In case anyone in the world doesn't know, I'm a Coldplay fan. I've noticed that any time I hear a song of theirs that I haven't heard before, it becomes my favorite song. Right now, my favorite song is A Rush of Blood to the Head. In the chorus there's this great line that says, "Start as you mean to go on." It would appear that Aristotle agrees with Chris Martin (the lead singer for Coldplay). In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that virtue has to be learned through habituation. One would have to start off being trained up in virtuous way. In a sense, one should start off virtuous to go on virtuous.
Aristotle starts of making the distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions. Basically anything you do out of ignorance or compulsion is involuntary. If you do an action for the action itself it’s voluntary. So, in order to be virtuous, you would have to voluntarily do virtuous things. That seems simple enough. But it gets more complicated. Humans don’t have a natural tendency to be virtuous. We almost always lean toward some extreme such as anger, greed, selfish, or whatever. Luckily, according to Aristotle, we can still become virtuous through practice. First, do the right thing for the right reason. Second, do the right thing for the right reason again. Third, do the right thing…well you get the picture. The point is humans are creatures of habit. Whatever we start of doing we will likely keep doing. Hence Chris Martin suggesting that you start as you mean to go on, and hence Aristotle strongly suggesting you start of virtuous.
If only Aristotle had been born several hundred years later, we could have traded iTunes.
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