This essay explores the interrelation of skills and virtues. I first trace one line of analysis from Aristotle to Alasdair MacIntyre, which argues that there is a categorical difference between skills and virtues, in their ends and intrinsic character. This familiar distinction is fine in certain respects but still importantly misleading. Virtue in general, and also some particular virtues such as ritual propriety and practical wisdom, are not just exercised in practical contexts, but are in fact partially constituted by the (...) mastery of certain skills. This has implications for moral psychology, specifically how we might understand the acquisition of virtue, as well as its very nature. To try to make this claim plausible I analyze two case studies from early Confucianism: treatment of ritual propriety as a cardinal virtue, and Mencius's less carefully integrated treatment of excellence at moral discernment. I conclude by revisiting the question of the relations between skill and virtue, and exploring a few of the difficulties implied by my account of early Confucian ethics. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 9, Issue 2, pp 129 - 145 The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of ἕξις in Plotinus’ virtue ethics. It is argued that since ἕξις signifies a quality of being in a permanent state of possession and virtue is defined as an ἕξις that intellectualizes the soul, therefore, it is suggested that virtue is an active ἕξις of the soul directed higher to the intelligible world in permanent contemplation of the Forms.

Inspired in part by a renewed attention to Aristotle's moral philosophy, philosophers have acknowledged the important role of the emotions in morality. Nonetheless, precisely how emotions matter to morality has remained contentious. Aristotelians claim that moral virtue is constituted by correct action and correct emotion. But Kantians seem to require solely that agents do morally correct actions out of respect for the moral law. There is a crucial philosophical disagreement between the Aristotelian and Kantian moral outlooks: namely, is feeling the (...) correct emotions necessary to virtue or is it an optional extra, which is permitted but not required. I argue that there are good reasons for siding with the Aristotelians: virtuous agents must experience the emotions appropriate to their situations. Moral virtue requires a change of heart. (shrink)

Argues that, in acting for a reason, one takes that reason to explain one's action, not to justify it: reasons for acting need not be seen "under the guise of the good". The argument turns on the need to explain the place of "practical knowledge" - knowing what one is doing - in intentional action. A revised and expanded version of this material appears in Part One of "Reasons without Rationalism" (Princeton, 2007).

The expression ‘second nature’ can be used in two different ways. The first allows phronēsis to count as the sort of thing a second nature is. The second speaks of second natures...

Can a virtuous person act contrary to the virtue she possesses? Can virtues have “holes”—or blindspots—and nonetheless count as virtues? Gopal Sreenivasan defends a notion of a blindspot that is, in my view, an unstable moral category. I will argue that no trait possessing such a “hole” can qualify as a virtue. My strategy for showing this appeals to the importance of motivation to virtue, a feature of virtue to which Sreenivasan does not adequately attend. Sreenivasan’s account allows performance alone (...) to be a reliable indicator of the possession of virtue. I argue that, at least with respect to a classical, Aristotelian conception of virtue, this assumption is mistaken: a person is said to possess a virtue only when she is properly motivated. In my view, the nature of motivation required for the possession of Aristotelian virtue does not admit of blindspots. I am not primarily interested in details about the situationist critique of virtue theory but rather the implications that blindspots have for our conception of virtue. I argue that because the practical reasoning of the virtuous requires both cognitive and motivational coherence, the motivational structure of the virtuous agent cannot accommodate blindspots. My conclusion is neither a defense of motivational internalism nor of an idealized conception of Aristotelian virtue. My aim is to show that because blindspotted virtue does not cohere well with Aristotle’s conception of virtuous agency, friends of virtue theory must choose one or the other; they cannot have both. (shrink)

Many recent writers in the virtue ethics tradition have followed Aristotle in arguing for a distinction between virtue and continence, where the latter is conceived as an inferior moral condition. In this paper I contend that rather than seeking to identify a sharp categorical difference between virtue and continence, we should see the contrast as rather one of degree, where virtue is a continence that has matured with practice and habit, becoming more stable, effective and self-aware.

