You are not brave because you decided to be. For Aristotle, there is a precise Greek word for what really forms character: hexis.
Habit, not label
In Nicomachean Ethics, his masterpiece on how to live well, Aristotle uses hexis to describe a stable disposition, built by repeated practice. Virtue is not a state that a person possesses once and for all, like a seal. You are not courageous, you become courageous by acting courageously, repeatedly, even in fear. It is repetition that consolidates habit, and it is habit that forms character.
Why this matters for change
This changes the way you look at who you are in the midst of constant change: you can change, and you should change, but what you build through these changes, through discipline and habit, is what gives you real identity. Not the label. Not the category you assign to yourself on a social network. Character forged in action.
A personal, not academic question
Nicomachean Ethics is almost 2,400 years old and remains, perhaps, the most useful book ever written about how to live well, because it doesn't tell you who to be, it asks what you are practicing, what you are building in yourself, day after day. It is the same question that supports the act and power: you change every moment, like in the river of Heraclitus, but hexis is what guarantees that this change has direction, and is not just dissolution.
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What is hexis, for Aristotle?
It is the Greek word for habit, stable disposition. Aristotle uses it in Nicomachean Ethics to explain that virtue is not a state that a person possesses once and for all, it is built through repeated practice.
How does one become courageous, according to Aristotle?
It's not enough to want. You become courageous by acting courageously, repeatedly, even in fear. Character is forged in action, not in the label or category a person assigns to themselves.
Continue: Act and Potency, in Aristotle · What is Aristotle's Hylemorphism? · Heraclitus: No One Enters the Same River Twice
Home class (Community NousCast): O pensamento de Heráclito está em tudo ao seu redor