 But Aristotle thinks that this does not absolve the vicious person of responsibility for their actions, because they are responsible for making themselves into the person they currently are through their past actions. Virtue is a state of character developed through practice in a way analogous to how we gain craft knowledge or other practical skills: I become courageous by acting courageously, just as a person becomes a good carpenter by practicing making cabinets or a good basketball player by working on their free throws (NE 2.1). But vice is also developed through a person’s repeated actions; it’s by cheating that a person makes themselves unjust and by engaging in drinking bouts that they become dissolute drunkards (NE 3.5 1114a4–7). Aristotle admits that some people are incorrigibly bad, because they have firmly fixed bad characters, and hence they cannot now control what appears good to them. But at one time, they had the ability to change their character, and hence they are responsible for what now seems good to them. Aristotle compares such a person to an incurably sick person, who made themself ill through their dissolute living and their refusal to listen to their doctor’s orders. The sick person is responsible for their sickness, even though there is nothing they can do about it now; so too with the thoroughly vicious person (NE 3.5 1114a12–22).