‘The importance of being experienced’ plays a central part in the ethical philosophy of Aristotle. An experienced person is a person who has acquired a coping skill, an appropriate attitude and a sense of situation. According to Aristotle the soul and the body are interdependent, which indicates a close connection between human activity, human cognition and human character. By insisting on the primacy of action, Aristotle changes the educational focal point from an epistemological discussion of knowledge to an ethical discussion (...) of practice. The paper discusses what Aristotle can offer contemporary education in relation to his understanding of experience. The frame of the discussion is organised according to the three notable elements that are contained in Aristotle’s notion of ‘the importance of being experienced’: a practice, an appropriate hexis or character and a sense of the situation. As a background for and framing of the discussion, the paper will outline some of the many variants as well as substantial differences of the notion of experience and experience-based learning and categorise them in three different understandings. (shrink)

Full virtue and practical wisdom comprise the end of neo-Aristotelian moral development, but wisdom cannot be cultivated straight away through arguments and teaching. Wisdom is integrated with, and builds upon, habituation: the acquisition of virtuous character traits through the repeated practice of corresponding virtuous actions. Habit formation equips people with a taste for, and commitment to, the good life; furthermore it provides one with discriminatory and reflective capacities to know how to act in particular circumstances. Unfortunately, habituation is often understood (...) primarily as a method suitable only for children. This article examines whether Aristotle limited habituation to children and, if not, what the relationship between habituation and wisdom beyond childhood might look like. This article concludes that wisdom-guided habituation is also possible for adults who continue and confirm their already established virtuous habits. The implications of this for professional moral education are subsequently discussed. (shrink)

In her seminal article ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ (1958) Elizabeth Anscombe argued that we need a new ethics, one that uses virtue terms to generate absolute prohibitions against certain act-types. Leading contemporary virtue ethicists have not taken up Anscombe's challenge in justifying absolute prohibitions and have generally downplayed the role of rule-following in their normative theories. That they have not done so is primarily because contemporary virtue ethicists have focused on what is sufficient for characterizing the deliberation and action of the (...) fully virtuous person, and rule-following is inadequate for this task. In this article, I take up Anscombe's challenge by showing that rule-following is necessary for virtuous agency, and that virtue ethics can justify absolute prohibitions. First, I offer a possibility proof by showing how virtue ethics can generate absolute prohibitions in three ways: by considering actions that directly manifest vice or that cannot be performed virtuously; actions that are prohibited by one's institutional roles and practical identities; and actions that are prohibited by the prescriptions of the wise. I then seek to show why virtue ethicists should incorporate rule-following and absolute prohibitions into their theories. I emphasize the central role that rules have in the development of virtue, then motivate the stronger view that fully virtuous agents follow moral rules by considering the importance of hope, uncertainty about consequences, and taking responsibility for what eventuates. Finally, I provide an account of what Anscombe called a ‘corrupt mind’, explaining how our understanding of virtue is corrupted if we think that virtue may require us to do vicious actions. (shrink)

This article offers an account of akrasia as a primary failure of intentional agency in contrast to a recent account of weakness of will, developed by Richard Holton, that also points to a kind of failure of intentional agency but presents this as both separate from akrasia and more fundamental than it. Drawing on Aristotle’s work, it is argued that the failure of intentional agency articulated by the concept of akrasia is the central case, whereas the phenomenon Holton’s account is (...) after, referred to as ‘ordinary weakness of will’, is best understood as an unsuccessful attempt to tackle akrasia and, more specifically, a secondary failure of intentional agency. (shrink)

(2006). Neoptolemus's soul and the taxonomy of ethical characters in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics ∗. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 205-223.

