Search

Do we have a unified pre-theoretical concept of morality? This paper makes a start on the larger argument that we do not, by countering criticisms of virtue ethics on the ground that it does not adequately capture such a pre-theoretical concept. One criticism is discussed and met, namely that the reasons on which virtuous people act fail to have the special force of moral reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The standard account of Kantian moral weakness fails to provide a psychologically realistic account of moral improvement. It assumes that moral strength is simply a matter of volitional resolve and weakness is a lack of resolve. This leaves the path to moral improvement unclear. In this paper, I reconstruct an alternative character-based account of Kantian moral weakness and strength. On this account, moral strength is the possession of sympathy and self-knowledge, key practical-epistemic virtues from Kant's Doctrine of Virtue, and moral weakness is a lack of these virtues. This identifies moral strength with a high degree of development, integrity, or fitness in one's character, and not merely an ability to somehow try harder. It also resolves an exegetical puzzle concerning the change of heart in Kant's Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Synthesis Philosophica is the property of Croatian Philosophical Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recently, it has become popular to account for knowledge and other epistemic states in terms of epistemic virtues. The present paper focuses on an epistemic virtue relevant when deferring to others in testimonial contexts. It is argued that, while many virtue epistemologists will accept that epistemic virtue can be exhibited in cases involving epistemically motivated hearers, carefully vetting their testimonial sources for signs of untrustworthiness prior to deferring, anyone who accepts that also has to accept that an agent may exhibit epistemic virtue in certain cases of blind deference, involving someone soaking up everything he or she is told without any hesitation. Moreover, in order to account for the kind of virtue involved in the relevant cases of blind deference, virtue epistemologists need to abandon a widespread commitment to personalism, i.e., the idea that virtue is possessed primarily on account of features internal to the psychology of the person, and accept that some virtues are social virtues, possessed in whole or in large part on account of the person being embedded in a reliable social environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Romanitas: Revista de Estudos Greco-Latinas is the property of Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Plato noticed a sizeable problem apropos of establishing his republic-that there was always a ready pool of zealous potential rulers, lying in wait for a suitable opportunity to rule on their own tyrannical terms. He also recognized that those persons best suited to rule, those persons with foursquare and unimpeachable virtue, would be least motivated to govern. Ruling a polis meant that those persons, fully educated and in complete realization that the most complete happiness comprises solitary study of things unchanging, would have to compromise their happiness for the wellbeing of their polis and of the people in it. Plato's solution, in effect that the aristoi would merely recognize their duty to sacrifice personal happiness for the happiness of the polis, has perplexed and continues today to perplex scholars. Like Plato, Jefferson recognized that there was always a pool of eager sharks, ready to govern. His republicanism, comprising a ward system and general education, was founded on the fullest participation of its citizenry, suitably educated and a governing aristoi. The true aristoi, the 'natural aristoi', are the intelligent and virtuous and that government is best which allows for a 'pure selection' of the natural aristoi into the governing offices. Nonetheless, as Jefferson's own life shows, non-parochial governing meant being rent from domestic tranquility, being forced to leave behind one's personal affairs to decay, and being tossed willy-nilly into the coliseum of nonstop political wrangling. Why would anyone, particularly one wanting to be happy, wish to govern? Thus, Jefferson faced the same problem that Plato faced. How could a state be structured so that the wisest and most virtuous would be motivated to rule? In this paper, I argue that Jefferson, in full recognition of the problem of encouraging the most intelligent and virtuous to govern, the problem of public service, offers a solution that is remarkably Platonic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reason of prefering one of the most important thinker of the contemporary virtue theory that reinterpreted in the 80's, whose name is Alasdair Maclntyre, as the subject of study may be explained in such a way that, the potantial of his virtue theory that founded on the basis of Aristotle's idea of virtue to have more consist conception of virtue than that of the other alternative approaches. Aim of the study is to understand in terms of Alasdair Maclntyre's reinterpretation whether the Aristotle's theory of virtue and human good is still relevant at the heart of contemporary social, political and cultural arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the aspects of proportionment of happiness to virtue and the relevance of future divine justice amidst many moral difficulties surrounding the idea. It explores the transactional model of punishment and reward for those who neglect their continuing relationship with God who judges. It mentions that the idea of a proportionment of happiness to virtue represents a simplification of the on-going task human beings face in realizing morality among themselves.

