Lawrence (2011) Acquiring character : becoming grown-up

Lawrence, Gavin (2011). Acquiring character : becoming grown-up. In Michael Pakaluk & Giles Pearson (eds.), Moral psychology and human action in Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The Nicomachean Ethics is a work of ‘practical philosophy’. Its concern is Praxis, action, but action in a sense somewhat obscure to the ear of modern philosophy. It is action in a narrower sense than the merely voluntary, or intentional, action of which animals and children are also capable (ta hekousia). Its concern is action whose archeé is prohairesis, action that comes from, or expresses, the human agent’s preferential choice (3.2, 1111b6-8).* Such action expresses the agent's values—in the sense that it is viewed as being what is unqualifiedly best or wisest to do, as being the appropriate (prepon) or fine (kalon) way to go on, as being what he should do (dei), where this is the unqualified (haplos), or ‘unsub- scripted’, ‘should’ of full practical reason (see Lawrence 1995, 2004). Such action is in a sense fully rational action. For Aristotle, practical reason, or deliberation, has as its formal end eupraxia—successful action, in this sense of Praxis: it is reasoning aimed at determining what we should do, should unquali- fiedly, in order to do it.