El presente trabajo tiene como propósito elucidar la postura de Aristóteles con respecto a la responsabilidad moral basándonos en el contenido de su libro Ética a Nicómaco. A pesar de que no encontramos una teoría explícita al respecto, demostraremos que Aristóteles habla de lo que hoy en día llamaríamos responsabilidad moral en términos de voluntariedad y capacidad de deliberación. Por ello, examinaremos en primer lugar su teoría de la voluntariedad; luego, analizaremos el papel que le otorga al deseo, la deliberación (...) y la elección en la responsabilidad y, finalmente, profundizaremos en su análisis de la naturaleza del carácter del agente. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper suggests a much more serious purpose for an education in music-making than play or pleasure or even the training of professional musicians. It presents and explicates a possible connection between musical performance training and the development of practical wisdom. Music in performance constitutes in effect a form of virtuous conduct, where one learns through doing and thereafter comes to love and to be capable of wise practical judgement. Excellence in this field requires the exercise of a species (...) of reasoning and judgement analogous to Aristotelian practical wisdom, and develops the distinctive qualities of character and vision of the practically wise person. (shrink)

It has been a fundamental assumption in management theory that communication is a key condition for successful management. This assumption has been linked to Habermas’ model of communicative rationality, but it is very difficult for managers to implement this model in real-life leadership relations. The reason is that practical obstacles, resource limitations and knowledge gaps make it impossible to achieve Habermas’ ideal aim of ‘shared horizons’. The article argues that it is possible for managers to meet fundamental communication conditions in (...) employee interaction and other forms of leadership relations if the holistic concept of a shared horizon is replaced with an idea of contextual agreement. Within this alternative conceptual framework, a key strategic aim for managers is to communicate as well as realistically possible how organisational strategies and action-guiding principles are justified. This presupposes that managers are able to uncover ‘hidden’ language meaning and transcend contextual power relations. Within a speech act theory of meaning, the article articulates three basic communication conditions that can function as conceptual tools for achieving these communicative aims. (shrink)

Within the nursing ethics literature, there has for some time now been a focus on the role and importance of character for nursing. An overarching rationale for this is the need to examine the sort of person one must be if one is to nurse well or be a good nurse. How one should be to live well or live a/the good life and to nurse well or be a good nurse seems to necessitate a focus on an agent's character (...) as well as actions because character is (for the most part) expressed in action (e.g. see Laird). This paper will give an overview of the reasons for the role and importance of character in nursing practice and explain its relation to nursing's frequent use of virtue ethics in order to recommend caution. While the paper agrees that the role of character is important in nursing caution is needed in both how much moral and thus normative, emphasis is being placed on the psychology of character and on the drift to virtue ethics. The psychological which may be explanatory needs to be linked with the normative, and a justification for the normative is needed. A justification as virtue ethics is contested, and nursing practice does not need to take on this explanatory and justificatory burden.A tentative proposal raised but not discussed in depth in this paper is that when an ultimate explanation or explanatory ground is needed, nursing practice leads quite naturally to a form of consequentialism as well as a realist metaethic. On this account, there are two levels of moral thinking, and nursing practice entails the virtues at one level and leads quite naturally to moral thinking at another more critical level of the criterion of what makes something right and good independently of character. (shrink)

This paper's philosophical ideas are developed from a General Nursing Council for England and Wales Trust‐funded study to explore nursing knowledge and wisdom and ways in which these can be translated into clinical practice and fostered in junior nurses. Participants using Carper's (1978) ways of knowing as a framework experienced difficulty conceptualizing a link between the empirics and ethics of nursing. The philosophical problem is how to understand praxis as a moral entity with intrinsic value when so much of value (...) seems to be technical and extrinsic depending on desired ends. Using the Aristotelian terms poesis and praxis can articulate the concerns that the participants as well as Carper (1978) and Dreyfus (in Flyvbjerg, 1991) among others share that certain actions or ways of knowing important for nursing are being devalued and deformed by the importance placed on quantitative data and measurable outcomes. The sense of praxis is a moralized one and most of what nurses do is plausibly on any account of normative ethics a morally good thing; the articulation of the idea of praxis can go some way in showing how it is a part of the discipline of nursing. Nursing's acts as poesis can be a part of how practitioners come to have praxis as phronesis or practical wisdom. So to be a wise nurse, one needs be a wise person. (shrink)

