, since he explicitly rejects the view that habituation is a “mindless process”
(158). Another moderate version of the mechanical view can be found in Curzer 2012, who under-
stands habituation as the “mechanism of internalizing the punishments,” and appeals to Pol 1338b4
(“education is to be in habits before it is in reason”) to minimize the presence of reason in habituation
(317).
⁸ There is a long and varied list of authors who explicitly reject the mechanical view and hold that
habituation must include the cultivation of the learners’ cognitive powers. For example, Burnyeat 1980:
“Aristotle is not simply giving us a bland reminder that virtue takes practice. Rather, practice has
cognitive powers, in that it is the way in which we learn what is noble or just” (73); Sherman 1989:
“Contrary to the popular interpretation according to which ethical habituation is nonrational, I argue
that it includes early on the engagement of cognitive capacities” (7), and “We misconstrue Aristotle’s
notion of action producing character if we isolate the exterior moment of action from the interior
cognitive and affective moments which characterize even the beginner’s ethical behaviour” (178);
Broadie 1991: “Forming a habit is connected with repetition, but where what is repeated are (for
example) just acts, habituation cannot be a mindless process, and the habit (once formed) of acting
22      

perceptual and deliberative capacities in their practices towards virtue, then it

becomes a mystery as to how they eventually develop them.⁹
Although the mechanical view has been mostly abandoned because of its
inability to explain the transition to moral maturity, and most commentators
today hold that reason has to be present (at least in some degree) in the process of
habituation, many nonetheless think that Aristotle gives a deflationary account
of the learners’ actions in relation to motivation. It is common to see the learners’
actions characterized as being virtuous only “in an equivocal sense” or
“homōnimōs” (Stewart), “only in their external aspect like those that virtue
produces” (Ross), not virtuous “in the same full sense as those which we do
when our hexis is fully formed” (Joachim), “not strictly virtuous” or actions that
“while not strictly virtuous or accomplished, have an external similarity to the
performances which manifest a virtue” (Hardie), “minimally virtuous actions”
and “acts that are less than fully V[irtuous]” (Williams), “virtuous actions in a
minimal sense” (Vasiliou), and so on.¹⁰ In all these cases, scholars see the actions
of the learners as lacking in relation to those of virtuous people because they are
not done for virtuous motives—i.e. they are not done for the sake of the noble, but
aiming at some other goal, typically pleasure or gain.
Here I propose to extend the application of the continuity principle to motiv-
ational tendencies and show that continuity is both possible and necessary for
developing in the learners a reliable tendency to do actions for the sake of the
noble. I argue that deflationary views of the learners’ actions in relation to
motivation should be rejected for reasons similar to those we have for rejecting
the mechanical view: they are similarly unable to explain how the learners’ actions
contribute to the formation of virtuous dispositions. Against these deflationary
views, I argue that Aristotle’s account requires that the actions of the learners have
continuity with those of virtuous people not only in that they are the right things
to do in the circumstances, but also in that they are done from right motives.
In my view, the actions of learners can and indeed must be done for the sake of
the noble, even if learners do not yet have stable virtuous dispositions of character.

justly cannot be blind in its operations, since one needs intelligence to see why different things are just
under different circumstances” (109); Kraut 2012: “that process of thoughtless routinization cannot be
what Aristotle has in mind when he says that we become just by doing just acts. . . . a just person is good
at thinking about problems that call for a just response. That kind of thoughtfulness cannot be acquired
by automatically and mindlessly repeating some single type of action like brushing one’s teeth” (539).
See also Hardie 1968, 104–5; Cooper 1975, 8; Sorabji 1980, 216; Hursthouse 1988, 210–11; McDowell
1996, 28; Vasiliou 2007, 42.

⁹ In Sherman’s terms, the problem with the mechanical view is that it “leaves unexplained how the
child with merely ‘habituated’ virtue can ever develop the capacities requisite for practical reason and
inseparable from full virtue” (1989, 158).
¹⁰ See respectively Stewart 1892, 183; Ross 1923, 194; Joachim 1951, 79; Hardie 1968, 104–5;
Williams 1995, 14; Vasiliou 2007, 51. We can find an even more deflationary account in Gauthier
and Jolif 1958–9, where virtuous actions can only be performed by virtuous people (130, quoted in note
34 below).
     “”     23

To make this move plausible, I question the assumption that only virtuous agents
can perform virtuous actions on account of their nobility. For although it is true
that aiming at the noble in action belongs characteristically to virtuous people, this
does not preclude the possibility that non-virtuous agents occasionally act for the
sake of the noble.¹¹
By recognizing that the learners can become genuinely virtuous only if they can
at least occasionally act from such a motive, and by showing moreover that the
virtuous actions of learners can be performed for the sake of the noble, my view
shows that Aristotle’s account can provide a satisfactory explanation of how doing
virtuous actions can eventually yield genuinely virtuous dispositions.

1.3 The Question about the “How”

and the Continuity Principle

In NE II 1–3 (and EE II 1) Aristotle discusses the general relationship between

actions (praxeis) and dispositions (hexeis) and explains how practice contributes
to the generation of dispositions. To this end, he repeatedly refers to the similarity
that exists between the actions of the learners and those of virtuous people: the
actions of the learners, he claims, reflect the relevant features of the actions of
those who possess the corresponding disposition. Here are some of his remarks in
support of this point:

¹¹ The claim that doing virtuous actions “for the sake of the noble” (tou kalou heneka) is charac-
teristic of virtue (and virtuous people) is expressed by Aristotle on numerous occasions throughout the
discussion of the particular virtues of character in NE III 6, 1115a6, to IV 8, 1128b9. See e.g. NE III 7,
1115b10–13: “the courageous person . . . will stand his ground as he ought and as the rule directs, for the
sake of the noble; for this is the end of virtue” (ὁ δὲ ἀνδρεῖος . . . ὡς δεῖ δὲ καὶ ὡς ὁ λόγος ὑπομενεῖ τοῦ
καλοῦ ἕνεκα· τοῦτο γὰρ τέλος τῆς ἀρετῆς); NE III 7, 1115b23–24: “Therefore it is for the sake of
something noble that the courageous person endures and acts as courage directs” (καλοῦ δὴ ἕνεκα ὁ
ἀνδρεῖος ὑπομένει καὶ πράττει τὰ κατὰ τὴν ἀνδρείαν); NE IV 1, 1120a23–25: “Now actions done in
accordance with virtue are noble and for the sake of the noble. And the liberal person will give for the
sake of the noble, and rightly” (Αἱ δὲ κατ’ ἀρετὴν πράξεις καλαὶ καὶ τοῦ καλοῦ ἕνεκα. καὶ ὁ ἐλευθέριος οὖν
δώσει τοῦ καλοῦ ἕνεκα καὶ ὀρθῶς) and 1120a27–29: “But he who gives to the wrong people or not for the
sake of the noble but for some other cause, will be called not liberal but by some other name” (ὁ δὲ
διδοὺς οἷς μὴ δεῖ, ἢ μὴ τοῦ καλοῦ ἕνεκα ἀλλὰ διά τιν’ ἄλλην αἰτίαν, οὐκ ἐλευθέριος ἀλλ’ ἄλλος τις
ῥηθήσεται); NE IV 2, 1122b6–7: “And the magnificent person will spend such sums for the sake of
the noble; for this is common to the virtues” (δαπανήσει δὲ τὰ τοιαῦτα ὁ μεγαλοπρεπὴς τοῦ καλοῦ ἕνεκα·
κοινὸν γὰρ τοῦτο ταῖς ἀρεταῖς). See also 1123a24–27. While the expression “for the sake of the noble”
does not appear in the EE, Aristotle describes the virtuous person as acting for the sake of kalon actions
themselves at EE VIII 3, 1248b34–37: “Someone is noble and good because those goods which are noble
are his on their own account (di’auta), and because he practices noble things (tōn kalōn) and does so for
their own sake (autōn heneka), the noble things being the virtues and the actions that proceed from
virtue” (καλὸς δὲ κἀγαθὸς τῷ τῶν ἀγαθῶν τὰ καλὰ ὑπάρχειν αὐτῷ δι’ αὑτὰ καὶ τῷ πρακτικὸς εἶναι τῶν
καλῶν καὶ αὑτῶν ἕνεκα. καλὰ δ’ ἐστὶν αἵ τε ἀρεταὶ καὶ τὰ ἔργα τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρετῆς).
24      

Thus, in one word, dispositions arise from similar activities. This is why we must
do activities of a certain kind. It is because the dispositions result from the
differences between these.¹² (NE II 1, 1103b21–23)
We must examine the nature of actions, namely how we ought to do them; for
these determine also the nature of the dispositions that are produced, as we have
said.¹³ (NE II 2, 1103b29–31)
But not only the actions that are sources and causes of their origination and
growth are the same as those of their destruction, but also their actualizations will
be in the same actions.¹⁴ (NE II 2, 1104a27–29)
Every disposition of the soul has a nature relative to and concerned with the
kinds of things by which it tends to be made worse or better.¹⁵
(NE II 3, 1104b19–21)

These passages from NE II 1–3 express a strong correlation between the kinds of
actions performed by the learners and the resulting dispositions of character,
where the qualities of the learners’ actions—i.e. ‘how’ (pōs, 1103b30) they are
performed—determine the qualities of the dispositions that they bring about.¹⁶
Moreover, Aristotle also claims that ‘the exercises’ or ‘the actualizations’ (hai
energeiai) of the dispositions are in ‘the same actions’ (en tois autois, 1104a29),
thus suggesting the absence of a significant difference between the actions that
learners do before acquiring a virtue and those that they do once they have
become virtuous.¹⁷

