Connecting Virtues E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Metaphilosophy
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 517

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Connecting Virtues examines the significant advances within the fast-growing field of virtue theory and shows how research has contributed to the current debates in moral philosophy, epistemology, and political philosophy. * Includes groundbreaking chapters offering cutting-edge research on the topic of the virtues * Provides insights into the application of the topic of virtue, such as the role of intellectual virtues, virtuous dispositions, and the value of some neglected virtues for political philosophy * Examines the relevance of the virtues in the current debates in social epistemology, the epistemology of education, and civic education * Features work from world-leading and internationally recognized philosophers working on the virtues today

Leseprobe

METAPHILOSOPHY SERIES IN PHILOSOPHY

Series Editors: Armen T. Marsoobian and Eric Cavallero

The Philosophy of Interpretation, edited by Joseph Margolis and Tom Rockmore (2000)

Global Justice, edited by Thomas W. Pogge (2001)

Cyberphilosophy: The Intersection of Computing and Philosophy, edited by James H. Moor and Terrell Ward Bynum (2002)

Moral and Epistemic Virtues, edited by Michael Brady and Duncan Pritchard (2003)

The Range of Pragmatism and the Limits of Philosophy, edited by Richard Shusterman (2004)

The Philosophical Challenge of September 11, edited by Tom Rockmore, Joseph Margolis, and Armen T. Marsoobian (2005)

Global Institutions and Responsibilities: Achieving Global Justice, edited by Christian Barry and Thomas W. Pogge (2005)

Genocide’s Aftermath: Responsibility and Repair, edited by Claudia Card and Armen T. Marsoobian (2007)

Stem Cell Research: The Ethical Issues, edited by Lori Gruen, Laura Gravel, and Peter Singer (2008)

Cognitive Disability and Its Challenge to Moral Philosophy, edited by Eva Feder Kittay and Licia Carlson (2010)

Virtue and Vice, Moral and Epistemic, edited by Heather Battaly (2010)

Global Democracy and Exclusion, edited by Ronald Tinnevelt and Helder De Schutter (2010)

Putting Information First: Luciano Floridi and the Philosophy of Information, edited by Patrick Allo (2011)

The Pursuit of Philosophy: Some Cambridge Perspectives, edited by Alexis Papazoglou (2012)

Philosophical Engineering: Toward a Philosophy of the Web, edited by Harry Halpin and Alexandre Monnin (2014)

The Philosophy of Luck, edited by Duncan Pritchard and Lee John Whittington (2015)

Criticism and Compassion: The Ethics and Politics of Claudia Card, edited by Robin S. Dillon and Armen T. Marsoobian (2018)

Connecting Virtues: Advances in Ethics, Epistemology, and Political Philosophy, edited by Michel Croce and Maria Silvia Vaccarezza (2018)

Connecting Virtues

Advances in Ethics, Epistemology, andPolitical Philosophy

Edited by

Michel Croce and Maria Silvia Vaccarezza

This edition first published 2018.

Chapters and book compilation © 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

First published as Metaphilosophy volume 49, no. 3 (April 2018).

Registered OfficesJohn Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USAJohn Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

Editorial Office9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com.

The rights of Michel Croce and Maria Silvia Vaccarezza to be identified as the authors of the editorial material in this work have been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and editors have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Croce, Michel, 1988- editor. | Vaccarezza, Maria Silvia, editor.Title: Connecting virtues : advances in ethics, epistemology, and political philosophy / edited by Michel Croce and Maria Silvia Vaccarezza.Description: Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, 2018. | Series: Metaphilosophy series in philosophy |  “First published as Metaphilosophy volume 49, no. 3 (April 2018).” | Includes bibliographical references and index. |Identifiers: LCCN 2018028786 (print) | LCCN 2018035284 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119525745 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781119525691 (ePub) | ISBN 9781119525738 (pbk.)Subjects: LCSH: Virtues. | Knowledge, Theory of. | Political science–Philosophy.Classification: LCC BJ1521 (ebook) | LCC BJ1521 .C67 2018 (print) | DDC 179/.9–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018028786

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

Part 1: Moral Philosophy

Chapter 1: Utrum Sit Una Tantum Vera Enumeratio Virtutum Moralium

Part 2: Epistemology

Chapter 2: Generosity: A Preliminary Account of a Surprisingly Neglected Virtue

1. Preliminary Observations

2. The Cost of Generous Actions

3. The Motivation of a Generous Action

4. The Freedom of a Generous Action

5. The Virtue of Generosity

6. Some Candidates for Additional Necessary Conditions

7. Sorting Out Generosity and Some Related Virtues

8. Conclusion: Looking Ahead

Acknowledgments

References

Notes

Chapter 3: An Eye on Particulars with the End in Sight: An Account of Aristotelian

Phronesis

Introduction

1. A Particularistic Reading of Aristotle’s Ethics

2. Priority of Particulars Reading

3. Aristotle as a “Qualified Generalist”: Further Aristotelian Reasons

4. Particularism and Generalism in Educational Practice

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

Notes

Chapter 4: Honesty as a Virtue

Introduction

1. The Importance of Honesty

2. Generating Success Criteria

3. Miller’s Starting Point

4. A Motivational Account of Honesty

5. Honesty as a Moral Virtue

6. Further Implications

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

Notes

Chapter 5: Virtue Epistemology, Enhancement, and Control

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Acknowledgments

References

Notes

Chapter 6: Epistemic Paternalism and the Service Conception of Epistemic Authority

