Aristotle on Shame and Learning to Be Good Jimenez, Marta, Aristotle on Shame and Learning to Be Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. x + 214 pp. (original) (raw)

How can we become virtuous by doing virtuous actions? This question, which has received unceasing attention from scholars working in Aristotle's ethical theory, is at the center of Marta Jimenez's book, Aristotle on Shame and Learning to Be Good. Jimenez articulates clearly the challenges faced when trying to provide an account of moral development in Aristotle's works. She also meets these challenges with energy and originality, by weaving together a series of remarks scattered throughout Aristotle's ethical treatises into a persuasive and coherent picture of ethical education. Jimenez's book offers a rigorous treatment of central issues in Aristotelian ethics and moral development, and is essential reading for anyone researching or teaching on these topics. Jimenez aims at offering an answer to what she calls 'the moral upbringing gap'. Aristotle famously says that we become virtuous by performing virtuous actions. He also claims that virtue involves acting from the right motives and affective framework-that is, because of the nobility of the actions and with enjoyment. Yet, it is not immediately clear how repeatedly performing actions of a virtuous type can result in steady dispositions to act virtuously. Repeating good actions could make us skilled at acting as the virtuous person would, only to conform to societal expectations and pressures, to get external rewards or avoid punishments, and without any enjoyment or appreciation for these actions' nobility. Jimenez argues that conditioning agents to enjoy doing what is right through rewards and punishments will not do the trick. After all, if my kid enjoys the candy I give to her every time she shares a toy with her playdate, she will not (we may think) come to enjoy sharing for its own sake and because of its nobility, but rather for the external reward. Neither can the pleasure we feel when we perform actions that have become familiar to us account for the peculiar desire for, and enjoyment of, doing what is right. Indeed, these pleasures of familiarity are not the pleasures proper to virtue because they are not felt at the nobility of the actions. These accounts of Aristotelian habituation fail, according to Jimenez, because they suffer from a 'discontinuity' problem: they cannot account for the acquisition of virtue because they start with actions that are not done in a virtuous manner, that is, from virtuous motives and with virtuous affective dispositions. But if the 'learning-by-doing' thesis, as typically understood, cannot fully account for the development of a truly virtuous character, then what does? An answer to this question, Jimenez insists, must guarantee