The power of habituation: Aristotle’s pedagogical model

Abstract

The purpose of this writing is to explain in a clear and simple way the “moral pedagogy” of Aristotle (how to educate the child so that he becomes a good man), something that appears scattered in his most important works and that I have gathered to examine it as a whole. For this conference on Paideia, I have chosen to sacrifice its more technical components and present an accessible version for both initiated and uninitiated in Aristotelian philosophy, in order to facilitate discussion. In very general lines, his proposal will be divided into three stages according to how life is divided (childhood, adolescence, adulthood), and what should be done in each one will have to do with (1) instilling ethical habits –something that is achieved through of coercion–, (2) theoretically instruct on these habits –which requires an induction on one's own habits–, and (3) practice good until habituation takes effect and thus we learn to feel pleasure from acting well.