Exemplarity Between Tradition and Critique

Journal of Religious Ethics 47 (3):552-565 (2019)
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Abstract

Moral exemplarism, which insists on the centrality of particular embodiments of exemplary virtue to the moral life, is currently receiving significant attention within moral philosophy as well as theological and religious ethics. This introductory essay situates the contributions made by this focus issue on moral exemplarity in relation to the history of attention to moral exemplars, the twentieth‐century turn to virtue, philosopher Linda Zagzebski’s exemplarist moral theory, Stanley Hauerwas’s particularist embrace of Christian discipleship, Foucauldian turns to critique and self‐cultivation, and the significance of exemplars in Jeffrey Stout’s democratic piety. Arguing for the critical importance of articulating the authority of exemplars, this essay points to the ways in which the present focus can assist us to navigate between the shoals of nostalgic deference to tradition and dismissive critiques of authoritarianism.

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Jennifer Herdt
Yale Divinity School

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References found in this work

Modern Moral Philosophy.G. E. M. Anscombe - 1958 - Philosophy 33 (124):1 - 19.
Moral saints.Susan Wolf - 1982 - Journal of Philosophy 79 (8):419-439.
Saints and heroes.J. O. Urmson - 1958 - In Abraham Irving Melden (ed.), Essays in moral philosophy. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Exemplarist virtue theory.Linda Zagzebski - 1996 - Metaphilosophy 41 (1-2):41-57.
Democracy and Tradition.Jeffrey Stout - 2004 - American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 25 (2):185-190.

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