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The way to be habituated in virtue is to do virtuous actions, starting from a young age. Virtues can be corrupted by deficiency and excess, such as drinking and eating where too much of them or even too little damages health, virtues such as bravery and temperance are ruined by their extreme. When someone has made it a habit to practice the virtues in moderation, their actions will help them obtain a state of integrity. The person who allows themselves only a moderate amount of pleasure, for example, will become a temperate person. Also, he argues that for one to act virtuously, it is concerned with pains and pleasures.

It is through pain and pleasure that we tend to do what is best. Virtues cannot be obvious since the action must be appropriate to the situation. Virtue is to be found in the mean between extremes of vice. If virtue becomes a habit, indeed, it will be pleasant to act according to that virtue. The right education should make individuals be pained by what is terrible and take pleasure in what is good. Individuals will take pleasure in doing what is right so long as they are in a virtuous state. Vice and virtue are about pains and pleasures. Aristotle says that each person avoids pain and seeks pleasure from when one is an infant moving forward.

"For moral excellence is concerned with pleasures and pains; it is on account of pain that we abstain from noble ones" (Book 2, page 575). Although a virtuous person will choose the best regarding pains and pleasures, a vicious person will not. This explains that they have to choose

their acts where one chose their actions concerning pleasures or pains for one to be virtuous. Virtuous and vice are contrary states and also opposing to each other. They involve choices on what to avoid and what to seek. One will avoid whatever objectives are painful, shameful, and harmful.

The virtue will not eradicate pain and pleasure as some individuals think, but it will make people enjoy virtuous actions. Aristotle argues that someone's pain or pleasure following action indicates the state of that individual. For instance, if someone enjoys staying away from pleasure, the person is levelheaded and moderate. Pleasure can lead an individual to do corrupt actions or vulgar, and the pain leads to a person abstaining from acceptable actions. Aristotle cites Plato's argument, "hence we ought to have been brought up in a particular way from our very youth, as Plato says" (Book 2, page 575). He meant that the key to finding pain or pleasure in the right things is having had the proper upbringing. For this philosopher, pain and pleasure serve as an indication of a person's state or disposition. Though responding to pain and pleasure in virtuous ways, abstaining or acting according to what is acceptable or base needs training from the time one is youth.

As I conclude, I am of the perspective that Aristotle was right that one acts according to our character. Reason being that one acts as they feel they should once a type of pressure is exerted on them. The character of a person guides them into doing something either right or wrong. A character in someone is what sees them through tough and simple times. A person considers what’s best for themselves first before acting, or rather they wonder what someone would in my place do. This makes someone act in default as they would in their character. A virtuous person will act virtuously since that is their character, just like a kind person acting kindly towards other people. If one possesses moral values, they will act morally according to their unchangeable character. One can learn from peers or guardians how to act virtuously or be an inborn character. Children who are guided by their guardians to follow the right paths also grow in moral character.

References

Aristotle. (1999). Faculty of Social Sciences.

https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/aristotle/Ethics.pdf