¹² καὶ ἑνὶ δὴ λόγῳ ἐκ τῶν ὁμοίων ἐνεργειῶν αἱ ἕξεις γίνονται. διὸ δεῖ τὰς ἐνεργείας ποιὰς ἀποδιδόναι·
κατὰ γὰρ τὰς τούτων διαφορὰς ἀκολουθοῦσιν αἱ ἕξεις.
¹³ ἀναγκαῖον ἐπισκέψασθαι τὰ περὶ τὰ πράξεις, πῶς πρακτέον αὐτάς· αὗται γάρ εἰσι κύριαι καὶ τοῦ
ποιὰς γενέσθαι τὰς ἕξεις, καθάπερ εἰρήκαμεν.
¹⁴ ἀλλ’ οὐ μόνον αἱ γενέσεις καὶ αὐξήσεις καὶ αἱ φθοραὶ ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν γίνονται, ἀλλὰ
καὶ αἱ ἐνέργειαι ἐν τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἔσονται·
¹⁵ πᾶσα ψυχῆς ἕξις, ὑφ’ οἵων πέφυκε γίνεσθαι χείρων καὶ βελτίων, πρὸς ταῦτα καὶ περὶ ταῦτα τὴν
φύσιν ἔχει·
¹⁶ This correlation is expressed also in the EE, for example in EE II 1, 1220a29–34: “Virtue, then, is a
disposition of this kind, which is brought about by the best movements of the soul and which produces
the best functions and affections of the soul. In addition, the same things in one way bring virtue about,
and in another way destroy it; and the use of it is related to the same factors that cause it to develop or
decay—those to which its best disposition is related.” (καὶ ἡ ἀρετὴ ἄρα ἡ τοιαύτη διάθεσις ἐστίν, ἣ
γίνεταί τε ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρίστων περὶ ψυχὴν κινήσεων καὶ ἀφ’ ἧς πράττεται τὰ ἄριστα τῆς ψυχῆς ἔργα καὶ
πάθη, καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν πὼς μὲν γίνεται, πὼς δὲ φθείρεται, καὶ πρὸς ταὐτὰ ἡ χρῆσις αὐτῆς ὑφ’ ὧν καὶ
αὔξεται καὶ φθείρεται, πρὸς ἃ βέλτιστα διατίθησιν.)
¹⁷ Aristotle summarizes his view concerning the acquisition of virtue through practice in NE II 3 as
follows: “Let this be taken as said: that virtue, then, is concerned with pleasures and pains; and that (a)
by the actions from which it comes to be it is both increased and, if they are done differently, destroyed;
and that (b) the actions from which it has come to be are those in relation to which it actualizes itself ”
(1105a13–16). The important claims for our purposes are the last two, (a) and (b), where he restates his
conclusion concerning the relationship between actions and virtuous dispositions: Not only (a) ‘from’
(ἐκ) doing certain kinds of actions, certain dispositions grow in us, but also (b) the actions ‘from which’
(ἐξ ὧν) a given disposition comes to be in us are those ‘in relation to’ (περὶ) which that disposition, once
formed, ‘actualizes itself ’ (ἐνεργεῖ).
     “”     25

That there is a direct correlation between the learners’ actions and the resulting
dispositions is something that Aristotle takes to be obvious to everyone. He brings
up this point in his explanation of responsibility for character in NE III 5: “So only
an entirely stupid person would not know that dispositions come about from the
exercise of activities in each sphere”¹⁸ (1114a9–10). In fact, that agents are aware
of this correlation between dispositions and practices is crucial for responsibility
for character:

But those who live without restraint (aneimenōs) are themselves responsible
for becoming such kinds of individuals, and they are themselves responsible for
being unjust or self-indulgent, in the first case by engaging in illicit actions, in the
second by spending their time in drinking parties and the like. For the activities
done in relation to each sphere produce the corresponding kinds of agents.¹⁹
(NE III 5, 1114a4–7)

We are familiar with this phenomenon, he claims, from examples of everyday life,
like those of people who prepare for winning in a contest, “since they keep doing
the activity continuously” (diatelousi gar energountes, 1114a9). In fact, those who
want to win at a running competition run, those who want to win at a dancing
competition dance, and each continuously keeps doing the activities they want to
become proficient at, since their capacity to do those activities of running,
dancing, etc. is both generated and increased by their repeated performance.
NE II 2, at 1104a27–33, presents a similar example, about acquiring strength:
we increase our strength from “taking much food and undergoing much exertion,”
and then the acquired strength is actualized in those very activities of “taking
much food and undergoing much exertion.” By practicing certain activities, we
become more able to do those same activities: After the practice, the strong person
“will be most able to do these things” (1104a33).²⁰ Here as well the case of the
virtues is parallel:

So too is it with the virtues. By abstaining from pleasures we become temperate,

and it is when we have become so that we are most able to abstain from
them. Similarly also in the case of courage; for by being habituated to despise

¹⁸ τὸ μὲν οὖν ἀγνοεῖν ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ ἐνεργεῖν περὶ ἕκαστα αἱ ἕξεις γίνονται, κομιδῇ ἀναισθήτου.
¹⁹ ἀλλὰ τοῦ τοιούτους γενέσθαι αὐτοὶ αἴτιοι ζῶντες ἀνειμένως, καὶ τοῦ ἀδίκους ἢ ἀκολάστους εἶναι, οἳ
μὲν κακουργοῦντες, οἳ δὲ ἐν πότοις καὶ τοῖς τοιούτοις διάγοντες· αἱ γὰρ περὶ ἕκαστα ἐνέργειαι τοιούτους
ποιοῦσιν.
²⁰ There is a parallel example in EE II 1, 1220a22–26: “Let us first assume that the best tendency is
brought about by the best things, and that the best actions in relation to each thing result from the
corresponding virtue. For example, the best exercises and food are what bring about good physical
condition, and the best physical condition results in the best exercises.” (ὑποκείσθω δὴ πρῶτον ἡ
βελτίστη διάθεσις ὑπὸ τῶν βελτίστων γίγνεσθαι, καὶ πράττεσθαι ἄριστα περὶ ἕκαστον ἀπὸ τῆς ἑκάστου
ἀρετῆς, οἷον πόνοι τε ἄριστοι καὶ τροφὴ ἀφ’ ὧν γίνεται εὐεξία, καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς εὐεξίας πονοῦσιν ἄριστα·)
26      

things that are terrible and to endure them we become courageous, and it is when
we have become so that we shall be most able to endure them.²¹
(NE II 2, 1104a33–b3)

Also with the virtues, the actions that “we are most able” (genomenoi malista
dunametha, 1104a34–35) to do once we have acquired virtuous dispositions, e.g.
standing our ground in battle in the case of courage or abstaining from pleasures
in the case of temperance, are the same as the actions through which we have
acquired those dispositions.
In what sense are the activities performed before and after the acquisition of a
disposition similar? What Aristotle’s comments in NE II 1–3 reveal is that the
simple practice of superficially similar actions will not be sufficient to produce the
desired dispositions; instead, the actions of the learners need to have certain
qualities, and it is important to pay attention to how they are done—i.e. they
need to be done in the right way. Aristotle explains this point in some detail
through a parallel with technical skills:

Again, it is from the same causes and on account of the same things that every
virtue is both produced and destroyed, and similarly every skill; for it is from
playing the lyre that both good and bad lyre-players are produced. And the
corresponding statement is true of builders and of all the rest; people will be good
or bad builders as a result of building well or badly. For if this were not so, there
would have been no need of a teacher, but everyone would have been born good
or bad.²² (NE II 1, 1103b6–13)

It makes a great difference how the actions during the learning process are
performed: to become good builders, learners need to practice building ‘well’
(eu), and not ‘badly’ (kakōs); to become good lyre players, learners need to practice
playing the lyre well, and not badly; and, in general, to become experts in a craft,
learners need to perform the corresponding activities well, and not ‘badly’. For
example, if someone simply makes sounds with the lyre while unaware that she is
doing so, or if she repeatedly plays with the wrong rhythm, in the wrong tone, with
the wrong intensity, etc., it is clear that her ‘practice’ is not going to contribute to
her becoming a good lyre player. When learning a skill, people typically need to
pay attention to what they are doing and to follow the advice of those who know

²¹ οὕτω δ’ ἔχει καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἀρετῶν· ἔκ τε γὰρ τοῦ ἀπέχεσθαι τῶν ἡδονῶν γινόμεθα σώφρονες, καὶ
γενόμενοι μάλιστα δυνάμεθα ἀπέχεσθαι αὐτῶν· ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς ἀνδρείας· ἐθιζόμενοι γὰρ
καταφρονεῖν τῶν φοβερῶν καὶ ὑπομένειν αὐτὰ γινόμεθα ἀνδρεῖοι, καὶ γενόμενοι μάλιστα δυνησόμεθα
ὑπομένειν τὰ φοβερά.
²² ἔτι ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν καὶ διὰ τῶν αὐτῶν καὶ γίνεται πᾶσα ἀρετὴ καὶ φθείρεται, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τέχνη· ἐκ
γὰρ τοῦ κιθαρίζειν καὶ οἱ ἀγαθοὶ καὶ κακοὶ γίνονται κιθαρισταί. ἀνάλογον δὲ καὶ οἰκοδόμοι καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ
πάντες· ἐκ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ εὖ οἰκοδομεῖν ἀγαθοὶ οἰκοδόμοι ἔσονται, ἐκ δὲ τοῦ κακῶς κακοί. εἰ γὰρ μὴ οὕτως
εἶχεν, οὐδὲν ἂν ἔδει τοῦ διδάξοντος, ἀλλὰ πάντες ἂν ἐγίνοντο ἀγαθοὶ ἢ κακοί.
     “”     27

(the teachers), who are able to show the difference between a good performance
and a bad performance, and are able to correct the learner’s mistakes. The case of
the virtues, Aristotle continues, is parallel in this respect:

This is also the case, then, with the virtues. For by doing the actions that we do in
our dealings with other people we become just or unjust, and by doing the actions
that we do in the presence of danger, and being habituated to feel fear or
confidence, we become courageous or cowardly. The same is true of actions
concerning appetites and those concerning anger; some people become temper-
ate and good-tempered, others self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one
way or the other in the corresponding circumstances.²³ (NE II 1, 1103b13–21)

To become just, courageous, and in general virtuous, not only must we do

transactions with other people, and not only must we deal with dangerous
situations, but we also need to do such things well. If we engage incorrectly in
transactions with other people, or if we deal incorrectly with dangerous situations,
then we will become unjust, cowardly, and in general vicious instead of virtuous.
In sum, it is not just from doing certain actions, but from doing them ‘in one way’
(houtōsi) instead of the other that we become virtuous—i.e. doing them in a way
that relevantly models the actions of virtuous people. For example, if someone
stands at their post during a battle unaware that she is doing so, or if she does so at
the wrong moment, with the wrong goal, etc., her action will not contribute to her
becoming courageous. It will be similarly useless for her character formation if she
stands at her post feeling no fear or with no confidence. It is by feeling fear or
confidence appropriately in the relevant circumstances that people become cour-
ageous, and it is by feeling fear or confidence inappropriately that people become
cowardly.
It is thus of the greatest importance to pay attention to how learners perform
their actions, since they will acquire virtuous dispositions only if they perform the
relevant actions in the right way—because the qualities of the dispositions will
reflect the qualities of the actions through which they came into being. The
relevance of the how implies, then, that learners have to be able to perform the
relevant actions well, even before they have the relevant dispositions. And this
priority requirement generates a true puzzle for those who defend that only
virtuous people are able to perform virtuous actions properly.