1. Introduction

2. Epistemic Paternalism in a Nutshell

3. Justifying Epistemic Paternalism: Against the Expertise Strategy

4. Justifying Epistemic Paternalism: The Epistemic-Authority Strategy

5. Refining the Account: Virtuous Paternalist Interferers

6. Benefits of the Account and the Challenge of Institutional Paternalist Interferers

7. Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

Notes

Chapter 7: Neuromedia and the Epistemology of Education

1. Neuromedia

2. Extended Cognition

3. The Epistemic Aims of Education

4. Neuromedia and the Epistemology of Education

5. Intellectual Character and Technology

6. Concluding Remarks

Acknowledgments

References

Notes

Chapter 8: Epistemic Vice and Motivation

1

2

3

Acknowledgments

References

Notes

Part 3: Political Philosophy

Chapter 9: Senses of Humor as Political Virtues

1. Introduction

2. Sense(s) of Humor as Virtuous

3. Political Virtues of a Sense of Humor

4. Conclusion

References

Notes

Chapter 10: Citizens’ political prudence as a democratic virtue

Making Room for Citizens’ Political Prudence in Democratic Theory

Ordinary Citizens as Statesmen: A Weberian Analysis

The Relevance of Citizens’ Political Prudence for Democratic Theory

How Citizens’ Prudence Can Fail to Be Properly Exercised

Acknowledgments

References

Notes

Chapter 11: Hope as a Democratic Civic Virtue

Introduction

Hope

Worriers and Carers

Hope as a Democratic Civic Virtue

Theorizing Hope: A Modified Pragmatism

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

Notes

Index

EULA

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

List of Illustrations

Chapter 2

Figure 1

Benevolence, compassion, and generosity

Pages

C1

ii

iii

iv

vii

viii

ix

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

13

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

67

68

69

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

82

83

84

85

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

118

119

120

121

122

123

124

125

126

127

128

129

130

131

132

133

134

135

136

137

138

139

140

141

142

143

144

145

146

147

148

149

151

152

153

154

155

156

157

158

159

160

161

162

163

164

165

166

167

169

171

172

173

174

175

176

177

178

179

180

181

182

183

184

185

186

187

188

189

190

191

192

193

194

195

196

197

198

199

200

201

202

203

204

205

206

207

208

209

210

211

212

213

214

215

216

217

218

219

220

221

222

223

225

226

227

228

229

230

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

J. Adam Carter is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Glasgow. He works mainly in epistemology, and his publications have appeared in such journals as Noûs, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Studies, and Analysis. His book Metaepistemology and Relativism was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016.

Sophie Grace Chappell is a professor of philosophy at the Open University. She was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and the University of Edinburgh. She has published widely on ethics, moral psychology, epistemology, ancient philosophy, and philosophy of religion. Her main current research is about epiphanies, immediate and revelatory encounters with value. She lives with her family in the northeast of Scotland.

Michel Croce is Early Stage Marie Curie Researcher at the University of Edinburgh and a junior researcher at the Aretai Center on Virtues, Genoa. His research interests lie at the intersection of epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of education. He has published several articles in these fields. He also coauthored Etica delle virtù: Un’introduzione, the first critical introduction to virtue ethics published in Italian (2017, Carocci).

Phillip Deen is a senior lecturer in philosophy and humanities at the University of New Hampshire and the editor of John Dewey’s Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy. His work on the history of American philosophy, the climate debate, civic education, and aesthetics has appeared in History of Political Thought, Public Affairs Quarterly, and the Journal of Value Inquiry, among other venues. He is currently writing a book on the ethics of stand-up comedy.

Christian B. Miller is the A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. Recent popular writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Dallas Morning News, and Slate. He is the author of more than seventy-five academic papers as well as three books with Oxford University Press, Moral Character: An Empirical Theory (2013), Character and Moral Psychology (2014), and The Character Gap: How Good Are We? (2017).

Valeria Ottonelli is an associate professor of political philosophy at the University of Genoa. Her main research interests are in the normative theory of democracy and in the theory of justice in migration. Her work has appeared in Political Studies, Journal of Political Philosophy, Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy, International Migration Review, and Politics, Philosophy and Economics.

Duncan Pritchard is Chancellor’s Professor of Philosophy at the University of Irvine, California, and chair in Epistemology at the University of Edinburgh. His monographs include Epistemic Luck (Oxford, 2005), The Nature and Value of Knowledge (coauthored, Oxford, 2010), Epistemological Disjunctivism (Oxford, 2012), and Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing (Princeton, 2015).

Nancy E. Snow is a professor of philosophy and director of the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of Virtue as Social Intelligence: An Empirically Grounded Theory (Routledge, 2009) and more than forty papers on virtue and ethics more broadly. She has also edited or coedited six volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of Virtue (2018). She is currently cowriting a book on virtue measurement.

Alessandra Tanesini is a professor of philosophy at Cardiff University. She is the author of An Introduction to Feminist Epistemologies (Blackwell, 1999), of Wittgenstein: A Feminist Interpretation (Polity, 2004), and of several articles on epistemology, feminist philosophy, the philosophy of mind and language, and Nietzsche. Her current work lies at the intersection of ethics, the philosophy of language, and epistemology, with a focus on epistemic vice, silencing, prejudice, and ignorance.

Maria Silvia Vaccarezza is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Genoa and a junior researcher at the Aretai Center on Virtues. Her research focuses on classical and contemporary Aristotelian virtue theory. Among her latest publications are “The Unity of the Virtues Reconsidered: Competing Accounts in Philosophy and Positive Psychology,” Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (2017), and (with Michel Croce) “Educating Through Exemplars: Alternative Paths to Virtue,” Theory and Research in Education 15 (2017).

Alan T. Wilson is a lecturer in ethics in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bristol. His work mainly focuses on virtue theory within ethics and epistemology, and he has additional research interests in applied ethics and political philosophy. He is currently working on issues relating to the development of virtue and on the connection between virtue and well-being.

INTRODUCTION

MICHEL CROCE AND MARIA SILVIA VACCAREZZA

The literature on the virtues has seen several shifts and turns in its relatively short history. The first landmark was the renewed interest in the moral virtues urged by proponents of virtue ethics, who, starting in the late 1950s, proclaimed their dissatisfaction with deontologist and consequentialist views in moral theory. Despite a number of divergences among various figures of virtue ethics, their core and shared move was shifting the focus of normative moral theory from mere acts (including the consequences of an act and the normative requirements that make an act right or wrong) to the agents performing those acts. In particular, virtue ethicists shed light on the character traits—that is, the virtues—that allow a moral agent to act well. Thus, virtue ethics led to a renewed discussion of many themes that lay at the centre of the debate in ancient and medieval philosophy, among which we would mention the problem of the unity/disunity of the virtues, the role of practical wisdom as the key to living virtuously and avoiding akratic behaviour, the relationship between virtue, happiness, and flourishing, and the relationship between the good and the right. In so far as moral philosophers interested in the virtues are still discussing these topics, we can think of their work as a contribution to the original approach to the virtue-theoretic discourse.

