Abstract

W. K. Clifford's 1877 essay "The Ethics of Belief" remains his best-known work. In it, he declares: "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient belief", a view that has come to be called "evidentialism". In order to understand why he wrote this essay, and what he meant by it, one must examine the context in which lived, as well as his own intellectual history. Clifford has been criticized by many philosophers, both his own contemporaries and modern-day, for being too hyperbolic; for conflating ethical and epistemic issues; and for not being clear on what specific ethical view he is arguing for. I will attempt to defend Clifford by arguing that he is using a version of virtue ethics---related as well to virtue epistemology---and that a version of his ethics of belief, albeit one he would most probably not accept himself, is still relevant