Monday 2 March 2009

Moral excellence

Aristotle in the Nichomachean Ethics claimed that 'moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts'. There are, clearly enough, good cognitive-theraputic reasons for agreeing with him, except that this seems to place virtue itself into the realm of the autonomous, rather than the conscious, nervous system. And surely that can't be right ...

Or can it?

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