Aristotle repeatedly claims that character-virtue “makes the goal right“, while Phronesis is responsible for working out how to achieve the goal. Many argue that these claims are misleading: it must be intellect that tells us what ends to pursue. I argue that Aristotle means just what he seems to say: despite putative textual evidence to the contrary, virtue is (a) a wholly non-intellectual state, and (b) responsible for literally supplying the contents of our goals. Furthermore, there are no good textual (...) or philosophical reasons to reject this straightforward interpretation. Contrary to widespread opinion, Aristotle does not characterize Phronesis as supplying ends. Instead, its ethical import lies wholly in its ability to “determine the mean“. Moreover, because character involves non-rational cognition of the end as good, Aristotle can restrict practical intellect to deliberation without abandoning his anti-Humean view that we desire our ends because we find them good. (shrink)

Some philosophers hold that the depth of an emotion is a question of how embedded it is among the person’s other mental states. That means, the emotion is inter-connected with other states such that its alteration or removal would lead to widespread changes in the mind. This paper argues that it is necessary to distinguish two different concepts of embeddedness: the inter-connections could either be rational or causal. The difference is non-trivial. This paper argues that the rational approach cannot admit (...) that certain types of recalcitrant emotion are deep without violating requirements of charity in the interpretation of others. Furthermore, it also argues that the causal approach is necessary to explain the depth of even non-recalcitrant emotions. So, if emotional depth is to be conceived as a kind of embeddedness, the relevant concept of embeddedness must be the causal one. (shrink)

This paper assesses Michael Brady’s claim that the ‘capture and consumption of attention’ in an emotion facilitates evaluative understanding. It argues that emotional attention is epistemically deleterious on its own, even though it can be beneficial in conjunction with the right epistemic skills and motivations. The paper considers Sartre’s and Solomon’s claim that emotions have purposes, respectively, to circumvent difficulty or maximize self-esteem. While this appeal to purposes is problematic, it suggests a promising alternative conception of how emotions can be (...) teleological. The fact that emotional attention manifests dispositions, which have been habituated by repeated association with pleasure or relief, explains how the emotion can acquire the function of producing pleasure or relief. Hence, the emotion can have ‘non-cognitive function,’ in which its patterns of attention reliably produce beliefs that disregard or distort the truth. Not only is non-cognitive function the default condition of emotion prior to any training, but even those who have successfully trained their emotions often revert back to non-cognitive function when faced with trauma or stress. (shrink)

I argue that Aristotelian decisions (προαιρέσεις) cannot be conceived of as based solely on wish (βούλησις) and deliberation (βούλευσις), as the standard picture (most influentially argued for in Anscombe's "Thought and Action in Aristotle", in R. Bambrough ed. New Essays on Plato and Aristotle. London: Routledge, 1965) suggests. Although some features of the standard view are correct (such as that decisions have essential connection to deliberation and that wish always plays a crucial role in the formation of a decision), Aristotelian (...) decisions sometimes must include non-rational desires such as appetite. Consequently, any exegetical account of Aristotle’s notion of decision must be able to accommodate this feature. (shrink)

The central virtue at issue in recent philosophical discussions of the empirical adequacy of virtue ethics has been the virtue of compassion. Opponents of virtue ethics such as Gilbert Harman and John Doris argue that experimental results from social psychology concerning helping behavior are best explained not by appealing to so-called ‘global’ character traits like compassion, but rather by appealing to external situational forces or, at best, to highly individualized ‘local’ character traits. In response, a number of philosophers have argued (...) that virtue ethics can accommodate the empirical results in question. My own view is that neither side of this debate is looking in the right direction. For there is an impressive array of evidence from the social psychology literature which suggests that many people do possess one or more robust global character traits pertaining to helping others in need. But at the same time, such traits are noticeably different from a traditional virtue like compassion. (shrink)