Then, in the 1980s, the interest in the virtues reached the domain of epistemology, where at the time a lot of discussion was devoted to solving the Gettier problem—that is, to finding plausible ways to back up the tripartite analysis of knowledge with some extra conditions. The debate about moral virtues offered to epistemologists the possibility of leaving behind neutral and individualistic approaches to the analysis of knowledge, to endorse an agent-centred epistemological perspective. Ernest Sosa’s first attempt to propose a virtue epistemology was grounded in Aristotle’s idea that the virtues require reliable success and in Aristotle’s account of intellectual virtues as dispositions that lead the rational soul to the truth (virtue reliabilism) (see Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics VI, 2, 1139b12–13). Following these Aristotelian principles, Sosa developed his virtue epistemology around the notion of virtues as cognitive faculties (for example, visual perception, memory, and introspection) that allow an epistemic subject to perform well in the epistemic domain (that is, in acquiring knowledge) (see, e.g., Sosa 2007; 2015). For others, however, a virtue epistemology must capture another Aristotelian principle: namely, the idea that a virtue is an acquired character trait for which an agent is somehow responsible—at least in the relevant sense according to which she cannot be responsible for, say, the limits and the deterioration of her visual capacities—and which can be cultivated through education (virtue responsibilism) (see Code 1984; Montmarquet 1992; and Zagzebski 1996). Accordingly, these virtue epistemologists focused on the role that specific intellectual virtues such as intellectual courage, open-mindedness, intellectual humility, intellectual honesty, and epistemic justice play in our intellectual inquiry.

There is no need for us to go into much detail, as the important point we want to stress is the turn currently taking place within the virtue-theoretic panorama, along with the fundamental contribution of virtue ethics and virtue epistemology to the current philosophical discussion. Several virtue theorists have started developing a genuine interest in questions related to the links among various approaches to the virtue-theoretic discourse, as well as to the possibility of extending this framework to other philosophical domains. Most works on the virtues in epistemology, ethics, or other areas are frequently isolated from each other, yet they would benefit enormously from being brought into a conversation. The main thrust of this collection of essays is to offer a plausible remedy to bridge this gap. In particular, its aim is to break down barriers between different philosophical perspectives on the study of the virtues—both to highlight the interplay and overlap among virtues pertaining to different philosophical areas and to stress the peculiarity of specific virtues within their own fields.

The goals of this project are rooted in recent advances within virtue theory and, in particular, in the core idea that a serious concern for the agent and his character traits can be extremely helpful for addressing urgent philosophical issues. A few important manifestations of this assumption in the current debate need to be mentioned here (without any claim to be exhaustive), as this collection purports to share their spirit and possibly bring such spirit to further domains of inquiry. First, the serious challenge posed by situationism, which threatened the very idea of a character trait (see, e.g., Harman 1999; Appiah 2008; Doris 2010), eventually helped virtue ethicists to take an empirical approach to character more seriously, and therefore to elaborate more plausible versions of traditional views of what counts as a character trait.1 Secondly, and partly along the same lines, virtue theorists are now more inclined than ever to work jointly with different kinds of psychologists, especially within the positive-psychology movement (see, e.g., Peterson and Seligman 2004; Park 2009; Peterson 2006), to sketch out a plausible account of human happiness and flourishing, and to find joint strategies to foster character development and human well-being. Even if some divergences endure (see Schwartz and Sharpe 2006; Kristjánsson 2013; Vaccarezza 2016), the synergy between the two movements is surely a healthy and mutually enriching one whose results are increasingly benefitting reflection on both sides.

Thirdly, both virtue ethics and virtue epistemology are currently raising their voices about the impact of virtue-theoretic approaches on the philosophy of education, with a particular interest in the role of virtue formation in traditional school curricula. Since David Carr and Jan Steutel’s work in Virtue Ethics and Moral Education (1999), several other moral philosophers have already addressed this important issue (e.g., Kristjánnson [2014]; Russell [2015]), and further research is going to appear in the coming years as a response to Linda Zagzebski’s recent work Exemplarist Moral Theory (2017), which approaches the topic of virtue and education from an exemplarist perspective.2 It is also a pleasure to notice that the past few years have seen the rise of several research centres working on these topics all over the world: after the founding of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues based at the University of Birmingham (which hosted David Carr and Tom Harrison’s Knightly Virtues Programme, a remarkable attempt to bring character education to British schools [2015]), further centres have been founded in the United States (the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing at the University of Oklahoma) and in Italy (the Aretai Center on Virtues at the University of Genoa).

As regards the interest of virtue epistemologists in the philosophy of education, the brightest and most concrete witness is offered by Jason Baehr’s research (e.g., 2011; 2016) and commitment to help found a new charter middle school in Long Beach, California, named Intellectual Virtues Academy of Long Beach. This institution takes the view that a school is a place that fosters growth in intellectual character virtues in a supportive academic environment and equips students to “engage the world with curiosity and thoughtfulness, to know themselves, and to live well.”3 Besides Baehr’s seminal work, recent research in this area has addressed several main topics, including the following: (i) the importance of specific intellectual virtues in the context of education, such as intellectual humility, inquisitiveness, and open-mindedness;4 and (ii) the epistemic aims of education and the variety of educational strategies that allow us to achieve those aims.5

Another area that both virtue ethicists and virtue epistemologists have recently started to (re)investigate is the relationship between virtues and vices. The debate on the interconnection of the virtues—whether having a virtue requires having them all; whether one can be genuinely virtuous in some respects while lacking other virtues—has contributed to casting light on the need for a more detailed framework for understanding how virtues relate to their vices, as it has shown that there might be cases in which, for example, displaying benevolence is overtly in contrast with being just, to the extent that a profound benevolence might appear as a vice rather than a virtuous trait. Recent work in this area includes the important collection Virtues and Their Vices (Timpe and Boyd 2014), several projects on the role of intellectual vices in epistemology (e.g., Cassam 2016; Kidd 2016b; Tanesini 2016b), and well-known research on epistemic injustice and its corrective virtues (e.g., Fricker 2007; Battaly 2017).