²³ οὕτω δὴ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἀρετῶν ἔχει· πράττοντες γὰρ τὰ ἐν τοῖς συναλλάγμασι τοῖς πρὸς τοὺς
ἀνθρώπους γινόμεθα οἳ μὲν δίκαιοι οἳ δὲ ἄδικοι, πράττοντες δὲ τὰ ἐν τοῖς δεινοῖς καὶ ἐθιζόμενοι
φοβεῖσθαι ἢ θαρρεῖν οἳ μὲν ἀνδρεῖοι οἳ δὲ δειλοί. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τὰ περὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας ἔχει καὶ τὰ περὶ
τὰς ὀργάς· οἳ μὲν γὰρ σώφρονες καὶ πρᾶοι γίνονται, οἳ δ’ ἀκόλαστοι καὶ ὀργίλοι, οἳ μὲν ἐκ τοῦ οὑτωσὶ ἐν
αὐτοῖς ἀναστρέφεσθαι, οἳ δὲ ἐκ τοῦ οὑτωσί.
28      

1.4 Aristotle’s Response to the Priority Objection:

General Lines

In NE II 4 Aristotle offers his response to those who raise concerns about the
priority of dispositions over actions. The priority objection is formulated as one
that affects both the case of learning crafts or skills and that of acquiring virtue:

Someone might wonder, however, what we mean by saying that becoming just
requires doing just actions first, and becoming temperate requires doing tem-
perate actions. For if people do what is just and what is temperate, they are
already just and temperate; similarly, if they do what is grammatical or musical,
they are grammarians and musicians.²⁴ (NE II 4, 1105a17–21)

Aristotle’s first move is to show that the objection is misguided in the case of the
crafts. To this end, he argues that we are familiar with examples of people who do
not possess a craft but are able to produce outcomes that are stereotypical of the
craft—e.g. someone who does not know grammar but can build a correct sentence,
or someone who does not know music but can play a melody. This argument can
also be applied to the case of the virtues: we are familiar with examples of people
who are not virtuous but are able to act ‘according to the virtues’—such as when
people produce outcomes that are stereotypical of the virtues by merely following
the law, or acting from fear of punishment, or simply by chance.²⁵ Although this
line of argument would be sufficient to respond to the priority objection,²⁶
Aristotle does not stop there.
Instead, in the second section of the argument he adds a complexity by
introducing a disanalogy between virtues and crafts. Why does he add this
disanalogy? And how does it contribute to his response to the priority objection?

²⁴ Ἀπορήσειε δ’ ἄν τις πῶς λέγομεν ὅτι δεῖ τὰ μὲν δίκαια πράττοντας δικαίους γίνεσθαι, τὰ δὲ σώφρονα
σώφρονας· εἰ γὰρ πράττουσι τὰ δίκαια καὶ σώφρονα, ἤδη εἰσὶ δίκαιοι καὶ σώφρονες, ὥσπερ εἰ τὰ
γραμματικὰ καὶ τὰ μουσικά, γραμματικοὶ καὶ μουσικοί.
²⁵ Aristotle refers to this phenomenon also in NE VI 12, 1144a13–17: “we say that some people who
do just actions are not necessarily just, i.e. those who do the actions ordained by the laws either
unwillingly [akontas] or owing to ignorance [di’agnoian], or for some other reason and not for the sake
of the actions themselves [mē di’ auta] (though, to be sure, they do what they should and all the things
that the good person ought).” A parallel distinction between doing unjust actions and being unjust
appears in NE V 6, 1134a17–23, and V 8, 1135b11–25.
²⁶ Commentators tend to agree that the grammar example is a sufficient response to the priority
objection as it is presented in NE II 4. For example, Broadie 1991 claims that Aristotle’s counterexample
concerning the crafts is all that he needs for responding to the priority objection in NE II 4: “Aristotle
responds by denying (2) [i.e. that doing what is grammatical is a sufficient condition for being
proficient in grammar], which is all that he needs for his main point; but then as if to be on the safe
side he takes this opportunity to argue against (1) [that virtues are analogous to skills]” (119, note 17,
my emphasis). Irwin 1999 reads in NE II 4 two consecutive independent answers to the priority
objection: “The second reply is independent of the first [i.e. that the crafts do not support the objection],
and challenges (2) [that virtues are analogous to crafts in the relevant ways], insisting on an important
difference between virtues and crafts” (195).
’     :   29

In what follows I present a way of understanding the first response that enables us
to tackle the section on the disanalogy with new eyes.

1.4.1 Grammar Example: In Accordance With Grammar

vs. Grammatically

The first step in Aristotle’s argument is to indicate that there are plenty of familiar
cases where people without expertise in a craft do something that is a character-
istic product of that craft. For example, it is possible for someone without expertise
in grammar to produce something grammatical:

Or is this [that one needs to have a disposition if one is to be able to perform the
activities characteristic of that disposition] not true even of the crafts? It is possible
to do something grammatical either by chance or prompted by someone else.
Someone will be an expert grammarian, then, only when he has both done
something grammatical and done it grammatically; and this means doing it in
accordance with the grammatical knowledge in himself.²⁷ (NE II 4, 1105a21–26)

This example introduces a crucial distinction between (a) productions where the
outcome is ‘something grammatical’ (grammatikon ti), i.e. something that is in
accordance with the rules of grammar, even though it does not come about from
the agent’s knowledge of grammar; and (b) productions where both the outcome
is something grammatical and the productions themselves are “grammatically”
(grammatikōs) done, i.e. “in accordance with the grammatical knowledge in the
person” (kata tēn en hautōi grammatikēn). This distinction provides a direct
response to the thesis that dispositions are necessarily prior to actions, since it
reveals through a familiar example that an agent does not need to possess “in
himself ” (en hautōi) the disposition or skill, in this case the grammatical know-
ledge, to be able to produce a characteristic outcome, i.e. something grammatical.
This response, however, provides only a formal solution to the priority objec-
tion, by showing that it is possible to produce the characteristic outcomes before
having the skill; this answer does not offer any input about how the process of
learning by doing works. In other words, although the grammar example is a
sufficient solution to the priority problem, it does not sufficiently address the
question of how practice contributes to the formation of the corresponding
dispositions. For surely Aristotle is aware of the fact that there are ways of
doing something grammatical or musical that do not contribute to learning, and

²⁷ ἢ οὐδ’ ἐπὶ τῶν τεχνῶν οὕτως ἔχει; ἐνδέχεται γὰρ γραμματικόν τι ποιῆσαι καὶ ἀπὸ τύχης καὶ ἄλλου
ὑποθεμένου. τότε οὖν ἔσται γραμματικός, ἐὰν καὶ γραμματικόν τι ποιήσῃ καὶ γραμματικῶς· τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶ
τὸ κατὰ τὴν ἐν αὑτῷ γραμματικήν.
30      

that can even be detrimental to learning. As I argued in Section 1.3, the relevant
question concerning learning by doing is whether (or how) learners can perform
the relevant actions well.
To make progress towards a viable account of learning by doing we should
avoid reading Aristotle’s first response in 1105a21–26 as his full solution to the
objection. Concretely, we should not understand Aristotle to be proposing that we
can solve the learning-by-doing puzzle by positing a simple dichotomy between
(a) actions merely in accordance with grammar and (b) actions from grammar,
where all actions done in accordance with grammar but not from grammar are to
be understood as grammatical only coincidentally.²⁸ On such a reading, the learners,
who do not yet possess expertise and thus cannot act from it, would perform the
corresponding actions coincidentally, thereby ruling out the possibility that they
perform the relevant actions well. Although this reading might be encouraged by
Aristotle’s choice of examples—in particular, the example of someone who does the
right (grammatical) action merely “by chance” (apo tuchēs)—it might mistakenly
lead to an excessively deflationary view of the learners’ actions that does not allow
for sufficient continuity in the process. In short, the repetition of merely coinciden-
tal productions will not result in the formation of the corresponding expertise. For
example, imagine a learner of Spanish who proceeds by copying random words
from a list and putting them together in sentences. Even if she were so lucky that she
hit upon correct sentences on every occasion, thus producing grammatical out-
comes, we would not say that she is really learning anything in that process. To learn
something through her practice, the sentences cannot be merely coincidental, nor
can they be done in any old way.
But Aristotle also uses the example of someone who does something grammat-
ical “prompted by someone else” (allou hupothemenou). Although this kind of
production can also be coincidental, as in cases where an agent unreflectively
follows instructions and does not pay attention to what she is doing, those are not
the relevant cases when we are talking about learning. Instead, true learners must
follow their teachers’ instructions, paying attention to the relevant details of what
they are doing and becoming more able to reproduce the activities in the future.
Only if the learners pay attention to the relevant features (e.g. the factors that
make their productions grammatical) will they acquire the memories and experi-
ences that eventually turn into expert knowledge.
Therefore, the grammar example provides a merely formal answer to the
priority objection, by showing that there are several ways of doing the actions or

²⁸ Some commentators suggest that this is the point of Aristotle’s first response. For example, Irwin
1999 writes: “the point he has made in the first reply,” namely at NE II 4, 1105a21–26, is “that someone
might produce a good product accidentally” (195, my italics). Also Vasiliou 2007 sides with this line of
reading: “While it is sufficient for a skill to be executed excellently if its product is excellent, it is not
sufficient for an action to have been done virtuously for a person simply to have done what the virtuous
person would do. A shoe might, by accident, be an excellent shoe (we can determine this by examining
the shoe); but a virtuous action cannot be virtuous by accident” (52, my italics).
’     :   31

productions characteristic of a craft without possessing the relevant disposition.

But Aristotle’s examples of someone producing the right outcome by chance and
prompted by someone else are two ways in which a non-expert can do something
grammatical, not two ways in which learners can become grammarians. As I have
suggested, an action or production has to be more than merely coincidental to be
part of the process of forming the corresponding expertise. The second option, i.e.
doing actions under the guidance of someone else, is the way in which learning
typically occurs. Although clearly not all cases of performing actions guided by
someone else lead to learning, with adequate guidance we can do the right actions
in the right way, paying attention to the relevant details, and in this way we will be
able to develop the appropriate dispositions.