The paper develops and contrasts two views about the role of examples in moral education — one based on R.M. Hare's recent “two-level” conception of moral reasoning and one based on Aristotle's conception ofphronesis. It concludes that a Harean view leads to a harmful and impoverished form of moral education by encouraging children to ignore or distort the complexity of particular moral judgments. It also concludes that an Aristotelian view, by emphasizing the importance of rich examples such as those found (...) in literature, enables children to develop and exercise a capacity for moral judgment that is sensitive to the complexities of particular moral judgments. Finally, the role of examples in public moral education in liberal pluralist societies is examined. (shrink)

Plato gives us two model philosophical figures, apparently in contrast with each other—one is the otherworldly philosopher who sees truth and reality outside the cave and has the knowledge to rule authoritatively within it; the other is the demotic figure of Socrates, who insists that he does not know but only asks questions. I consider Plato’s contrasting idioms of seeing and asking or talking, and argue that the rich account of perception that is represented in the Republic requires both idioms, (...) and both models, to explain the development of epistemic virtue. Furthermore, the conditions he places on the giving and taking of reasons show how Plato takes intellectual virtue to be inseparable from moral virtue. That integrated picture of virtue may—however disposed we may be towards the role of virtue in either ethics or epistemology—have something to say to us about how philosophy might best be carried on. (shrink)

This article offers a new interpretation of Aristotle’s ambiguous and much-discussed claim that pleasure perfects activity. This interpretation provides an alternative to the two main competing readings of this claim in the scholarship: the addition-view, which envisages the perfection conferred by pleasure as an extra perfection beyond the perfection of activity itself; and the identity-view, according to which pleasure just is the perfect activity itself. The proposed interpretation departs from both these views in rejecting their assumption that pleasure cannot perfect (...) the activity itself, and argues that pleasure makes activity perfect by optimising the exercise of one’s capacities for that activity. Those who build or play music with pleasure do so better than those who do not delight in these activities. The basis of this interpretation is Aristotle’s little-read remarks from the following chapter, i. e. NE x.5, about how pleasure “increases” the activity. (shrink)

Discussions of habit in Hegel’s thought usually focus on his subjective spirit since this is where the most extended discussion of this issue takes place. This paper argues that habit is also important for understanding Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. The discussion of habit and second nature occur at a critical juncture in the text. This discussion is important for understanding his notion of ethical life and his account of freedom.

Scholarship on Aristotle’s NICOMACHEAN ETHICS (hereafter “the Ethics”) flourishes in an almost unprecedented fashion. In the last ten years, universities in North America have produced on average over ten doctoral dissertations a year that discuss the practical philosophy that Aristotle espouses in his Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, and Politics. Since the beginning of the millennium there have been three new translations of the entire Ethics into English alone, several more that translate parts of the work into English and other modern (...) languages, and half a dozen collections of new articles discussing Aristotle’s Ethics. Such an outpouring of scholarship has produced an almost unmanageable wave of books, articles, and reviews. Through my topical bibliography, I seek to organize this wealth of scholarly writing so as to make it manageable both to scholars working across the disciplines of philosophy, classics, history, and politics, and to scholars pursuing theses on specific topics within the Ethics. The bibliography takes as its model and is much indebted to that compiled by Barnes, Schofield, and Sorabji in their Articles on Aristotle, Volume 2: Ethics and Politics (1977), which was further updated and incorporated into the complete bibliography to all of Aristotle’s writings in Barnes’s Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (1995). Although I have taken guidance from their model, my bibliography differs in one main respect. Whereas Barnes et al. were more selective and annotated their bibliography, I have been more comprehensive in my inclusion of items. I have sought to include all books and journal articles concerned with the Ethics written in English over the last 120 years; additionally, I have sought to include representative and central works of scholarship written on the Ethics in French, German, and Italian during the same period of time. (shrink)