As a final important instance of how virtue theory is benefitting current philosophical discussion, a new wave of interest in the virtues and their role in public life has arisen from current research in political philosophy. A few remarks are needed in this regard. Within the classical republican tradition, interest in civic virtues, aimed at ensuring stability in a well-ordered republic, has never faded.6 This tradition, rooted in Machiavelli’s writings and ending with both modern civic humanism and civic republicanism, has always grounded the maintenance of a stable republic not only in the existence of just laws but also—and foremost—in the creation of good customs among citizens. This means, practically speaking, carrying out three strategies: first, “[one might select] institutions that inspire virtue; second, one might design institutions to economize on the stock of virtue readily available; third and finally, one might attempt to inculcate virtue (through education, religion, public mythology, etc.) so as to bridge any gap left by the former” (Lovett 2014, 512). In contrast, rival approaches to political theory seem to have long underestimated (and therefore insufficiently theorized about) the political significance of virtues broadly conceived. Even those scholars we may call “republican liberals”—despite criticizing the main tenets of both civic humanism and civic republicanism—are, however, increasingly trying to reconcile the language of rights and that of virtues, provided these liberal virtues are taken in a merely instrumental sense and not as part of a controversial conception of human flourishing (see Lovett 2014, 516).

This collection covers several of these key themes within virtue theory. It includes ground-breaking articles offering original solutions to long-standing issues in virtue theory, such as the plausibility of different lists of virtues, the relationship between virtues and the vices that oppose them, and the connection between moral and intellectual virtues. In addition, the collection offers insights into cutting-edge fields of application of the topic of virtue, such as the role of intellectual virtues in an age of neuromedia, virtuous dispositions related to social epistemology, and the role of some neglected virtues for political philosophy.

The collection has three parts: (i) “Moral Philosophy,” (ii) “Epistemology,” and (iii) “Political Philosophy.” The first part tackles long-debated issues concerning virtue theory within the moral-philosophical field, such as the plausibility of drawing a single list of virtues and the stance to be taken in the debate on generalism versus particularism. It also offers novel accounts of particular virtues, thus providing new solutions to vexed questions and showing how advances in virtue research can improve our understanding of single virtuous traits.

The first part opens with Sophie Grace Chappell’s fascinating contribution, “Utrum sit una tantum vera enumeratio virtutum moralium” (It seems that there cannot be a single correct list of the virtues of character). By making use of an original style, which is a tribute to Thomas Aquinas and mimics the structure of a quaestio disputata, Chappell offers a positive answer to the old question of the possibility of drawing a single correct list of the virtues. Having defined the virtues of character as “permanently admirable and reliably beneficial dispositions of the will that always express our attachment and orientation to the good,” and having established their principle of individuation in the need to face all sorts of difficulties, Chappell is in a position to list seven virtues that fit such a description and will always be part of a single correct list: faith, hope, love, justice, self-control, courage, and wisdom.

In the second contribution, drawing both on a philosophical analysis and on the available psychological literature, Christian B. Miller in “Generosity” casts light on the extremely neglected virtue of generosity in order to spell out the necessary conditions for possessing it and to reveal its surprising complexity. A generous action, in Miller’s account, is one (i) involving the giving of a gift that is valuable in the eyes of the giver, (ii) ultimately motivated by an altruistic desire to benefit the recipient, (iii) morally optional or supererogatory, and proving to be (iv) cross-situationally consistent and (v) stable. Miller defends an ultimately “subjective” approach to generosity, according to which for someone to be generous it is enough that she thinks she is benefitting others, even if it is objectively not the case. Then Miller considers three other plausible candidates for necessary conditions of generosity: reliable success, a specific manner to donate, and lack of presumptuousness. Finally, he briefly maps the relevant moral field and argues that both compassion and generosity are types of benevolence, and that they partly overlap.

Maria Silvia Vaccarezza’s aim in “An Eye on Particulars with the End in Sight” is to take a stance on the debate within Aristotelian scholarship on moral particularism versus generalism so as to get a fuller grasp of the master virtue of phronesis, or practical wisdom. Vaccarezza starts by sketching a portrait of what she labels “radical Particularistic Reading (PR)” and contrasts it with the view she favours: the “Priority of Particulars Reading (PPR).” In particular, she argues that PPR succeeds in accounting for the priority Aristotle assigns to practical perception while at the same time counterbalancing that priority by means of two interpretive strategies and of a novel reading of some neglected passages of Aristotle’s works. These passages, Vaccarezza argues, offer plenty of insight to support a moderate particularistic (or “qualified generalistic”) reading. Finally, she applies such reading to educational practice, claiming that qualified generalism holds true also at an applied-educational level.

In the final contribution to the moral philosophy section, Alan T. Wilson in “Honesty as a Virtue” offers a framework for a novel understanding of another neglected virtue: honesty. In particular, he draws on Christian Miller’s recent work on the topic to propose “success criteria that … need to be met by any plausible account of honesty”: namely, the following: (i) meeting the “unification challenge”—that is, explaining “why the trait is thought to be manifest in a range of seemingly distinct behaviours,” including truthfulness, respect for property, proper compliance, fidelity to promises, and forthrightness; (ii) generating plausible verdicts “concerning who should (or should not) be classed as an honest agent”; (iii) being compatible with a corresponding account of dishonesty; and (iv) providing an explanation for why honesty is valuable and constitutes a moral virtue. Then Wilson defends a motivational account of honesty, which, as opposed to views focused on reliable behaviour or a tendency to produce certain outcomes, has as its core claim that honesty “centrally involves a deep motivation to avoid deception.”

The second part of the collection, “Epistemology,” introduces four original ways virtue epistemology successfully applies to other domains—some within, others outside, mainstream epistemology—by providing novel responses to old questions as well as by addressing more recent issues. In particular, this part explores topics such as the relationship between virtue epistemology and enhanced performances, the role of intellectual virtues in social epistemology, the importance of having an epistemology of education informed by virtue epistemology in order to face an upcoming technological revolution such as neuromedia, and the relationship between epistemic vices and motives in vice epistemology.

