Relationship between acts and character

[Socrates]

[quote name='rkwright' date='Jan 6 2006, 06:52 PM']well its kinda circular, do you change your mind before you change your actions? or do you change your actions to change your mind?
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It really doens't matter. They go together.
The will must first change, and the will directs our actions.

The main point is that one cannot truly consider himself virtuous unless his acts are virtuous. "Being a nice guy inside" isn't enough.

[Tata126]

It's mostly about habits, which are of course acquired by taking actions, but you have to start taking those actions even when they might not mean anything yet, in order to build the virtue. For instance, if someone wants to start praying really well, they should start off by acting like it - kneeling, for instance, and saying the prayers slowly and reverently. Then even if they're distracted, they're building the habit of kneeling at prayer and praying reverently, and though they might not feel like they're praying really well, eventually the habit of prayer will help them grow to pray better. Similarly with charity - nobody ever begins being charitable because he feels charitable, he has to perform acts of charity when he feels like he would really rather punch the other person in the face, and even though he doesn't have the interior disposition, forming the habit of acting charitably will form the virtue of charity in him. So our exterior actions really do matter, but it's mostly what we do repeatedly instead of what we do once that forms our interior dispositions.

[journeyman]

[quote name='Tata126' date='Jan 7 2006, 10:23 PM']It's mostly about habits, which are of course acquired by taking actions, but you have to start taking those actions even when they might not mean anything yet, in order to build the virtue.  For instance, if someone wants to start praying really well, they should start off by acting like it - kneeling, for instance, and saying the prayers slowly and reverently.  Then even if they're distracted, they're building the habit of kneeling at prayer and praying reverently, and though they might not feel like they're praying really well, eventually the habit of prayer will help them grow to pray better.  Similarly with charity - nobody ever begins being charitable because he feels charitable, he has to perform acts of charity when he feels like he would really rather punch the other person in the face, and even though he doesn't have the interior disposition, forming the habit of acting charitably will form the virtue of charity in him.  So our exterior actions really do matter, but it's mostly what we do repeatedly instead of what we do once that forms our interior dispositions.
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This presupposes that a conscious decision has been made to have a more prayerful or charitable life . . . the act of will (I shall pray) governs the physical act (I kneel and pray) . . . before the act of will, did I have a prayerful character? I don't think so. After the act of will, did I have a prayerful character? Again, I think the answer would be "not yet." However, the more I kneel and pray, as Tata suggests, the more prayer becomes a factor in all my actions, and I develop a prayerful character.

Under this pattern, the act of will determines the character that is desired, and the physical acts emulate the character until it in fact becomes part of the inner character.

A little undeserved grace doesn't hurt during the process.

[scardella]

Yeah, I was thinking about how it IS circular, but it still doesn't deny free will. I guess I'm trying to reinvent the wheel with virtue and vice theory, but it is interesting how past decisions and events bias and influence people, yet there's still room for free will, anyway. It's also interesting how the more you've invested in a particular way of acting, the more likely you are to act in that way.

There does seem to be a distinction in how we experience virtue and vice, though. In virtue, it seems to be bound up in freely choosing x, whatever good x may be. It does not give an apparent constraint against doing y as opposed to x, it just makes y no longer appealing. It reveals y for what it actually is. HOWEVER, in vice, doing y actually breaks down the free will (progressively) and it makes you less able to choose something else. You become ensnared by the vice. It can even happen that you can see the evil that the vice causes and begin to hate it, but you are still not able to choose otherwise. If this sounds suspiciously like addictions, you are exactly right.

Grace can, obviously, overcome these obstacles. One of the most interesting "categories" of grace, I find, is prevenient grace. It is a grace that strengthens the free will and lets one see clearly enough to be able to choose the good, despite the drowning of the will that is occurring.