In this essay I offer a new particularist reading of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. I argue that the interpretation I present not only helps us to resolve some puzzles about Aristotle’s goals and methods, but it also gives rise to a novel account of morality—an account that is both interesting and plausible in its own right. The goal of this paper is, in part, exegetical—that is, to figure out how to best understand the text of the Nicomachean Ethics. But this paper (...) also aims to contribute to the current exciting and controversial debate over particularism. By taking the first steps towards a comprehensive particularist reading of Aristotle’s Ethics I hope to demonstrate that some of the mistrust of particularism is misplaces and that what is, perhaps, the most influential moral theory in the history of philosophy is, arguably, a particularist moral theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that we face a challenge in understanding the relationship between the ‘value-oriented’ and ‘other-oriented’ dimensions of shame. On the one hand, an emphasis on shame's value-oriented dimension leads naturally to ‘The Self-Evaluation View’, an account which faces a challenge in explaining shame's other-oriented dimension. This is liable to push us towards ‘The Social Evaluation View’. However The Social Evaluation View faces the opposite challenge of convincingly accommodating shame's ‘value-oriented’ dimension. After rejecting one attempt to chart (...) a middle course between these extremes, I argue that progress can be made if we reject the widespread assumption that the other-oriented dimension of shame is best understood primarily terms of our concern with the way we appear to others. Instead, I outline an account which treats shame as manifesting our desire primarily for interpersonal connection and which elucidates the property of shamefulness in terms of merited avoidance. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to pinpoint some of the features that do—or should—make Aristotelianism attractive to current moral educators. At the same time, it also identifies theoretical and practical shortcomings that contemporary Aristotelians have been overly cavalier about. Section II presents a brisk tour of ten of the ‘pros’: features that are attractive because they accommodate certain powerful and prevailing assumptions in current moral philosophy and moral psychology—applying them to moral education. Section III explores five versions of the (...) view that Aristotle's position is somehow anachronistic and out-dated. As none of those bears scrutiny, Section IV addresses ten features of Aristotelianism that do not seem to sit well with contemporary moral philosophy and psychology: the genuine ‘cons’ of Aristotelianism. It is subsequently argued that if we want to avoid acquiring Aristotelianism on the cheap, those less attractive features need to be engaged head-on: reinterpreted, revised or simply rejected. (shrink)

This paper is about the interplay between intuition and reason in Aristotle’s moral psychology. After discussing briefly some other uses of ‘intuition’ in Aristotle’s texts, I look closely at A...

This essay introduces the present special issue on wisdom and moral education, which draws on a conference held in Oxford in 2017. Some of the seven contributions (by Sanderse; Ferkany; and Hatchimonji et al.) make use of the Aristotelian concept of phronesis, or practical wisdom, while others focus more on the wisdom concept as it has developed in contemporary psychology (Huynh and Grossman; Ardelt; and Brocato, Hix and Jayawickreme). One (by Swartwood) straddles the distinction between the two. All the contributions, (...) however, address in different ways practical questions about how wisdom can be evaluated and how it relates to issues of moral development and education. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to make a case for Aristotelian friendship as a ‘method’ of moral education qua mutual character development. After setting out some Aristotelian assumptions about friendship and education in the “Aristotle and Beyond: Some Basics about Character Friendship and Education”section, I devote the “Role-Model Moral Education Contrasted with Learning from Character Friends” section to role modelling and how it differs from the idea of cultivating character through friendships. “The Mechanisms of Learning from Character Friends” section (...) then explores the mechanisms of Aristotelian friendship education directly: those identified by him and those which can be elicited more obliquely from his texts. I end in the “Concluding Remarks and Classroom Applications” section with some reflections on how this model of friendship as a moral method could be applied in current educational contexts. While the idea of character friendship as an educational method comes with many assets, it also imports various liabilities that may lead to painful friendship terminations. I have put the spotlight on those liabilities in two previous articles. In contrast, the goal here is to impart a new edge and added force to the idea that a certain Aristotle-defined type of deep friendships may have a unique role to play in facilitating moral growth, above and beyond other developmental learning mechanisms. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology is among the dominant influences in mainstream epistemology today. An important commitment of one strand of virtue epistemology – responsibilist virtue epistemology (e.g., Montmarquet 1993; Zagzebski 1996; Battaly 2006; Baehr 2011) – is that it must provide regulative normative guidance for good thinking. Recently, a number of virtue epistemologists (most notably Baehr, 2013) have held that virtue epistemology not only can provide regulative normative guidance, but moreover that we should reconceive the primary epistemic aim of all education as (...) the inculcation of the intellectual virtues. Baehr’s picture contrasts with another well-known position – that the primary aim of education is the promotion of critical thinking (Scheffler 1989; Siegel 1988; 1997; 2017). In this paper – that we hold makes a contribution to both philosophy of education and epistemology and, a fortiori, epistemology of education – we challenge this picture. We outline three criteria that any putative aim of education must meet and hold that it is the aim of critical thinking, rather than the aim of instilling intellectual virtue, that best meets these criteria. On this basis, we propose a new challenge for intellectual virtue epistemology, next to the well-known empirically-driven ‘situationist challenge’. What we call the ‘pedagogical challenge’ maintains that the intellectual virtues approach does not have available a suitably effective pedagogy to qualify the acquisition of intellectual virtue as the primary aim of education. This is because the pedagogic model of the intellectual virtues approach (borrowed largely from exemplarist thinking) is not properly action-guiding. Instead, we hold that, without much further development in virtue-based theory, logic and critical thinking must still play the primary role in the epistemology of education. (shrink)