In his contribution, “Virtue Epistemology, Enhancement, and Control,” J. Adam Carter evaluates the place of enhanced performances—the performance of athletes under the effect of a performance-enhancing drug—within Sosa’s virtue epistemology. In particular, Carter tackles Sosa’s recent idea that such performances fall short of aptness because they do not arise out of an agent’s genuine competence. Carter shows how that idea leaves Sosa with an uncomfortable dilemma to deal with whenever we take into consideration cases of cognitive enhancement—cases in which one’s cognitive performances are boosted by some kind of drug. Carter’s suggested way out of the puzzle highlights the connections between virtue epistemology and the fields of ethics and the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Specifically, he draws insights from Fischer and Ravizza’s guidance-control thesis in the debate on moral responsibility to set up a parallel argument for epistemic responsibility, while he refers to Pritchard’s take on cognitive integration—which reconciles virtue epistemology and extended cognition—to split the horns of the dilemma and avoid Sosa’s conclusion.

Michel Croce’s aim in “Epistemic Paternalism and the Service Conception of Epistemic Authority” is to apply virtue epistemology to a recent issue in social epistemology: the problem of evaluating whether epistemic paternalism can be an epistemically justified practice. Specifically, Croce tackles the issue from a novel perspective: namely, by asking who can be rationally entitled to undertake epistemically paternalistic interferences for the benefit of another. He argues that experts, when defined along Goldman’s lines, are not the best candidates to provide that service. Virtue epistemology plays a crucial role in Croce’s account because it provides the tools for introducing a virtue-based framework that distinguishes various kinds of epistemically privileged subjects (for example, experts and epistemic authorities). Thus, it makes room for individuating the key features of a virtuous paternalist interferer: a subject who relies on a specific set of intellectual virtues—which Croce calls novice-oriented abilities—to interfere with someone’s inquiry for their own epistemic good. The essay focuses on situations where the interferer is an epistemic subject, but the last section broadens the argument to account for circumstances in which collective agents such as groups and institutions undertake epistemically paternalistic interferences.

The ground-breaking topic of educating in a futuristic age of technological development is tackled by Duncan Pritchard in “Neuromedia and the Epistemology of Education.” Pritchard depicts neuromedia as a technological revolution that will make information-processing technology so integrated with our cognitive processes that we will not be able to distinguish between on-board processes and the technology itself. If it becomes real, this particular kind of extended cognition will have a strong impact on education: any concern with, for example, helping the young make good use of their memory and learn a language would become unnecessary, as they could count on their extended memory and rely on the technology to speak any language they want. In such a scenario, it becomes even more fundamental to select the most apt epistemic aim of education, which Pritchard individuates in helping the young build their intellectual character. For while technology will help us, it will not be able to make us intellectually virtuous, as intellectual virtues cannot be offloaded onto technology. Thus, Pritchard explores several ways an epistemic agent can be intellectually virtuous in her interaction with the new technology, but he also sheds light on how technology can aid the development of our intellectual character.

The “Epistemology” part concludes with Alessandra Tanesini’s “Epistemic Vice and Motivation,” on vice epistemology, one of the most recent advances in virtue epistemology. Tanesini defends from recent attacks the view that intellectual character vices involve a motivation to actively turn away from the epistemic good. After introducing some counterexamples to the thesis—according to which, intellectual character vices require epistemically bad motives or, at least, the absence of good motives—Tanesini argues that all the examples feature what she calls a non-instrumental aversion to epistemic good, which undermines the force of the counterexamples and shows that they are in fact compatible with the motivational account of epistemic vices. To provide a successful defence of such a view, Tanesini appeals to the distinction between justifications of, rationalisations of, and explanations for acts and beliefs, and she argues that the distinction supports the motivational account of epistemic vices. For the fact that vice attribution is a genuinely explanatory practice entails that we consider vices to have a psychological component explaining someone’s actions and/or beliefs, which on Tanesini’s view is exactly what is required for having a motivation.

The final part of the collection is devoted to political philosophy and aims at applying the framework of the virtues to fields traditionally analysed with other conceptual tools. More specifically, it inquires into whether it is legitimate to complement traditional accounts of democratic agency—focused on rationality and reasonableness—with a picture of the moral and intellectual traits needed by citizens. In particular, contributions in this part investigate which of the traditional virtues might best serve the purpose of enabling full democratic agency, and whether Aristotelian-type civic virtues can be complemented by traits found in different traditions, such as American pragmatism.

In Philip Deen’s contribution, “Senses of Humor as Political Virtues,” the central claim is that a sense of humour amounts to a secondary virtue conducive to the cardinal political virtues of sociability, prudence, and justice. In particular, Deen defends the view that humour is instrumental to political virtue rather than a virtue in itself. The argument is developed through a critical analysis of the current debate over a sense of humour as an excellent trait, where Deen draws from recent findings in psychology to stress the idea that humour can, and in fact should, be connected to political virtues in various ways. Then, after introducing the case of Donald Trump as an exemplar of a sense of humour as a vicious trait, Deen explores in detail three ways a sense of humour can be politically virtuous. A sense of humour can be virtuous in its relationship with sociability when it fosters a sense of equality and mutual affection among the citizenry. It can be virtuous in so far as it is a way of expressing the virtues of humility and transcendence to the extent that they are conducive to prudence. Finally, a sense of humour, unlike wit, can be virtuous in its relationship with justice whenever it fosters respect for institutions and social bonds.

In her essay “Citizens’ Political Prudence as a Democratic Virtue,” Valeria Ottonelli vindicates by means of a reconstructive method the importance of this neglected and undertheorized virtue in a democratic society. Despite a long tradition of thought that makes political prudence the key political virtue of the enlightened statesman, contemporary theories of democratic prudence tend to be exclusively concerned with the behaviour and responsibilities of professional politicians, rather than those of ordinary citizens, both out of a concern for feasibility and as an attempt to avoid having substantial conceptions of the good life play any role in the democratic process. To reverse such an attitude, Ottonelli starts by offering a Weberian analysis of the virtuous traits of a prudent politician: political passion, sense of proportion, and responsibility. All of these traits, Ottonelli argues, can be recognized in the political action of ordinary citizens. In the next two sections, she shows the relevance of citizens’ political prudence for democratic theory, and the ways it can fail to be properly exercised. Finally, she concludes by contending that, potential ill uses of political prudence notwithstanding, the importance and value of its exercise should be protected and secured by means of adequate institutional devices.