We outline an analysis of various aspects relevant to education along the philosophical lines of Alasdair MacIntyre. He himself has spoken about it, recognizing that his own work has «important implications for moral education and indeed for education in general». The relevance of MacIntyre's philosophy in the field of education, even without confronting this topic directly and systematically, has received certain attention. However, with the publication of Dependent Rational Animals in 1999, its educational aspects have come to have greater prominence: it expounds ideas with direct educational consequences. The interest of many authors in MacIntyre's thoughts on education has been growing since then. We expound some topics with educational implications: the transformation of desires, the importance of the notion of practice, narrativity, the concept of dependence, and the rationality of actions. In MacIntyre we distinguish four phases in the development of virtues, from the earliest infancy to the reflexive assumption of the virtues of the acknowledgment of dependence. These are phases open to changes, and even the possibility of retrogression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examples of "nameless" virtues are discussed by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. They are also found in the Confucian Analects. This paper explores what makes a virtue nameless in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Analects, and then argues that restrained speech is best understood as a nameless virtue in the Analects. It further argues that the virtue of restrained speech merits careful study because it contributes to our understanding of nameless virtues generally, while also deepening our understanding of Kongzi's ethics by showing why he thought it was important to cultivate certain virtues. Indeed, many of the things that make restrained speech valuable hold in a contemporary setting as well, making restrained speech a virtue that is important for us today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the psychological phenomena of "endurance" and "non-endurance," and the ethical implications of a Confucian approach, which regards non-endurance as an impulse of primary virtue. It states that human beings have indefinite desires and intentions, thus a contradiction emerged between limited resources and boundless desires. In order to achieve a balance development, various civilizations have laid down different visible and invisible rules so as to enforce restraints on people's desire with different social status. These rules are actually application of the skill of endurance, which could be a choice made due to fear of punishment. However, from Confucius' perspective, one achieves the greatest virtue-benevolence through a process of exercising self-restraint.

The author contends that attempts to define modesty have failed because they are unable to adequately account for the virtue's social dimensions. He claims that modesty is a valuable disposition for moral agents to possess because it facilitates jealousy, bitterness and other emotions that arise in social circumstances. Moreover, he discusses the definition of modesty offered by Michael Ridge, who attempted to rule out false modesty using means that lead him to neglect the social aspects of the virtue. Lastly, the author offers his own definition of modesty and explains some features of it to promote its advantages.

The article focuses on the issues of sacredness in negotiations. According to the authors, negotiators won't negotiate if they believe that sacred values such as their safety and health and that of their children would be at stake. They add that sacred values cannot be dealt in a negotiation or be endangered, because they believed that sacred values has no monetary equivalent. Furthermore, they said that sacred values are regarded by some researchers to be a hindrance in getting an outcome in negotiations based in ideology. Other information related to sacredness are also mentioned.

