The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 195 of 254
Passive and active character
perhaps the most important limitations of character scepticism arise from a failure to distinguish between two senses of character, what I’ll call passive and active. Passive character is the set of dispositions we just happen to have as a result of our genes, upbringing and experience, without any particular effort on our own part. Active character is the set of dispositions that we have because we’ve worked on developing them. To use a philosophical term of art, dispositions are active if they are the result of an individual’s attempts at self-constitution, to build who they are.