Abstract

There are significant challenges to developing a neo-Aristotelian account of a virtue of patience. First, on an Aristotelian understanding, virtue is both instrumentally good and good in itself. Yet exclusively instrumental views of patience are pervasive in the philosophical literature. Furthermore, these instrumental views present patience as more like a psychological skill than a virtue of character. Skills, however, can be misused. If patience is to be a virtue, its account must entail goodness in its possessor. Finally, there is the challenge of specifying a field, or sphere of concern, for patience, given the diversity of phenomena that we tend to attribute to it. I propose a thin account of a virtue of patience that, I contend, can meet these challenges.