In the final contribution, “Hope as a Democratic Civic Virtue,” Nancy E. Snow sketches an account of hope as a democratic civic virtue. Against the backdrop of the current political scenario, dominated by the resurgence of populism in several countries, including the United States, Snow points to hope as an especially valuable civic virtue, which could help democracies facing current challenges. After offering her account of hope, she contends that the United States’ becoming a nation of worriers, as opposed to one of carers (see Hage 2003), is partly due to a lack of social hope. “Paranoid nationalism,” she contends, results from a scarcity of hope. Then, against the background of such a fragmented and divided political context, she provides examples of what hope as a democratic civic virtue looks like in the United States today. Drawing upon a distinction between pure and impure virtues, she is then in a position to define conclusively hope both as a pure and as an impure democratic civic virtue as the “disposition of openness to the political possibilities a democratic government can provide.” In her conclusion, Snow suggests that her conception of hope is best theorized within a modified pragmatist account—that is, one fortified with empirical psychological evidence.

Acknowledgments

Several contributions to this collection were presented in an earlier form at the first annual conference of the Aretai Center on Virtues, held at the University of Genoa in 2016. We are extremely grateful to Angelo Campodonico for setting up and leading the Aretai Center, as well as to the following organizations for their financial support of the conference: the Department of Classics, Philosophy, and History at the University of Genoa, the FINO (Northwestern Italian Philosophy Consortium), and the SIFM (Italian Society for Moral Philosophy). We would also like to thank the editor in chief of Metaphilosophy, Armen T. Marsoobian, for hosting the collection, and the managing editor, Otto Bohlmann, for his help in every phase of its preparation.

Bibliography

Alfano, Mark. 2013. “Identifying and Defending the Hard Core of Virtue Ethics.”

Journal of Philosophical Research

38:233–60.

Annas, Julia. 2011.

Intelligent Virtue

. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Appiah, Anthony. 2008.

Experiments in Ethics

. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Baehr, Jason. 2011.

The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology

. New York: Oxford University Press.

——, ed. 2016.

Intellectual Virtues and Education: Essays in Applied Virtue Epistemology

. New York: Routledge.

Battaly, Heather. 2017. “Testimonial Injustice, Epistemic Vice, and Vice Epistemology.” In

The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice

, edited by Ian James Kidd, Gaile Polhaus Jr., and José Medina, 506–25. New York: Routledge.

Brennan, Geoffrey, and Philip Pettit. 2003.

The Economy of Esteem

. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Carr, David, and Tom Harrison. 2015.

Educating Character Through Stories

. Exeter: Imprint Academic.

Carr, David, and Jan W. Steutel, eds. 1999.

Virtue Ethics and Moral Education

. London: Routledge.

Cassam, Quassim. 2016. “Vice Epistemology.”

Monist

99, no. 2:159–80.

Code, Lorraine. 1984. “Toward a ‘Responsibilist’ Epistemology.”

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

45, no. 1:29–50.

Croce, Michel, and Maria Silvia Vaccarezza. 2017. “Educating Through Exemplars: Alternative Paths to Virtue.”

Theory and Research in Education

15, no. 1:1–15.

Dagger, Richard 1997.

Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism

. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Doris, John M. 2010.

The Moral Psychology Handbook

. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fricker, Miranda. 2007.

Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing

. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hage, Ghassan. 2003.

Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society

. Annandale, Australia: Pluto Press.

Harman, Gilbert 1999. “Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error.”

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society

99:315–31.

Honohan, Iseult. 2002.

Civic Republicanism

. London: Routledge.

Kidd, Ian James. 2016a. “Educating for Intellectual Humility.” In

Intellectual Virtues and Education: Essays in Applied Virtue Epistemology

, edited by Jason Baehr, 54–70. New York: Routledge.

——. 2016b. “Charging Others with Epistemic Vice.”

Monist

99, no. 3:181–97.

——. 2017. “Capital Epistemic Vices.”

Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective

6, no. 8:11–16.

Kristjánsson, Kristján. 2006. “Emulation and the Use of Role Models in Moral Education.”

Journal of Moral Education

35, no. 1:37–49.

——. 2013.

Virtues and Vices in Positive Psychology

. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press.

——. 2014. “There Is Something About Aristotle: The Pros and Cons of Aristotelianism in Contemporary Moral Education.”

Journal of Philosophy of Education

48, no. 1:48–68.

Kotzee, Ben, ed. 2014.

Education and the Growth of Knowledge: Perspectives from Social and Virtue Epistemology

. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.

Lovett, Frank 2014. “Civic Virtue.” In

The Encyclopedia of Political Thought

, edited by Michael T. Gibbons, 509–18. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.

Miller, Christian B. 2017.

The Character Gap: How Good Are We

? New York: Oxford University Press.

Montmarquet, James. 1992. “Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility.”

American Philosophical Quarterly

29, no. 4:331–41.

Park, Nansoon 2009. “Character Strengths (VIA).” In

The Encyclopedia of Positive Psychology

, edited by S. J. Lopez, 135–41. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.

Peterson, Christopher. 2006.

A Primer in Positive Psychology

. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Peterson, Christopher, and Martin Seligman. 2004.

Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

. New York: Oxford University Press.

Pettit, Philip. 1997.

Republicanism

. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Porter, Steven. 2016. “A Therapeutic Approach to Intellectual Virtue Formation in the Classroom.” In

Intellectual Virtues and Education: Essays in Applied Virtue Epistemology

, edited by Jason Baehr, 221–39. New York: Routledge.

Pritchard, Duncan. 2013. “Epistemic Virtue and the Epistemology of Education.”

Journal of Philosophy of Education

47:236–47.

——. 2016. “Intellectual Virtue, Extended Cognition, and the Epistemology of Education.” In

Intellectual Virtues and Education: Essays in Applied Virtue Epistemology

, edited by Jason Baehr, 113–27. New York: Routledge.

Riggs, Wayne. 2016. “Open-Mindedness, Insight, and Understanding.” In

Intellectual Virtues and Education: Essays in Applied Virtue Epistemology

, edited by Jason Baehr, 18–37. New York: Routledge.

Russell, Daniel. 2009.

Practical Intelligence and the Virtues

. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

——. 2015. “From Personality to Character to Virtue.” In

Current Controversies in Virtue Theory

, edited by Mark Alfano, 92–105. London: Routledge.

Sanderse, Wouter. 2013. “The Meaning of Role Modelling in Moral and Character Education.”

Journal of Moral Education

42, no. 1:28–42.