1.4.2 Disanalogy Between Crafts and Virtues

and the Question about the “How”

Aristotle appeals in the next lines to a difference between crafts and virtues not
with the aim of building a new response to the priority objection, but rather in
order to add some complexity concerning the details to which learners of virtue
should pay attention if their practices are to yield the relevant dispositions. In
other words, Aristotle’s next step is to tackle the question of the ‘how’ by appealing
to a disanalogy between the crafts and the virtues with the aim of underlining a
difference in the requirements that we should take into account when learning
virtue:

Again, the case of the crafts and that of the virtues are not similar. For the
products of the crafts have in themselves the quality of being well made [to eu], so
that it is enough that they should have a certain character, but if the actions that
are in accordance with the virtues have themselves a certain character, it does not
follow that they are done justly or temperately. The agent also must be in a
certain condition [pōs echōn] when he does them: in the first place, he must have
knowledge; secondly, he must choose the actions, and choose them for their own
sake; and thirdly, he must act with consistency and firmness. These are not
considered to be conditions of the possession of the crafts, except the bare
knowledge; but as a condition of the possession of the virtues, knowledge has
little or no weight, while the other conditions, i.e. the very conditions which
result from often doing just and temperate acts, count not for a little but for
everything.²⁹ (NE II 4, 1105a26–b5)

²⁹ ἔτι οὐδ’ ὅμοιόν ἐστιν ἐπί τε τῶν τεχνῶν καὶ τῶν ἀρετῶν· τὰ μὲν γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν τεχνῶν γινόμενα τὸ εὖ
ἔχει ἐν αὑτοῖς· ἀρκεῖ οὖν ταῦτά πως ἔχοντα γενέσθαι· τὰ δὲ κατὰ τὰς ἀρετὰς γινόμενα οὐκ ἐὰν αὐτά πως
ἔχῃ, δικαίως ἢ σωφρόνως πράττεται, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐὰν ὁ πράττων πῶς ἔχων πράττῃ, πρῶτον μὲν ἐὰν εἰδώς,
32      

Here Aristotle explains first what is necessary for the stereotypical outcomes or
results of productions to be well done, and next, he contrasts this with the
requirements for the stereotypical outcomes or results of actions to be well (or
‘justly’ or ‘temperately’ and, in general, virtuously) performed. The main differ-
ence between the sphere of crafts and the sphere of the virtues is that, in the first
case, things have ‘goodness’ (to eu) simply when they are done ‘by the crafts’ (hupo
tōn technōn), independently from the actual characteristics of the agent, while in
the case of the virtues, e.g. justice or temperance, we must add considerations
about the agent, how he acts and whether he himself fulfills certain conditions. The
possession of the virtues, unlike that of the crafts, requires that agents not only
have knowledge but also choose the actions for their own sake and act with
consistency and firmness. Moreover, the latter two conditions have most weight
for the possession of virtue, and are precisely the conditions that result from
habituation.
It is common to emphasize in this passage the distinction that it establishes
between the way in which learners perform virtuous actions and the way in which
fully virtuous people do. For example, Taylor writes in his commentary on
1105a28ff.:

This distinction [sc. between actions that are in accordance with the virtues and
actions that are in addition performed virtuously] enables Aristotle to offer in the
case of virtue a solution of his problem; an essential part of the process of
learning to act while satisfying those further conditions consists in acting without
satisfying them. (2006, 83, my emphasis)

However, I think that this way of interpreting the purpose of the passage is
misleading. The main problem is that this reading might lead us to think that
learners do not fulfill the conditions for virtuously performed virtuous action at
all, and thus overlook the conclusion that we reached in Section 1.3 that if
habituation is to be successful, then the actions of the learners must be done
well and not just in any old way. Moreover, read this way the passage does not add
much to the formal answer provided with the grammar example.
A more promising approach is, I think, to emphasize instead the disanalogy
with the crafts. How should this disanalogy affect our understanding of the
respective processes of learning? What are the differences between the require-
ments for the right practice to become a good lyre player and the requirements for
the right practice to become a just person? Aristotle’s comments give us some

ἔπειτ’ ἐὰν προαιρούμενος, καὶ προαιρούμενος δι’ αὐτά, τὸ δὲ τρίτον ἐὰν καὶ βεβαίως καὶ ἀμετακινήτως
ἔχων πράττῃ. ταῦτα δὲ πρὸς μὲν τὸ τὰς ἄλλας τέχνας ἔχειν οὐ συναριθμεῖται, πλὴν αὐτὸ τὸ εἰδέναι· πρὸς δὲ
τὸ τὰς ἀρετὰς τὸ μὲν εἰδέναι οὐδὲν ἢ μικρὸν ἰσχύει, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα οὐ μικρὸν ἀλλὰ τὸ πᾶν δύναται, ἅπερ ἐκ τοῦ
πολλάκις πράττειν τὰ δίκαια καὶ σώφρονα περιγίνεται.
’     :   33

hints about this issue. When learning a craft, agents should pay attention in their
practices to features or conditions of the product and make them correspond to the
rules of the corresponding craft. For example, those learning to make shoes should
do the things that expert shoemakers characteristically do: they should choose the
right material, stitch the pieces together in the right way, design the shoes with the
right shape, use the right instruments, etc. In sum, they should attend to the effects
of their actions, choice of materials etc. on the product.
In contrast, for virtuous actions to be done well (or ‘justly’, ‘temperately’, etc.),
agents must not only be aware of the appropriateness of their outcomes to the
given situations, but must themselves be in a certain condition when they perform
those actions. As we have seen in our analysis of NE II 4, in the case of virtuous
activity the relevant ‘goodness’ or ‘being well done’ (to eu) is not achieved when
the outcome that occurs “according to the virtues” (kata tas aretas) “has itself a
certain character” (pōs echēi); on the contrary, an action has the relevant ‘good-
ness’, i.e. it is not only virtuous but also performed virtuously, when the agent
fulfills further requirements concerning knowledge, motivation, and stability.

(1) Knowledge requirement: the agent must know what he is doing;

(2) Motivation requirement: the agent must choose the actions, and choose
them for their own sake; and
(3) Stability requirement: the agent must act from a firm and unwavering
character.

For example, when someone makes a substantial donation to a hospital we can

say that she has done a stereotypically generous action; however, to know whether
her action had the kind of goodness required in order to be generously done, we
need to inquire whether, in addition, (1) the agent knew what she was doing,
(2) she was doing it for its own sake, and (3) she had sufficient consistency and
firmness in her behavior as to not to have mixed feelings or waver.
In contrast with Taylor’s interpretation, my alternative view is that although
learners themselves do not yet have stable dispositions to act virtuously, they are
able to fulfill at least occasionally and at least to some degree the requirements for
virtuously performed virtuous action. This interpretation allows for continuity in
the process and thus enables us to see the origins of the capacity to choose well and
of the stability required for virtue.
Thus what we learn from the disanalogy passage is that, while in the case of
the crafts learners need to acquire only (or mainly) knowledge, in the case of the
virtues learners need to acquire not only knowledge but also the capacity for right
choice (prohairesis) and stability. The difference between learning crafts and
learning virtues is that the kind of activities involved in the acquisition of a craft
require the learners to be aware of the relevant features of the production so that
they may acquire knowledge of the craft; in contrast, the kind of activities involved
34      

in the acquisition of virtue require not only that the learners be aware of the
features of their practical situation, but also that they possess the right kind of
motivation towards the noble and a relatively stable sense of what they stand for.
In what follows I focus on the motivation requirement and ask whether in this
respect the actions of the learners merely resemble the actions of virtuous people
externally, or if they instead fulfill at least partially the motivation requirement by
being done for the sake of the noble.

1.5 “Fake It till You Make It”: Motivationally-Neutral

Accounts

One way to conceive of the learners’ actions is, as mentioned above, as merely
externally similar repetitions of the actions of virtuous people. Modern commen-
tators tend to disagree with an extreme version of this deflationary conception of
the learners’ actions and claim, correctly I think, that learners must at least be
aware of the actions they are performing and must put some thought into what
they are doing. It is broadly agreed that although learners of virtue do not have
practical wisdom (phronēsis) and consequently do not have the kind of knowledge
about virtue and the noble that virtuous agents have, their actions are not
‘mindless’ but require the engagement of the learners’ cognitive capacities.
However, some commentators introduce a second kind of deflationary view—
this time regarding the learners’ motivation. Reading the second section of NE II 4
as centered on the difference between the actions of the learners and those of
virtuous people, these commentators assume that Aristotle’s view is that the
actions performed by the learners are virtuous in that they are the right actions
in the circumstances, i.e. the kinds of actions characteristically performed by
virtuous people, but that they differ from the activities of virtuous people not
only in not being performed from a stable disposition of character, but also in that
they lack virtuous motivation.³⁰ The following passage by Ross provides a clear
example of this approach:

³⁰ Some of the commentators that defend this deflationary view concerning the learners’ motivation
are mentioned in note 10 above. Irwin 1999 talks about actions that are “not done for the virtuous
person’s reasons” or from “the motive of the virtuous person,” by which he means actions that are not
done for their own sake, since he contrasts them with how virtuous agents “do the virtuous action
because they have decided to do it for its own sake” (xviii); Vasiliou 2007 defends this line of
interpretation as follows: “What Aristotle needs, however, to solve the puzzle of 2.4 is not only a
separation between virtuous action and motive but also the ability to describe the virtuous action, the
action to be done, without using ethical terms. This is what makes it possible for the virtuous and non-
virtuous agent to, in one ordinary sense of the expression, do the same action—for example, to share
half their sandwich, even though it will only be a truly virtuous action if the agent is motivated in the
appropriate way” (52, note 22; my emphasis). The position of Broadie 1991 is more difficult to pin
down—on the one hand, her interpretation of NE II 4 suggests a deflationary conception of the
learners’ actions in that she explains the difference between learners and virtuous people appealing
“     ”: -  35

A paradox is involved in Aristotle’s assertion that we become good by doing good

acts; how can we do good acts if we are not ourselves good? He proceeds to
explain that there is a difference between the acts that create and those that flow
from the good disposition. . . . Thus the paradox disappears: the actions that
produce virtue are not in their inner nature but only in their external aspect like
those that virtue produces. Aristotle here (1105a17–b18) lays his finger with
precision on the distinction between the two elements involved in a completely
good action—(a) that the thing done should be the right thing to do in the
circumstances, and (b) that it should be done from a good motive.
(1959, 194, my emphasis)

The main assumption behind this deflationary conception of the learners’ actions,
which I call the motivationally-neutral view, is that Aristotle tries to answer the
priority objection while maintaining the claim that only virtuous agents are
moved by virtuous motives.³¹ This assumption is manifest in Irwin’s commentary
on NE II 4:

The puzzle arises because Aristotle has emphasized the similarity between the
actions that we learn to do in habituation and the actions that we do when we are
virtuous. We may suppose that if the actions are the same, their motive must be
the same too, so that we can learn to be virtuous only if we already have the motive
of the virtuous person. (1999, 195, my emphasis.)

