PLASTICITY AND PERFECTION: MAIMONIDES AND ARISTOTLE ON CHARACTER
JONATHAN JACOBS a1 a1 Philosophy and Religion Department,
Colgate University, Hamilton, New York 13346-1389
Abstract
There are some quite striking similarities between the moral psychology
Maimonides presents in ‘Eight Chapters’ and Aristotle's
moral psychology.
They both deny that individuals have the virtues and vices by nature; they
put a great deal of weight on habituation as a formative factor with respect
to character; and they both characterize virtues in terms of lying in a
mean
between excess and defect. These are fundamentals of moral psychology that
they share. But there are some very significant differences as well, and
these
are brought out quite clearly by a consideration of Maimonides' ‘Laws
of
Repentance’. It is worth looking at these differences not just for
the sake of
seeing how some Aristotelian claims are modified by the Jewish tradition,
but also in order to see how moral psychology and the interpretation of
the
scope of human volition are altered by certain types of theistic commitments.
