Kathi Beier

The paper discusses the question whether Aristotle’s concept of causality is applicable to the acquisition of virtues. It therefore connects Aristotle’s doctrine of the four causes, as it is developed in Physics II 3, with his account of the virtues elaborated in the Nicomachean Ethics. On the one hand, the doctrine of the four causes seems to be helpful when we want to understand the virtues since the acquisition of the virtues is a kind of transformation (kinêsis)...