Schwartz, Barry, and Kenneth Sharpe 2006. “Practical Wisdom: Aristotle Meets Positive Psychology.”

Journal of Happiness Studies

7, no. 3:377–95.

Siegel, Harvey. 2017.

Education’s Epistemology: Rationality, Diversity, and Critical Thinking

. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sosa, Ernest. 2007.

A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge

, Volume 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

——. 2015.

Judgment and Agency

. New York: Oxford University Press.

Tanesini, Alessandra. 2016a. “Intellectual Humility as Attitude.”

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

. doi: 10.1111/phpr.12326.

——. 2016b. “‘Calm Down Dear’: Intellectual Arrogance, Silencing, and Ignorance.”

Aristotelian Society

suppl. 90, no. 1:71–92.

Timpe, Kevin, and Craig A. Boyd, eds. 2014.

Virtues and Their Vices

. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Vaccarezza, Maria Silvia 2016. “The Unity of the Virtues Reconsidered: Competing Accounts in Philosophy and Positive Psychology.”

Review of Philosophy and Psychology

8:637–51.

Watson, Lani. 2015. “What Is Inquisitiveness?”

American Philosophical Quarterly

52, no. 3:273–88.

Zagzebski, Linda. 1996.

Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge

. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press.

——. 2017.

Exemplarist Moral Theory

. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Notes

1

See, e.g., Russell 2009; Annas 2011; Alfano 2013; Kristjánnson 2013; Miller 2017.

2

See, e.g., Kristjánsson 2006; Sanderse 2013; Carr and Harrison 2015; Croce and Vaccarezza 2017.

3

From the Mission and Vision page on the website of the Intellectual Virtues Academy (consulted on January 4, 2018, at

http://www.ivalongbeach.org/about/mission-and-vision

).

4

See, e.g., Kidd 2016a; Watson 2015; Riggs 2016; Tanesini 2016a.

5

See, e.g., Kotzee 2014; Porter 2016; Pritchard ; Siegel 2017.

6

See, e.g., Pettit 1997; Dagger 1997; Honohan 2002; Brennan and Pettit 2003.

PART 1MORAL PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER 1Utrum Sit Una Tantum Vera Enumeratio Virtutum Moralium

Sophie Grace Chappell

(Readers should feel at liberty, if they wish, to translate this into thirteenth-century Latin, as well as the title.)

It seems that there cannot be a single correct list of the virtues of character.

Objection 1. For any counting of items presupposes that we have a principle of individuation applicable to those items. But there is no one correct principle of individuation for the virtues of character. And so, no single correct list.

Objection 2. For what is true in ethics is “what everyone or most of us or the wisest have always thought is true,” as Aristotle (Topics 100b23–25) and the Catholic Catechism both incline us to agree. But there is no single list of the virtues that has been accepted semper ubique ab omnibus [always, everywhere, by everyone]: different lists are found in Plato and Aristotle and St. Paul and Buddhism and Islam and Confucianism and (implicitly) the Lonely Hearts columns and in many other places too. Therefore there cannot be a single correct list of the virtues of character.

Objection 3. Moreover, if there were a single correct list of virtues of character then Aristotle or Plato or St. Paul would already have discovered it. But Plato and Aristotle and St. Paul all give different lists in different places; and Aristotle and St. Paul present no argument for their lists, while Plato sometimes just assumes a list, as in the Protagoras, and sometimes presents an unconvincing argument for a different list, as in the Republic. So none of them discovered a single correct list of virtues of character. Neither, then, can we.

Objection 4. Moreover, the virtues are those dispositions of character that people admire. But what people admire changes all the time and includes many contradictions and perplexities. No stable single list can be founded upon this mutability, contradictoriness, and perplexity. Ergo, etc.

Objection 5. Again the virtues are those dispositions of character that are always beneficial. But no dispositions of character are always beneficial; social structures and environmental conditions change constantly, and we change with them. Therefore there are no virtues of character, and hence no single correct list of such virtues, or indeed any list at all.

Objection 6. Again, the virtues are those dispositions of character that no one can make bad use of. But there is no disposition of character that no one can make bad use of: a soldier who fights knowingly in a bad cause can be courageous, a burglar who incidentally passes treasures on his way to the burglary he intends can temperately ignore them, justice can be unloving through harshness, love can be unjust through partiality, faith and hope can be sincere but misplaced. Ergo there are no virtues, and hence no list.

Objection 7. Again, the virtues are those dispositions of character that promote or instantiate human flourishing. But human flourishing is an evolutionarily determined notion, and what promotes it is not only different depending on the human animal’s environmental conditions but also sets a standard that is not so much an ethical one as, in Bernard Williams’s words, the “ethological standard of the bright eye and the gleaming coat” (Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, p. 46). By this way, then, either the list of virtues of character includes such things as ruthlessness and cunning and dissimulation and promiscuity, quod minime convenit [which would be entirely unfitting], or there is no list of virtues of character.

Objection 8. And the true virtues are those dispositions that necessarily express and promote the good of and for any rational creature. But if we were a different kind of creature then different dispositions would be virtues for us (see Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness, on wolves and bees and plants). Therefore all of these dispositions only contingently express or promote our good; so none of them is truly a virtue. So there can be no list of virtues of character.

Objection 9. Moreover, the virtues are deep dispositions in us, as Bernard Williams says in several places. But as Williams also says, it is impossible for us to state consciously and explicitly the depth of these dispositions without detaching ourselves from their motivational power. Therefore, if there can be a single correct list of the virtues of character, it is one we cannot state. Therefore we must either speak knowingly falsely or say that we know of no single correct list of the virtues of character.

Objection 10. Moreover, a list of virtues implies a plurality of virtues. But “virtue” means “a quality of soul that resides in the will.” And the soul and the will are unities. So therefore is virtue. So there is only one virtue, and unless a singleton “list” is a list, there can be no list of virtues.

Objection 11. And while a list of virtues implies a plurality of virtues, Augustine says in De libero arbitrio, book 1—following Socrates and the Stoics, and followed by Kant—that virtue means the capacity of the will that makes use of everything else, including all other capacities. So we have it on the authority of Socrates, the Stoics, Augustine, and Kant that virtue is a unitary capacity. So there is only one virtue. So no list of virtues.

