Not only do actions reflect the goodness or badness of one’s character, one’s actions also change one’s character. These public acts affect one’s character even if one’s private belief is the opposite of the action. For example, a physician believes use of contraceptives to be immoral yet prescribes them in the office because he or she feels a duty to provide what the patient asks for, or a pharmacist who believes abortion to be immoral fills prescriptions for the abortifacient RU-486. Both sets of actions affect one’s character. In this, public actions cannot be separated from private actions. To be of good character means that one’s habits, actions, and emotional responses all are united and directed toward the moral and the good. Lay summary: Character cannot be separated from the person. For the physician to be of good character, it is vital that he or she follow his or her conscience in all things: in private life and also in his or her profession, i.e., in the treatment of patients. Character and action are intertwined so intimately that one's professional duties, or even what is perceived by others as one's duties, cannot override one's conscience without negatively affecting (and changing) one's character. In order to be of good character, one must know the good, act in morally good ways, and be disposed and inclined toward the good through the development of virtues. Because human beings are body/soul unities, actions of the body are actions of the self, that is, human beings are self-possessing, self-governing, and self-determining.
The habits, actions, and emotional responses of the person of good character all are united and directed toward the moral and the good. Moral character is formed by one's actions.
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