Following Lawrence Kohlberg it has been commonplace to regard Plato's moral theory as ‘intellectualist’, where Plato supposedly believes that becoming virtuous requires nothing other than ‘philosophical knowledge or intuition of the ideal form of the good’. This is a radical misunderstanding of Plato's educational programme, however. While Plato claims that knowledge is extremely important in the initial stages of the moral development of young adults, he also claims that knowledge must be followed by a rigorous process of imitation and habituation. (...) Like Aristotle, Plato believes that it is not possible to become virtuous if one does not practice the virtues under the guidance of virtuous role models. This paper seeks to illuminate this little recognised aspect of Plato's educational programme. When properly understood, Plato's theory offers educators important insights into how best to encourage the moral development of young adults. (shrink)

Aristotle ’s claim that we become virtuous by doing virtuous actions raises a familiar problem: How can we perform virtuous actions unless we are already virtuous? I reject deflationary accounts of the answer given in _Nicomachean Ethics_ 2.4 and argue instead that proper habituation involves doing virtuous actions with the right motive, i.e. for the sake of the noble, even though learners do not yet have virtuous dispositions. My interpretation confers continuity to habituation and explains in a non-mysterious way how (...) we become virtuous by doing virtuous actions in the right way. (shrink)

At least since Burnyeat’s “Aristotle on Learning to Be Good,” one of the most popular ways of explaining moral development in Aristotle is by appealing to mechanisms of pleasure and pain. Aristotle himself suggests this kind of explanation when he says that “in educating the young we steer them by the rudders of pleasure and pain” (Nicomachean Ethics X.1, 1172a21). However, I argue that, contrary to the dominant view, Aristotle’s view on moral development in the Nicomachean Ethics is not mainly (...) about learning to feel pleasures and pains in relation to the right kinds of objects and activities. I show that given Aristotle’s account of the relationships between pleasure and virtuous actions, on the one hand, and between pleasure and virtuous dispositions, on the other, pleasure can only have a supporting role in our learning to be good, and not a guiding one. (shrink)

Most theories about virtue cultivation fall under the general umbrella of the role model approach, according to which virtue is acquired by emulating role models, and where those role models are usually conceived of as superior in some relevant respect to the learners. I argue that although we need role models to cultivate virtue, we also need good and close relationships with people who are not our superiors. The overemphasis on role models is misguided and misleading, and a good antidote (...) draws on the Aristotelian concept of character friendship. Character friendship constitutes a unique form of experience in which we share a substantial way of seeing with a close other; facilitates a unique form of knowledge, the knowledge of a particular person ; develops other emotions important for virtue cultivation besides admiration, such as love, shame, trust, and hope; and is a praxis in which cooperative interactions and discussions function as a bridge between habituation of virtue at home and the public life. Character friendship provides necessary elements for human cultivation of virtue that the sole experience of having a role model does not. (shrink)

