Where does character fit in?

Self-interest, duty and character are the three, several, general motivators of behavior. For action to kick in, we need autonomy and agency. Character combines self-interest and duty. Our character has us doing what is right because it is good, because we prefer to do it. When we have strong character we do our duty as if it were our preference. It means we have incorporated what we ought to do into what we wish to do. When we conduct ourselves with good character we live our lives more fully and more robustly. We achieve the good life and not just the lavish life or the proper life. We incorporate the higher values, which permit of creative acts as well as of authoritative acts. The domain of character is where the mitigating institutions of shabbat and miqdash operate. The mitigating institutions of shabbat and miqdash depend on the autonomy and agency of character to delimit the scope, respectively, of self-interest and authority. Where we are alive to the richer possibilities of human agency and autonomy we are able to maintain our societies as both resilient and self-sustaining. With autonomy and agency comes the possibility of desert. When we live our lives as real experiences what drives those experiences is a sense of desert. It's how we evaluate what to do. When we prefer proper desert we are living with character. It is because of desert rather than the fulfillment of duty that we prefer to do what's right.