Here Irwin assumes that the gist of the objection about priority that Aristotle is
trying to solve is that it is impossible for a non-virtuous agent to perform virtuous
actions properly because non-virtuous agents cannot have virtuous motives. Once
the equivalence between ‘good motive’ or ‘virtuous motive’ and ‘the motive of the
virtuous person’ is assumed, it follows that any successful response to the priority
objection must hinge upon dissociating virtuous actions from virtuous motiv-
ations and showing that the actions of the learners can be virtuous even if they are
not performed from a virtuous motive.
The reasoning leading to this kind of view is then as follows: since only virtuous
agents are moved by virtuous motives, the actions of the learners must necessarily
lack virtuous motivation. If, per impossibile, the actions of the learners were

to the distinction between “doing what in fact is right” and “doing it in the right spirit” (88); on the
other hand, she does not maintain a deflationary view in her explanation of the actions of the learners
in other places, instead holding that “it is important for Aristotle’s theory of moral education that
subjects not yet established in their prohairetic attitudes can act for the sake of the noble. This is a spirit
that requires to be educated, since misdirections are possible” (93; my emphasis).

³¹ See e.g. Williams 1995: “ ‘an act done for X reasons’ is not a type of act independent of its agent’s
state; it is an act done by an agent with a certain disposition” (18). See also a reply to Williams in
Hursthouse 1995.
36      

performed from virtuous motives, then the learners would already possess virtue.
Consequently, since learners cannot have virtuous motivation, Aristotle must
allow for a way of describing the virtuous actions of the learners that is not only
independent of the agents’ possession of virtuous dispositions, but is also inde-
pendent of the agent’s motivation.
My approach, in contrast, is to embrace Irwin’s conclusion and take it not as the
problem but as the solution: learners become virtuous by acting from virtuous
motives, or as Irwin puts it, by acting with “the motive of the virtuous person”. If,
as I will argue in Section 1.7, Aristotle does not accept that being a fully virtuous
agent is a necessary condition for acting from a virtuous motive,³² then we can see
that his response to the priority objection in NE II 4 does not force him to
renounce the claim that the virtuous actions of the learners involve virtuous
motivation—in other words, Aristotle’s discussion in NE II 4 does not rule out
that in their practice towards virtue learners aim at noble goals on account of their
nobility.
Let us turn now to some of the disadvantages of the motivationally-
neutral view.

1.6 What is Wrong with the Motivationally-Neutral Accounts?

The motivationally-neutral conception of the learners’ actions, according to which

the actions of learners are the right things to do in the circumstances but are
lacking the right motivations, involves a number of difficulties. First, it leads some
defenders of this view to claim, erroneously, that the virtuous actions of the
learners are not fully (or even truly) virtuous or good. Second, it is also in tension
with the account of the actions of learners that we find in NE II 9, 1109a24–b7,
where Aristotle explains the relevance of the doctrine of the mean as a guide for
acquiring virtue. Third, and most importantly, this conception opens a gap
between the motivationally-neutral actions of the learners and the noble-oriented
virtuous dispositions that those actions are expected to yield.

³² The view that virtuous motivation is not necessarily dependent on the possession of stable
virtuous dispositions is defended by Hurka 2006, where he attributes to Aristotle (and criticizes) the
assumption that only virtuous agents act with virtuous motives. My claim here is, however, that
Aristotle does not hold that view, and that the claim that only virtuous agents act with virtuous motives
is erroneously attributed to him by some commentators (e.g. Ross 1959, 194, and Irwin 1999, 195, as
quoted above in this section). Other commentators, however, are sympathetic to the possibility that
learners can have virtuous motives—see e.g. Broadie 1991 (esp. 93), quoted in n. 30 above.
      - ? 37

1.6.1 Incorrect Conception of the Learners’ Actions

as Not-Fully Virtuous

The first problem with the motivational-neutral view is that it often leads com-
mentators to weaken the sense in which the learners’ actions are said to be
virtuous. Defenders of this view often (mistakenly) hold that Aristotle’s response
to the priority objection consists in making a distinction between the fully virtuous
actions of virtuous agents, which necessarily involve a virtuous motive, and the
minimally virtuous actions of the learners, which lack virtuous motivation. On
their view an action is only fully (or truly) virtuous if it is done from a virtuous
motive.³³ But the assumption that an action is less virtuous if it is not done from a
virtuous motive is wrong, so the corresponding qualification of the learners’
actions, as being just minimally or not fully virtuous, must be wrong as well.
Indeed, this qualification of the learners’ actions does not fit with the text. In
NE II 4, 1105a26–b12, Aristotle refers to the actions of the learners not only as
actions done “in accordance with virtue” (kata tas aretas) but also as “just and
temperate actions” (ta . . . pragmata dikaia kai sōphrona). Furthermore, Aristotle
distinguishes the learners’ actions from the actions of virtuous agents not by
saying that they are less virtuous, but by saying that they are not performed “justly
or temperately” (dikaiōs ē sōphronōs)—and, in sum, not virtuously. It follows,
then, that the distinction in NE II 4 is between two ways of performing fully
virtuous actions—i.e. (a) in accordance with virtue but not virtuously and (b)
virtuously. Aristotle holds that the three requirements of knowledge, right choice,
and stability are conditions that the agent has to meet if the virtuous action is to be
performed virtuously, but not requirements for virtuous action in general, as is
sometimes thought.³⁴ Thus, those who conclude that the actions of the learners
are not fully virtuous for this reason (i.e. because they do not fulfill the three
mentioned requirements) are disregarding the terms of the distinction that
Aristotle establishes in this passage.

