Emotional Skillfulness and Virtue Acquisition

In this chapter, the authors offer a sketch of the state of the art as concerns existing accounts of virtue acquisition in relation to automaticity. In particular, the chapter focuses on the so-called “skill model,” which the authors aim to improve by questioning its rather common underlying dualistic picture of the mind. Then, the authors propose an account of skillful emotions by identifying the features that make them both automatic and embedded in an intelligent practice. Finally, the authors show how this view can help the skill model by offering a better description of emotion shaping in virtue acquisition. By doing so, they contend that emotions contribute autonomously and actively to the skillfulness of the habits in which they are embedded.