Ancient Chinese and Greek thinkers alike were preoccupied with the moral value of music; they distinguished between good and bad music by looking at the music’s effect on moral character. The idea can be understood in terms of two closely related questions. Does music have the power to affect the ethical character of either listener or performer? If it does, is it better as music for doing so? I argue that an affirmative answers to both questions are more plausible than (...) it might seem at first. (shrink)

Surprisingly little attention has been devoted to Musonius Rufus, a noted teacher and philosopher in first–century CE Rome, despite ample evidence for his impact in the period. This paper attempts to situate Musonius in relation to his philosophical predecessors in order to clarify both the contemporary status of the Stoic tradition and the value of engaging with the central figures of that school’s history. I make the case for seeing Cleanthes as a particularly prominent predecessor for Musonius and reaffirm the (...) importance of framing his philosophical commitments in the context of the Stoic tradition. On this latter point, I attempt to connect Musonius’ perspective on askesis and moral development with that of Posidonius (and Seneca). In doing so, I push back against the sometimes overly schematic intellectualism attributed to Stoic ethics generally. (shrink)

Individuals with conditions like borderline personality disorder experience chronic, pervasive impairments that interfere with moral functioning. Even in recovery these individuals are plagued by residual symptoms, requiring diligence and management. First, I stipulate that some individuals who recover from BPD act morally. I argue that by acting morally while managing residual symptoms these individuals expand the boundaries of traditional Aristotelian virtue. Individuals who recover from BPD are simultaneously virtuous and outside the boundaries of traditional Aristotelian virtue if they meet the (...) following conditions: they experience marked, unchangeable morally-relevant difference in moral faculties; act morally at approximately the same rate or better than other moral agents; and act morally for the right reasons. These individuals challenge the boundaries of traditional Aristotelian virtue by demonstrating that many views of temperance and virtue are too restrictive. I evaluate multiple interpretations of McDowell’s [1] silencing view and call for a more inclusive virtue ethics that embraces continence in the vein of Foot’s [2] corrective view. (shrink)

The sociopolitical significance Aristotle and Confucius attribute to possessing a sense of shame serves to emphasize the importance of its development. Aristotle maintains that social class and wealth are prerequisites for its acquisition, while Confucius is optimistic that it can be developed regardless of socioeconomic considerations. The difference between their positions is largely due to competing views of praiseworthy dispositions. While Aristotle conceives of praiseworthy dispositions as “consistent” traits of character, traits that calcifiy as one reaches adulthood, Confucius offers us (...) an alternative picture, one that affords a greater plasticity to praiseworthy dispositions by treating them as situational character traits. I argue that the Confucian conception of praiseworthy dispositions, combined with several strategies for developing a sense of shame discussed in the Analects, renders Confucius’s optimism defensible. (shrink)

Moral virtue is, for Aristotle, a state to which an agent’s motivation is central. For anyone interested in Aristotle’s account of moral development this invites reflection on two questions: how is it that virtuous motivational dispositions are established? And what contribution do the moral learner’s existing motivational states make to the success of her habituation? I argue that views which demand that the learner act with virtuous motives if she is to acquire virtuous dispositions misconstrue the nature and structure of (...) the habituation process, but also obscure Aristotle’s crucial insight that the very practice of virtuous actions affords a certain discovery and can be transformative of an agent’s motivational states. Drawing attention, in Aristotle’s account, to an asymmetry between the agential perspective and the observation of others, I consider what the agential perspective affords the learner, and offer a novel interpretation of the role a learner’s existing motives play in her habituation. (shrink)