³³ A clear example can be found in Vasiliou 2007: “it will only be a truly virtuous action if the agent
is motivated in the appropriate way” (52, note 22; see full passage quoted in note 30 above).
³⁴ One example of how commentators insist on calling ‘virtuous actions’ only those in which the
agent fulfills the requirements for virtue is the following claim from the commentary of Gauthier and
Jolif 1958–9: “l’action vertueuse ne doit pas découler d’une disposition passagère, mais d’un état habituel
de caractère qui rend cette activité comme naturelle” (130, my emphasis). Here they are talking about
‘virtuous action’ (l’action vertueuse) as if it only referred to the action performed by the virtuous agent.
See also the comments to 1105b26–30 in Taylor 2006: “here [Aristotle’s] claim is that when skill is
exercised, its being exercised well is determined purely by the excellence of the product, whereas in the
case of the virtues extra conditions concerning the agent must be satisfied for the act to be virtuous” (83,
my emphasis). (Morison’s 2007 review article discusses some consequences regarding the primacy of
character over action of the fact that Taylor 2006 fails to make this distinction in his commentary.)
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the first intelligence concerning them among strangers, but at a
place where we were almost the strongest.
Sad condition Excessive marks of joy accompanied our
of the ship’s discovering the entrance of the gulph of Cajeli, at
companies. break of day. There the Dutch have their settlement;
there too was the place where our greatest misery was to have an
end. The scurvy had made cruel havock amongst us after we had
left Port Praslin; no one could say he was absolutely free from it, and
half of our ship’s companies were not able to do any duty. If we had
kept the sea eight days longer, we must have lost a great number of
men, and we must all have fallen sick. The provisions which we had
now left were so rotten, and had so cadaverous a smell, that the
hardest moments of the sad days we passed, were those when the
bell gave us notice to take in this disgusting and unwholesome food.
I leave every one to judge how much this situation heightened in our
eyes the beautiful aspect of the coasts of Boero. Ever since
midnight, a pleasant scent exhaled from the aromatic plants with
which the Moluccas abound, had made an agreeable impression
upon our organs of smell, several leagues out at sea, and seemed to
be the fore-runner which announced the end of our calamities to us.
The aspect of a pretty large town situated in the bottom of the gulph;
of ships at anchor there, and of cattle rambling through the meadows
caused transports which I have doubtless felt, but which I cannot
here describe.
We were obliged to make several boards before we entered into
this gulph, of which the northern point is called the point of
Lissatetto, and that on the S. E. side, point Rouba. It was ten o’clock
before we could stand in for the town. Several boats were sailing in
the bay; we hoisted Dutch colours, and fired a gun, but not one of
them came along-side; I then sent a boat to sound a-head of the
ship. I was afraid of a bank which lies on the S. E. side of the gulph.
At half an hour past noon, a periagua conducted by Indians came
near the ship; the chief person asked us in Dutch who we were, but
refused to come on board. However, we advanced, all sails set,
according to the signals of our boat, which sounded a-head. Soon
after we saw the bank of which we had dreaded the Shoal of the
approach. It was low water, and the danger gulph of Cajeli.
appeared very plain. It is a chain of rocks mixed with coral, stretching
from the S. E. shore of the gulph to within a league of point Rouba,
and its extent from S. E. to N. W. is half a league. About four times
the length of a boat from its extremities, you have five or six fathoms
of water, a foul coral bottom, and from thence you immediately come
into seventeen fathoms, sand and ooze. Our course was nearly S.
W. three leagues, from ten o’clock to half past one, when we
anchored opposite the factory, near several little Dutch vessels, not
quite a quarter of a league off shore. We were in twenty-seven
fathoms, sand and ooze, and had the following bearings:
Point Lissatetto, N. 4° E. two leagues.
Point Rouba, N. E. 2° E. half a league.
A peninsula, W. 10° N. three quarters of a league.
The point of a shoal, which extends above half a league to the offing
from the peninsula, N. W. by W.
The flag of the Dutch factory, S. by W. ½ W.
We put in at The Etoile anchored near us more to the W. N. W.
Boero. We had hardly let go our anchor, when two Dutch
soldiers, without arms, one of them speaking French, came on board
to ask me on the part of the chief of the factory, what motives
brought us to this port, when we could not be ignorant that the ships
of the Dutch India company alone had the privilege of entering it. I
sent them back with an officer to declare to the chief, that the
necessity of taking in provisions forced us to enter into the first port
we had met with, without permitting us to pay any regard to the
treaties that exclude our ships from the ports in the Moluccas, and
that we should leave the harbour as soon as he should have given
us what help we stood most in need of. The two
soldiers returned soon after, to communicate to me Embarrassmen
an order, signed by the governor of Amboina, upon t of the chief.
whom the chief of Boero immediately depends, by which the latter is
expressly forbid to receive foreign ships into his port. The chief at the
same time begged me to give him a written declaration of my
motives for putting in here, in order that he might thereby justify his
conduct in receiving us here, before his superior, to whom he would
send the above declaration. His demand was reasonable, and I
satisfied it by giving him a signed deposition, in which I declared, that
having left the Malouines, and intending to go to India by the South
Seas, the contrary monsoon, and the want of provisions, had
prevented our gaining the Philippinas, and obliged us to go in search
of the indispensable supplies at the first port in the Moluccas, and
that I desired him to grant me these supplies in consideration of
humanity, the most respectable of obligations.
Good reception From this moment we found no difficulties; the
he gives us. chief having done his duty for his company, happily
acted a very good natured character, and offered us all he had in as
easy a manner as if he had every thing in his disposal. Towards five
o’clock I went on shore with several officers, in order to pay him a
visit. Notwithstanding the embarrassment which our arrival had
caused him, he received us extremely well. He even offered us a
supper, and we did not fail to accept of it. When he saw with what
pleasure and avidity we devoured it, he was better convinced than
by our words, that we had reason to complain of being pinched by
hunger. All the Hollanders were struck with the highest degree of
surprise, and none of them durst eat any thing for fear of wronging
us. One must have been a sailor, and reduced to the extremities
which we had felt for several months together, in order to form an
idea of the sensation which the sight of greens and of a good supper
produced in people in that condition. This supper was for me one of
the most delicious moments of my life, especially as I had sent on
board the vessels what would afford as good a supper as ours to
every one there.
We agreed that we should have venison every day to supply our
companies with fresh meat, during their stay; that at parting we were
to receive eighteen oxen, some sheep, and almost as much poultry
as we should require. We were obliged to supply the want of bread
with rice, which the Dutch live upon. The islanders live upon sago
bread, which they get out of a palm of that name; this bread looks
like the cassava. We could not get great quantities of pulse, which
would have been extremely salutary to us. The people of this country
do not cultivate them. The chief was so good as to give some to our
sick from the company’s garden.
Police of the Upon the whole, every thing here, directly or
company. indirectly, belongs to the company; neat and small
cattle, grain, and victuals of all kinds. The company alone buys and
sells. The Moors indeed have sold us fowls, goats, fish, eggs, and
some fruit, but the money which they got for them will not long
remain in their hands. The Dutch know how to get at it, by selling
them very coarse kinds of cloth, which however bear a very great
price. Even stag-hunting is not allowed to every one, for the chief
alone has a right to it. He gives his huntsmen three charges of
powder and shot, in return they are obliged to bring him two deer, for
which they are paid six-pence a-piece. If they bring home only one,
he deducts from what is due to them the value of one charge of
powder and shot.
On the 3d in the morning we brought our sick on shore, to ly there
during our stay. We likewise daily sent the greatest part of the crews
on shore, to walk about and divert themselves. I got the slaves of the
company, whom the chief hired to us by the day, to fill the water of
both ships, and to transport every thing from the shore to the ships,
&c. The Etoile profited of this time to adjust the caps of her lower
masts, which had much play. We had moored at our arrival, but from
what the Dutch told us of the goodness of the bottom, and of the
regularity of the land and sea breezes; we weighed our small bower.
Indeed, we saw all the Dutch vessels riding at single anchor.
During our stay here we had exceeding fine weather. The
thermometer generally rose to 23° during the greatest heat of the
day; the breeze from N. E. and S. E; blowing in day time, changed in
the evenings; it then came from the shore, and the nights were very
cool. We had an opportunity of seeing the interior parts of the isle;
we were allowed to go out a stag-hunting several times, in which we
took a great deal of pleasure. The country is charmingly interspersed
with woods, plains, and hillocks, between which the vallies are
watered by fine rivulets. The Dutch have brought the first stags
hither, which have multiplied prodigiously, and are delicious eating.
Here are likewise wild boars in great plenty, and some species of
wild fowls.
Particulars The extent of the isle of Boero or Burro from east
concerning the to west is reckoned at eighteen leagues, and from
isle of Boero. north to south at thirteen. It was formerly subject to
the king of Ternate, who got a tribute from thence. The principal
place in it is Cajeli, situated at the bottom of the gulph of that name,
in a marshy plain, stretching about four miles between the rivers
Soweill and Abbo. The latter is the greatest river in the whole island,
and its water is always very muddy. The landing is very inconvenient
here, especially at low water, during which, the boats are obliged to
stop at a good distance from the beach. The Dutch settlement, and
fourteen Indian habitations, formerly dispersed in several parts of the
isle, but now drawn together round the factory, form the village or
town of Cajeli. At first, the Dutch had built a fort of stone here; it was
blown up by accident in 1689, and since that time they have
contented themselves with a simple enclosure of pallisadoes,
mounted with six small cannon, forming a kind of battery; this is
called Fort of Defence, and I took this name for a sort of ironical
appellation. The garrison is commanded by the chief, and consists of
a serjeant and twenty-five men; on the whole island are not above
fifty white people. Some habitations of black people are dispersed on
it, and they cultivate rice. Whilst we were here, the Dutch forces
were encreased by three vessels, of which, the biggest was the
Draak, a snow, mounting fourteen guns, commanded by a Saxon,
whose name was Kop-le-Clerc; she was manned by fifty Europeans,
and destined to cruise among the Moluccas, and especially to act
against the people of Papua and Ceram.
Account of the The natives of the country are of two classes, the
natives of the Moors (Maures) and the Alfourians (Alfouriens). The
country. former live together under the factory, being entirely
submitted to the Dutch, who inspire them with a great fear of all
foreign nations. They are zealous observers of the Mahomedan
religion, that is, they make frequent ablutions, eat no pork, and take
as many wives as they can support, being very jealous of them, and
keeping them shut up. Their food is sago, some fruits, and fish. On
holidays they feast upon rice, which the company sells them. Their
chiefs or orencaies are always about the Dutch chief, who seems to
have some regard for them, and by their means keeps the people in
order. The company have had the art of sowing the seeds of a
reciprocal jealousy among these chiefs; this allures them of a
general slavery, and the police which they observe here with regard
to the natives, is the same in all their other factories. If one chief
forms a plot, another discovers it, and immediately informs the Dutch
of it.
These moors are, upon the whole, ugly, lazy, and not at all warlike.
They are greatly afraid of the Papous, or inhabitants of Papua; who
come sometimes in numbers of two or three hundred to burn their
habitations, and to carry off all they can, and especially slaves. The
remembrance of their last visit, made about three years ago, was still
recent. The Dutch do not make slaves of the natives of Boero; for the
company gets those, whom they employ that way, either from
Celebes, or from Ceram, as the inhabitants of these two isles sell
each other reciprocally.
Wise people. The Alfourians are a free people, without being
enemies of the company. They are satisfied with being independent,
and covet not those trifles, which the Europeans sell or give them in
exchange for their liberty. They live dispersed in the inaccessible
mountains, which the interior parts of this isle contain. There they
subsist upon sago, fruits, and hunting. Their religion is unknown; it is
said, that they are not Mahommedans; for they feed hogs, and
likewise eat them. From time to time the chiefs of the Alfourians
come to visit the Dutch chief; they would do as well to stay at home.
Productions of I do not know whether there were formerly any
the Boero. spice plantations on this isle; but be this as it will, it
is certain that there are none at present. The company get from this
station nothing but black and white ebony, and some other species
of wood, which are much in request with joiners. There is likewise a
fine pepper plantation; the sight of which has convinced us, that
pepper is common on New Britain, as we conjectured before. Fruits
are but scarce here; there are cocoa-nuts, bananas, shaddocks,
some lemons, citrons, bitter-oranges, and a few pine-apples. There
