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Humanity And Moral Virtue In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

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Within Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, he considers humanity and its relationship with moral virtue. By the end of this essay, I will have summarized how Aristotle sees virtue as something that can be improved through repetition and what sort of ideology is required for an action to be considered virtuous. Also, I will address how one may disagree with Aristotle’s views on how a person learns to become virtuous, thinking that the concept of virtue must be precisely defined rather than as free-formed as Aristotle understands it. Following that counterargument, I shall refute it by explaining how a satisfactory childhood impresses society’s code of conduct upon a youth and how a youth learns how to apply that code of conduct through trial and error.
According to Aristotle, each individual has the ability to develop moral virtue, yet, this moral virtue is initially negligible in a person’s life since they do not possess the proper faculties to understand society’s expectations. Expanding on that, Aristotle claims that while nature may instill the first notion of virtue in a person, that person can develop or degrade that virtue to the extent of which they put it into practice. In this sense, Aristotle compares the concept of moral virtue to a muscle because, like a muscle, virtue can only become more realized through repetition. In Book II, chapter 4, Aristotle explains that a person can not passively interact with moral virtue, but must actively involve themselves with it, and

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