Aristotle famously held that there is a crucial difference between the person who merely acts rightly and the person who is wholehearted in what she does. He captures this contrast by insisting on a distinction between continence and full virtue. One way of accounting for the important difference here is to suppose that, for the genuinely virtuous person, the requirements of virtue “silence” competing reasons for action. I argue that the silencing interpretation is not compelling. As Aristotle rightly saw, virtue can have a cost, and a mark of the wise person is that she recognizes it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the prominence of the concept of virtue in contemporary ethical theory, accounts of virtue have often left readers with the impression that the virtuous person is an unattainable ideal or is just psychologically implausible. This article argues that reviving the ancient Greek idea that virtues are like practical skills can help provide a more plausible account of virtue and the virtuous person. The moral knowledge of the virtuous person is analogous to the practical knowledge of the expert in a skill. Instead of relying on a reconstruction of an ancient account of skills for the comparison to virtue, this paper adapts a modem account of skill acquisition developed by Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus in their research on artificial intelligence and human expertise. The skill model of virtue offers a promising direction for virtue theory, by using the research on skills to illuminate the otherwise murky concept of virtue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The common image of the fully virtuous person is of someone with perfect self-command and self-perception, who always makes correct evaluations. However, modesty appears to be a real virtue, and it seems contradictory for someone to believe that she is modest. Accordingly, traditional defenders of phronesis (the view that virtue involves practical wisdom) deny that modesty is a virtue, while defenders of modesty such as Julia Driver deny that phronesis is required for virtue. I offer a new theory of modesty—the two standards account—under which phronesis and modesty are reconciled. Additionally, since the two standards account involves reflection on moral ideals, I provide an account of the proper nature of moral ideals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Julia Annas is one of the few modern writers on virtue that has attempted to recover the ancient idea that virtues are similar to skills. In doing so, she is arguing for a particular account of virtue, one in which the intellectual structure of virtue is analogous to the intellectual structure of practical skills. The main benefit of this skill model of virtue is that it can ground a plausible account of the moral epistemology of virtue. This benefit, though, is only available to some accounts of virtue. Annas claims that Aristotle rejects this skill model of virtue, and so the model of virtues as a skill that Annas endorses for the modern virtue theory is Socratic.This paper argues that while Aristotle rejects the Socratic model of virtue as a skill, he does not reject the model of virtue as a skill altogether. Annas has mischaracterized Aristotle’s position on the skill model, because she has not recognized that Aristotle endorses a different account of the structure of skill than the one put forth by Socrates. In addition, recent research on expertise provides an account of skills very much at odds with the description of skills offered by Annas, but similar to the account endorsed by Aristotle.Contrary to Annas, not only is the skill model of virtue compatible with a neo-Aristotelian account of virtue, but it also appears that basing a skill model of virtue on a Socratic account of virtue is likely to prove unsuccessful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we posit a radical retheorization of anorexia as a form of deviance. We examine how the disciplinary practices and moral technologies typical of contemporary secondary schooling signify and enter into the articulation of three ‘virtue discourses’ (discipline, achievement and healthism), and tease out how these ‘virtue discourses’ play into the formation of the ‘anorexic’ subject. Informed by Foucauldian theory, our analysis draws on our life history interview study with teenage girls diagnosed with anorexia nervosa and their parents. We argue that anorexia can be understood not as a form of deviance but as a ‘paradox of virtue’ involving zealous compliance with and taking up of socially and culturally sanctioned ‘virtue discourses’ that are immanent in schooling and wider society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to show that for Aristotle god is, and is not, virtuous. I consider first the arguments of the EN to show that the gods do not have virtue—beginning with an account of the divisions of the faculties of soul, and of the virtues that belong to those divisions. These arguments suggest that now is a divine virtue, and so in the second section I consider now, as a faculty of soul and as a virtue, and examine the differences between now as a human virtue, and now as a virtue which is also a substance, and with which the first divine principle is identified. In the third and final section I ask what kind of difference Aristotle takes the difference between human and divine now to be—and in particular whether this is a difference in kind or in degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Michael Sandel's formative project about perfectionism, freedom, and virtue. With regards to perfection-based politics, Sandel works as a republicanism that is teleology or perfectionist in evaluating public rules in terms of the moral worth or intrinsic good of the ends they serve. On this view, the right is determined by what honors or advances some important human good. Furthermore, Sandel goes to defend a positive conception of freedom and the public promotion of substantive virtues linked to the realization of that freedom and that good.