grows a very good sort of barley, called ottong, and the sago-borneo,
of which they make soups, which seemed abominable to us. The
woods are inhabited by a vast number of birds of various species,
and beautiful plumage; and among them are parrots of the greatest
beauty. Here is likewise that species of wild cat[123], which carries its
young in a bag under its belly; the kind of bat, whose wings are of a
monstrous extent[124]; enormous serpents, which can swallow a
whole sheep at once, and another species of snakes, which is much
more dangerous; because it keeps upon trees, and darts into the
eyes of those who look into the air as they pass by. No remedy is as
yet found against the bite of this last kind; we killed two of them in
one of our stag-hunts.
The river Abbo, of which the banks are almost every where
covered with trees of a thick foliage, is infested by enormous
crocodiles, which devour men and beasts. They go out at night; and
there are instances of their taking men out of their periaguas. The
people keep them from coming near, by carrying lighted torches. The
shores of Boero do not furnish many fine shells. Those precious
shells, which are an article of commerce with the Dutch, are found
on the coast of Ceram, at Amblaw, and at Banda, from whence they
are sent to Batavia. At Amblaw they likewise find the most beautiful
kind of cockatoes.
Good Henry Ouman, the chief at Boero, lives there like
proceedings of a sovereign. He has a hundred slaves for the
the resident on service of his house, and all the necessaries and
our account.
conveniencies of life in abundance. He is an Under-
[125]
Merchant ; and this degree is the third in the company’s service.
This man was born at Batavia, and has married a Creole from
Amboina. I cannot sufficiently praise his good behaviour towards us.
I make no doubt, but the moment when we entered this port, was a
critical one for him; but he behaved like a man of sense. After he had
done what his duty to his superiors required, he did what he could
not be exempted from, with a good grace, and with the good
manners of a frank and generous man. His house was ours; we
found something to eat and drink there at all times; and I think this
kind of civility was as good as any other, especially to people who
still felt the consequences of famine. He gave us two repasts of
ceremony; the good order, elegance, and plenty of which, quite
surprised us in so inconsiderable a place. The house of this honest
Dutchman was very pretty, elegantly furnished, and built entirely in
the Chinese taste. Every thing is so disposed about it as to make it
cool; it is surrounded by a garden, and a river runs across it. You
come to it from the sea-shore, through an avenue of very great trees.
His wife and daughter were dressed after the Chinese fashion, and
performed the honours of the house very well. They pass their time
in preparing flowers for distillation, in making nosegays, and getting
some betel ready. The air which you breathe in this agreeable house
is most deliciously perfumed, and we should all very willingly have
made a long stay there: how great was the contrast between this
sweet and peaceful situation, and the unnatural life we had now led
for these ten months past?
Conduct of I must mention what impression the sight of this
Aotourou at European settlement made upon Aotourou. It will
Boero. easily be conceived that his surprise must have
been great at seeing men dressed like ourselves, houses, gardens,
and various domestick animals in abundance, and great variety. He
could not be tired with looking at these objects, which were new to
him. He valued above all that hospitality, which was here exercised
with an air of sincerity and of acquaintance. As he did not see us
make any exchanges, he apprehended that the people gave us
every thing without being paid for it. Upon the whole, he behaved
very sensibly towards the Dutch. He began with giving them to
understand, that in his country he was a chief, and that he had
undertaken this voyage with his friends for his own pleasure. In the
visits, at table, and in our walks, he endeavoured to imitate us
exactly. As I had not taken him with me on the first visit which we
made, he imagined it was because his knees are distorted, and
absolutely wanted some sailors to get upon them, to set them to
rights. He often asked us, whether Paris was as fine as this factory?
Goodness of On the 6th, in the afternoon, we had taken on
the provisions board our rice, cattle, and all other refreshments.
there. The good chief’s bill was of a considerable amount;
but we were assured, that all the prices were fixed by the company,
and that he could not depart from their tariff. The provisions were
indeed excellent; the beef and mutton are better by a great deal,
than in any other hot country I know; and the fowls are most
delicious there. The butter of Boero has a reputation in this country,
which our sailors from Bretany found it had not lawfully acquired.
The 7th, in the morning, I took on board the sick people, and we
made every thing ready, in order to set sail in the evening with the
land-breeze. The fresh provisions, and the salubrious air of Boero,
had done our sick much good. This stay on shore, though it lasted
only six days, brought them so far, that they could be cured on
board, or at least prevented from growing worse, by means of the
refreshments which we could now give them.
Observations It would doubtless have been very desirable for
on the them, and even for the healthy men, to have made a
monsoons and longer stay here; but the end of the eastern
currents.
monsoon being at hand, pressed us to set sail for
Batavia. If the other monsoon was once set in, it became impossible
for us to go there; because at that time, besides having the winds
contrary to us, we had likewise the currents against us, which follow
the direction of the reigning monsoon. It is true, they keep the
direction of the preceding monsoon for near a month after it; but the
changing of the monsoon, which commonly happens in October,
may come a month sooner, as well as a month later. In September
there is little wind: in October and November still less; that being the
season of calms. The governor of Amboina chooses at this season
to go his rounds to all the isles which depend upon his government.
June, July, and August, are very rainy. The eastern monsoon
generally blows S. S. E. and S. S. W. to the north of Ceram and
Boero; in the isles of Amboina and Bandas it blows E. and S. E. The
western monsoon blows from W. S. W. and N. W. The month of April
is the term when the western winds cease blowing; this is the stormy
monsoon, as the easterly one is the rainy monsoon. Captain Clerk
told us, that he had in vain cruized before Amboina, in order to enter
it, during the whole month of July: he had there suffered continual
rains, which had made all his people sick. It was at the same time
that we were so well soaked in Port Praslin.
Remarks on There had been three earthquakes this year at
the Boero, almost close after each other, on the 7th of
earthquakes. June, the 12th and on the 17th of July. It was the
22d of the same month that we felt one on New Britain. These
earthquakes have terrible consequences for navigation in this part of
the world. Sometimes they sink known isles and sand-banks, and
sometimes they raise some, where there were none before; and we
gain nothing by such accidents. Navigation would be much safer, if
every thing remained as it is.
We leave On the 7th after noon, all our people were on
Boero. board, and we only waited for the land-breeze, in
order to set sail. It was not felt till eight o’clock at night. I immediately
sent a boat with a light to anchor at the point of the bank, which lies
on the S. E. side, and we began to make every thing ready for
setting sail. We had not been misled, when we were informed that
the bottom was very good in this anchorage. We made fruitless
efforts at the capstan for a long time; at last the voyal broke, and we
could only by the help of our winding-tackle get our anchor out of this
strong ooze, in which it was buried. We did not get under sail before
eleven o’clock. Having doubled the point of the bank, we hoisted in
our boats, as the Etoile did hers, and we steered successively N. E.
N. E. by N. and N. N. E. in order to go out of the gulph of Cajeli.
Astronomical During our stay here, M. Verron had made several
observations. observations of distances on board; the mean result
of which enabled him to determine the longitude of this gulph; and
places it 2° 53′ more to the westward than our reckoning, which we
had followed after determining the longitude on New Britain. Upon
the whole, though we found the true European date current in the
Moluccas, from which it was very natural, we had lost a day by going
round the world with the sun’s course, yet I shall continue the date of
our journals, only mentioning, that instead of Wednesday the 7th,
they reckoned Thursday the 8th in India. I shall not correct my date,
till I come to the isle of France.
 CHART CHART
of the Straits of shewing the Track of the
BOUTON. French Ships
through the
MOLUCCAS,
to Batavia, in
1768.
 CHAP. VII.
Run from Boero to Batavia.
1768.
September.
Although I was convinced that the Dutch represent
the navigation between the Moluccas as much more dangerous than
it really is, yet I well knew that it was full of shoals and difficulties.
The greatest difficulty for us was to have no Difficulties of
accurate chart of these parts of India, the French the navigation
charts of them being more proper to cause the loss in the
Moluccas.
of ships than to guide them. I could get nothing but
vague information, and imperfect instructions from the Dutch at
Boero. When we arrived there, the Draak was going to leave the port
in a few days, in order to bring an engineer to Macassar, and I
intended to follow her to that place; but the resident gave orders to
the commander of this snow to stay at Cajeli till we were gone.
Accordingly we set sail alone, and I directed my course so as to pass
to the northward of Boero, and to go in search of the straits of
Button, which the Dutch call Button-straat.
Course which We ranged the coast of Boero at the distance of
we take. about a league and a half, and the currents did not
seem to make any sensible difference till noon. On the 8th in the
morning we perceived the isles of Kilang and Manipa. From the low
land which you find after going out of the gulph of Cajeli, the coast is
very high, and runs W. N. W. and W. by N. On the 9th in the morning
we got sight of the isle of Xullabessie; it is a very inconsiderable one,
and the Dutch have a factory there, in a redoubt, called Cleverblad,
or the Clover-leaf. The garrison consists of a serjeant and twenty-five
men, under the command of M. Arnoldus Holtman, who is only book-
keeper. This isle formerly was one of the dependences of the
government of Amboina, at present it belongs to that of Ternate.
Whilst we ran along Boero we had little wind, and the settled breezes
almost the same as in the bay. The currents during these two days
set us near eight leagues to the westward. We determined this
difference with precision enough, on account of the frequent
bearings which we took. On the last day they likewise set us a little
to the southward, which was verified by the meridian altitude
observed on the 10th.
We had seen the last lands of Boero on the 9th, at sun-setting; we
found pretty fresh S. and S. S. E. winds out at sea, and we passed
several very strong races of a tide. We steered S. W. whenever the
winds permitted, in order to fall in with the land between Wawoni and
Button, as I intended to pass through the straits of that name. It is
pretended that during this season it is dangerous to Nautical
keep to the eastward of Button, that one runs the advice.
risk of being thrown upon the coast by the winds and currents, and
that then it is necessary, in order to lay it again, to wait for the
western monsoon’s being perfectly set in. This I have been told by a
Dutch mariner, but I will not answer for the truth of it. I will however
positively assert that the passage of the straits is infinitely preferable
to the other course, either to the northward or to the southward of the
shoal called Toukanbessie: this latter being full of visible and hidden
dangers, which are dreaded even by those who know the coast.
On the 10th in the morning, one Julian Launai, taylor, died of the
scurvy. He began already to grow better, but two excesses in
drinking brandy carried him off.
Sight of the The 11th, at eight o’clock in the morning, we saw
straits of the land, bearing from W. by S. to S. S. W. ½ W. At
Button. nine o’clock, we found that it was the isle of Wawoni,
which is high, especially in its middle: at eleven o’clock we
discovered the northern part of Button. At noon we observed in 4° 6′
of south lat. The northermost point of the isle of Wawoni then bore
W. ½ N. its southermost point S. W. by W. 4° W. eight or nine
leagues distant, and the N. E. point of Button, S. W. ½ W. about nine
leagues distant. In the afternoon we stood within two leagues of
Wawoni, then stood out into the offing, and kept plying all night, in
order to keep to windward of the straits of Button, and be ready to
enter them at day-break. The 12th, at six o’clock in the morning, it
bore between N. W. by W. and W. N. W. and we stood in for the
north point of Button. At the same time we hoisted out our boats, and
kept them in tow. At nine o’clock we opened the straits, with a fine
breeze, which lasted till half past ten o’clock, and freshened again a
little before noon.
Description of When you enter these straits, it is necessary to
the entrance. range the land of Button, of which the north point is
of a middling height, and divided into several hummocks. The cape
on the larboard side of the entrance is steep and bold-to. Several
white rocks ly before it, pretty high above the water, and to the
eastward is a fine bay, in which we saw a small vessel under sail.
The opposite point of Wawoni is low, tolerably level, and projects to
the westward. The land of Celebes then appears before you, and a
passage opens to the north, between this great isle and Wawoni; this
is a false passage: the southern one indeed appears almost entirely
shut up; there you see at a great distance a low land, divided as it
were into little isles or keys. As you advance in the straits, you
discover upon the coast of Button, great round capes, and fine
creeks. Off one of these capes are two rocks, which one must
absolutely take at a distance for two ships under sail; the one pretty
large, and the other a small one. About a league to the eastward of
them, and a quarter of a league off the coast, we sounded in forty-
five fathoms, sand and ooze. The straits from the entrance run
successively S. W. and south.
At noon we observed in 4° 29′ south lat. and were then somewhat