Objection 12. And while a list of virtues implies a plurality of virtues, Aristotle says—following Socrates—that virtue of character is the knowledge of something specific: Socrates says knowledge of the good, Aristotle says knowledge of the mean. So there is only one virtue. So no list.

Objection 13. And while a list of virtues implies a plurality of virtues, John Lennon says—following the Epistles of St. John and, indeed, most of the rest of the New Testament—that love is all you need. So there is only one virtue. So no list.

Objection 14. Again, the object of those lists of virtues that have typically been offered, as by St. Paul or by spiritual directors, is not philosophical but devotional; St. Paul in such lists as he offers in his letters aims to exhort his readers to live better lives, spiritual directors aim to get their dirigees to consider with compunction in what ways they might have failed to live up to the Christian standard. Such lists are simply ad gregem aedificandam [for the edification of the flock] and have no bearing upon philosophical truth, and they do not imply that there can be a list of the virtues of character.

Objection 15. Again, the virtues are by definition the dispositions of character that we need to fulfil our highest destiny, that is, to get to heaven. But St. Paul and the Gospels say clearly that all we need to get to heaven is to be forgiven and redeemed. And to be forgiven and redeemed is not a disposition of character at all but a work of grace in us. So there are no dispositions of character that we need to get to heaven. Hence there are no virtues. And no list.

Objection 16. Moreover, the life of perfect goodness is what interests the ethicist. The life of perfect goodness is the life that we shall live in heaven; and supposedly, the life of perfect goodness is the life of the perfected virtues. But the virtues are, as St. Thomas says, circa difficilia [concerned with what is hard for us]. And nothing will be hard for us in heaven. So the life of perfect goodness will involve no virtues. So even if there is a single correct list of the virtues of character, it is of no interest to the ethicist.

But on the other hand, St. Thomas says, on the authority of the whole tradition, including scripture, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, and innumerably many others, that the cardinal virtues are fittingly enumerated as justice, self-control, courage, and wisdom (Summa Theologiae [ST] 1a2ae.61.2), and that the theological virtues are fittingly enumerated as faith, hope, and charity (ST 1a2ae.62.3). This, then, is our list of the seven virtues of character.

What needs to be said is that the virtues of character are those permanently admirable and reliably beneficial dispositions of the will that always express our attachment and orientation to the good.

“Permanently admirable” because every virtue of character always has something beautiful (kalon, pulchrum) and something great about it, and it is the nature of admiration to fix on what is beautiful or great or both. Admiration is often misdirected, sometimes even by entire societies: as it can be directed to honour killings of oneself or others, as it has been in Afghanistan and Japan; or to military violence, as it was by Homer’s heroes and is by many eleven-year-old boys; or to racial purity or racial baiting, as it was in Nazi Germany and the Old (and alas not so old) South of the United States; or to the acquisition of fame and money and column inches in Hello! magazine, as it most inexplicably (unintelligibilissime) is in Britain and Italy today. Yet the admirable is not what is admired but what most intelligibly can be, what should be, admired.

“Reliably beneficial” because the virtues do not in every case or inevitably benefit either their possessor or those around her; as when a person herself suffers or dies exactly because of her virtue, as Edith Stein and Dietrich Bonhoeffer did, or as when some great common good can only be achieved by some evil act that a virtuous person rightly refuses to do for the sake of that great common good—as Caiaphas should have refused, John 11:50. Yet the virtues are those dispositions that do in most cases and reliably benefit both their possessor and those around her. And they are those dispositions that will benefit us in these ways, irrespective of the differences between societies and individuals and times.

“Dispositions of the will” because every virtue of character is a habit of choice. A habit of choice means two things: first, a way of putting the practical question what to do and, secondly, a way of answering it.

By “a way of putting the question what to do” I mean a particular kind of moral vision, a specific way of framing the alternatives between which we deliberate and choose, that is distinctive and definitive of the good person. So a good person who is confronted by a fat man stuck in a cave entrance will certainly think to look around for unguents, whereas it will not even occur to her to look around for explosives. And a good person who has been shipwrecked and is in a life raft with no food or water and three companions will certainly think to hope and wait and pray for a shore or a rescue ship, and to encourage and distract his companions, and to try his teeth on his leather belt and wallet, and to catch fish and seaweed and turtles and gulls and insects, and upturn his hat in order to pool rainwater, whereas it will not even occur to him to kill and eat the cabin boy.

From this way of putting the practical question, our answers to it in various contingencies will almost immediately follow; or will follow perhaps not immediately at all and with the greatest imaginable difficulty, yet still conveniens virtuti [in a way that befits virtue].

And the virtues of character “always express our attachment and orientation to the good,” because to act out of virtue per se is always—however inchoately and unconsciously—to act out of allegiance to the good. It is expressive action with this force, that it states one’s past and present commitment to the good and one’s future intention always to continue to be guided by and towards the good. This force can rightly be called love of or loyalty to the good; it is the force that Iris Murdoch has in mind in The Sovereignty of Good. And this is the sense, or one sense, in which every act that is per se done out of virtue is always an act of love and an act of loyalty.

Now the virtues that always and in every case fit this description are at least these seven: faith, hope, love, justice, self-control, courage, and wisdom. Each of these is a single virtue, because it embodies a responsiveness to a specific kind of difficulty in life that is based in a specific group of the dispositions in us. Each of these virtues has subparts, but those parts are properly regarded as sub-virtues, not themselves as virtues, because of their ordering to the difficulties in life and the dispositions in us.

It is possible that there are not just sub-virtues but also wholly other virtues that should be listed. Possible in principle, at least.

It would be surprising for us to make a new discovery about this now, but we should always be open to future possibilities. If they seem remote to us now, this may simply be because they are future possibilities.

It is possible too that the division of the unity that is virtue overall into just these seven specific virtues could validly be framed a different way by a philosophical culture or tradition different from our own.

Notwithstanding these possibilities, these seven virtues will always be members of at least one possible correct list of the virtues of character. There can therefore be at least one single correct list of the virtues of character, though perhaps not one single uniquely correct list of the virtues of character; and we know at least seven of the items that it must contain.

So to Objection 1, this objection could not show that there cannot be a correct list of virtues of character; only that there could not be a single correct list, because there is no single correct principle of individuation for virtues. But the virtues are, as Thomas Aquinas says, circa difficilia