Abstaining from moral development

I used to think of moral development as building virtue - a straightforward improvement or upward ascent. But character change is messy and can involve toggling between vices. This is a process marked not by increasing degrees of flourishing but by different types of unflourishing as we incline in the direction of an opposing vice. This lack of flourishing may continue until we get it right, assuming that we eventually do.

Aristotle used the image of warped wood. He viewed moral virtue as a mean positioned between two vices – a vice of excess and a vice of deficiency. For example, courage is a mean between cowardice and rashness. Wittiness is the mean between buffoonery and boorishness. In the context of a virtue mean, the image of warped wood has interesting implications for character development.