beyond the rocks. They ly off a little isle, behind which there appears
to be a fine inlet. There we saw a kind of vessel in form of a square
chest, having a periagua in tow. She made way both by sailing and
rowing, and ranged the shore. A French sailor, whom we took in at
Boero, and who for these four years past had sailed with the Dutch
in the Moluccas, told us that it was a boat of piratical Indians, who
endeavour to make prisoners in order to sell them. They seemed to
be rather troubled at meeting with us. They furled their sail, and set
their vessel with setting poles close under the shore, behind the little
isle.
Aspect of the We continued our course in the straits, the winds
country. turning round with the channel, and permitting us to
come by degrees from S. W. to south. Towards two o’clock in the
afternoon we thought the tide began to set against us; the sea then
washed the lower parts of the trees upon the coast, which seems to
prove that the flood-tide comes here from the northward, at least
during this season. At half an hour after two o’clock we passed a
very fine port upon the coast of Celebes. This land offers a charming
prospect, on account of the variety of low lands, hills, and mountains.
The landscape is adorned with a fine verdure, and every thing
announces a rich country. Soon after, the isle of Pangasani, and the
keys to the northward of it, appear separated, and we distinguished
the several channels which they form. The high mountains of
Celebes appeared above, and to the northward of these lands. The
straits are afterwards formed by this long isle of Pangasani, and by
that of Button. At half past five o’clock we were locked in so that we
could not see either the entrance or the out-let, and we sounded in
twenty-seven fathoms of water, and an excellent oozy bottom.
First The breeze which then came from E. S. E.
anchorage. obliged us to sail close upon it, in order to keep the
coast of Button on board. At half past six o’clock, the wind coming
more contrary, and the tide setting pretty strong against us, we let go
a stream-anchor almost in the midst of the channel, in the same
soundings which we had before, twenty-seven fathoms, soft ooze;
which is a mark of an equal depth in all this part. The breadth of the
straits from the entrance to this first anchorage, varies from seven to
eight, nine and ten miles. The night was very fine. We supposed
there were habitations on this part of Button, because we saw
several fires there. Pangasani appeared much better peopled to us,
if we judge by the great number of fires on every part of it. This isle is
here low, level, and covered with fine trees, and I should not wonder
if it contained spices.
Traffic with the On the 13th, a great many periaguas, with
inhabitants. outriggers, surrounded the ships. The Indians
brought us fowls, eggs, bananas, perrokeets and cockatoes. They
desired to be paid in Dutch money, and especially in a plated coin,
which is of the value of two French sous and a half. They likewise
willingly took knives with red handles. These islanders came from a
considerable plantation on the heights of Button, opposite our
anchorage, occupying the skirts of five or six mountains. The land is
there entirely cleared, intersected with ditches, and well planted. The
habitations lay together in villages, or solitary in the midst of fields,
surrounded by hedges. They cultivate rice, maize, potatoes, yams,
and other roots. We have no where eaten better bananas than we
got at this place. Here are likewise abundance of cocoa-nuts, citrons,
mangle-apples, and ananas or pine-apples. All the people are very
tawny, of a short stature, and ugly. Their language, the same as that
of the Molucca isles, is the Malays, and their religion the
Mahometan. They seem to have a great experience in their trade,
but are gentle and honest. They offered us for sale some pieces of
coloured but very coarse cotton. I shewed them some nutmegs and
cloves, and asked them to give me some. They answered that they
had some dried in their houses, and that whenever they wanted any,
they went to get it upon Ceram, and in the neighbourhood of Banda,
where the Dutch certainly are not the people to provide them with it.
They told me that a great ship belonging to the company had passed
through the straits about ten days ago.
From sun-rising the wind was weak and contrary, varying from
south to S. W. I set sail at half past ten, with the first of the flood, and
we made many boards without gaining much way. At half past four
o’clock in the afternoon we entered a passage, which is only four
miles broad. It is formed on the side of Button, by a low, but much
projecting point, and leaves to the northward a great bay, in which
are three isles. On the side of Pangasani it is formed by seven or
eight little isles or keys, covered with wood, and lying at most half a
quarter of a league from the coast. In one of our boards we ranged
these keys almost within pistol shot, sounding close to them with
fifteen fathoms without finding bottom. In the channel our soundings
were in thirty-five, thirty, and twenty-seven fathoms, oozy bottom. We
passed without, that is, on the west side of the three isles, upon the
coast of Button. They are of a considerable size, and inhabited.
Second The coast of Pangasani here rises like an
anchorage. amphitheatre, with a low land at bottom, which I
believe is often overflowed. I conclude it from seeing the islanders
always fix their habitations upon the sides of the mountains. Perhaps
too, as they are almost always at war with their neighbours, they
choose to leave an interval of wood between their huts and the
enemies who should attempt the landing. It seems even that they are
dreaded by the inhabitants of Button, who consider them as pirates,
upon whom no reliance can be had. Both parties are likewise used to
wear the criss or dagger constantly in their girdle. At eight o’clock in
the evening, the wind dying away entirely, we let go our stream-
anchor in thirty-six fathoms, bottom of soft ooze. The Etoile anchored
to the northward, nearer the land. Thus we had passed the first
narrow gut or gullet.
Third and The 14th, at eight o’clock in the morning, we
fourth weighed and made all the sail possible, the breeze
anchorage. being faint, and we plied till noon; when, upon
seeing a bank to the S. S. W. we anchored in twenty fathoms, sand
and ooze, and I sent a boat to sound round the bank. In the morning
several periaguas came alongside, one among them displaying
Dutch colours at her poop. At her approach, all the others retired to
make way for her. She had on board one of their orencaies or chiefs.
The company allow them their colours, and the right to carry them.
At one o’clock in the afternoon we set sail again, with a view to gain
some leagues farther; but this was impossible, the wind being too
light and scant; we lost about half a league, and at half past three
o’clock we let go our anchor again, in thirteen fathom bottom of
sand, ooze, shells, and coral.
Nautical Mean while M. de la Corre, whom I had sent in
advice. the boat, to sound between the bank and the shore,
returned and made the following report: Near the bank there is eight
or nine fathom of water; and as you go nearer the coast of Button,
which is high and deep, opposite a fine bay, you always deepen your
water, till you find no bottom with eighty fathom of line, almost mid-
channel between the bank and the land. Consequently, if one was
becalmed in this part, there would be no anchoring, except near the
bank. The bottom is, upon the whole, of a good quality hereabouts.
Several other banks ly between this and the coast of Pangasani. We
cannot therefore sufficiently recommend it, to keep as close as
possible to the land of Button in all this strait. The good anchorages
are along this coast; it hides no danger; and, besides this, the winds
most frequently blow from thence. From hence, almost to the out-let
of the strait, it seems to be nothing but a chain of isles; but the
reason of this is, its being intersected by many bays, which must
form excellent ports.
Continuation The night was very fair and calm. The 15th, at five
and description o’clock in the morning, we set sail with a breeze at
of the straits. E. S. E. and we steered so as to come close to the
east of Button. At half past seven o’clock we doubled the bank, and
the breeze dying away, I hoisted out the long-boat and barge, and
made signal for the Etoile to do the same. The tide was favourable,
and our boats towed us till three o’clock in the afternoon. We passed
by two excellent bays, where I believe an anchorage might be found;
but all along, and very near the high-shores, there is no bottom. At
half after three o’clock the wind blew very fresh at E. S. E. and we
made sail to find an anchorage near the narrow pass, by which one
must go out of these straits. We did not yet discover any
appearances of it. On the contrary, the farther we advanced, the less
issue did we perceive. The lands of both shores, which over-lap
here, appear as one continued coast, and do not so much as let one
suspect any out-let.
At half past four o’clock we were opposite, and to the westward of
a very open bay, and saw a boat of the country-people’s, which
seemed to advance into it, to the southward. I sent my barge after
her, with orders to bring her to me, as I intended to get a pilot by this
means. During this time our other boats were employed in sounding.
Somewhat off shore, and almost opposite the north point of the bay,
they found twenty-five fathom, sand and coral bottom; and after that
they were out of soundings. I put about, then lay-to under top-sails,
in order to give the boats time to sound. After passing by the
entrance of the bay, you find bottom again, all along the land which
joins to its southerly point. Our boats made signal of 45, 40, 35, 29,
and 28 fathom, oozy bottom; and we worked to gain this anchorage
with the help of our long-boats. At half past five, we let go one of our
bower-anchors there, in thirty-five fathom of water, bottom of soft
ooze. The Etoile anchored to the southward of us.
Fifth As we were just come to an anchor, my barge
anchorage. returned with the Malayo boat. He had not found it
difficult to determine the latter to follow her; and we took an Indian,
who asked four ducatoons (about thirteen shillings sterling) for
conducting us; this bargain was soon concluded. The pilot came to ly
on board, and his periagua went to wait for him on the other side of
the passage. He told us, she was going thither through the bottom of
a neighbouring bay, from whence there was but a short portage, or
carrying-place, for the periagua. We were, upon the whole, enabled
to do without the assistance of this pilot; for some moments before
we anchored, the sun shining very favourably upon the entrance of
the gut, was the occasion of our discovering the larboard point of the
out-let, bearing S. S. W. 4° W. but one must guess which it is; for it
laps over a double rock, which forms the starboard point. Some of
our gentlemen employed the rest of the day in walking about on
shore; they found no habitations near our anchorage. They likewise
searched the woods, with which all this part is entirely covered, but
found no interesting production in it. They only met with a little bag
near the shore, containing some dried nutmegs.
The next morning we began to heave a-head at half past two
o’clock in the morning, and it was four before we got under sail. We
could hardly perceive any wind; however being towed by our boats,
we got to the entrance of the passage.
The water was then quite low on both shores; and as we had
hitherto found that the flood-tide set from the northward, we
expected the favourable return of it every instant; but we were much
deceived in our hopes; for here the flood sets from the southward, at
least during this season, and I know not which are the limits of the
two powers. The wind had freshened considerably, and was right aft.
In vain did we with its assistance endeavour to stem the tide for an
hour and a half; the Etoile, which first began to fall astern, anchored
near the entrance of the passage, on the side of Button, in a kind of
elbow, where the tide forms a sort of eddy, and is not very sensibly
felt. With the help of the wind I still struggled near an Sixth
hour without losing ground; but the wind having left anchorage.
me, I soon lost a good mile, and anchored at one o’clock in the
afternoon, in thirty fathom, bottom of sand and coral. I kept all the
sails set, and steering the ship, in order to ease my anchor, which
was only a light stream-anchor.
Leaving the All this day our ships were surrounded with
Straits of periaguas. They went to and fro as at a fair, being
Button; laden with refreshments, curiosities, and pieces of
description of
the passage.
cotton. This commerce was carried on without
hindering our manœuvres. At four o’clock in the
afternoon, the wind having freshened, and it being almost high water,
we weighed our anchor, and with all our boats a-head of the frigate
we entered the passage, and were followed by the Etoile, who was
towed in the same manner by her boats. At half past five o’clock, the
narrowest pass was happily cleared; and at half an hour after six we
anchored without, in the bay called Bay of Bouton, under the Dutch
settlement.
Let us now return to the description of the passage. When you
come from the northward, it does not begin to open till you are within
a mile of it. The first object which strikes one, on the side of Button,
is a detached rock, hollow below, representing exactly the figure of a
tented galley[126], half of whose cut water is carried away; the bushes
which cover it seem to form the tent; at low water, this galley joins to
the bay; at high water, it is a little isle. The land of Button, which is
tolerably high in this part, is covered with houses, and the sea-shore
full of enclosures, for catching fish in. The other shore of the
passage is perpendicular; its point is distinguishable by two sections,
which form as it were two stories in the rock. After passing the galley,
the lands on both sides are quite steep, and in some parts even
hang over the channel. One would think, that the god of the sea had
opened a passage here for his swelled waters, by a stroke of his
trident. However, the aspect of the coast is charming; that of Button
is cultivated, rises like an amphitheatre, and every where full of
habitations, unless in such places, which by their steepness exclude
men from coming at them. The coast of Pangasani, which is scarce
any thing but one solid rock, is however covered with trees; but there
appear only two or three habitations on it.
About a mile and a half to the northward of the passage, nearer
Button than Pangasani, we find 20, 18, 15, 12, and 10 fathom, oozy
bottom; as we advance to the southward in the channel, the bottom