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Aristotle distinguishes natural virtue from full virtue (NE 1144b). While we may have an innate disposition for justice, courage, compassion, or generosity, for instance, we need to develop understanding for those dispositions to be fully just, courageous, compassionate, or generous. In other words, it is because we learn to become fully virtuous that makes the virtuous acts actually virtuous (Curzer 2012, p. 12). For Aristotle, full virtue and practical wisdom are strongly intertwined, since “it is neither possible to be fully good without practical wisdom nor practically wise without virtue of character” (NE 1145a).

This means that we have to learn how to turn our natural receptivity to virtues into full virtues. We grow into virtues through habituation, and virtues require practice, in a similar way to acquiring skills, e.g. we evolve as a generous person by performing generous actions, as we become pianists by playing the piano (NE 1103a). But acquiring both virtues and skills is not a passive process; both need effort, focus, and the right kind of practice (Russell 2015). Nevertheless, there is a difference between acquiring skills and acquiring virtues: unlike skills, virtues are essential for flourishing, and their scope and depth for human life are broader (Kristjánsson 2013). Thus, it is not only the amount of practice that matters, but rather the way the agent understands and carries on that practice. Aristotle is adamant: “It makes a huge [difference], or rather, all the difference” (NE 1103b). So eudaimonia as collective human flourishing or true happiness for the common good would be the lodestar guiding the acquisition of virtue, and arguably also guiding ES projects. In this sense, Kristjansson (2016) concludes from his review on flourishing as an overarching aim of education (p. 18):

The uniqueness of a flourishing paradigm on human well‐being lies in its insistence that education and teaching is woven into the very fabric of flourishing – as work in progress until our dying day – and that any effort deserving of the name “education” must be characterised as education for flourishing.

It follows from the above reasons that the practice of cultivating virtues requires guidance. This guidance goes well beyond mechanically imitating the acts performed by virtuous exemplars, but focusing on the qualities that make a person virtuous, allowing students to choose their particular perspective aimed at developing the right criteria to become so (Athanassoulis 2018). That perspective can only be understood from within (Sherman 1989, p. 418). Again, phronesis lies at the heart of the qualities that make a person virtuous, manifested in the ability “to see” what is required in each situation to arrive at a virtuous decision (Waddock 2010; Russell 2015).