The trait of modesty has received significant philosophical attention in recent years. This is due, in part, to Julia Driver's claim that modesty is able to act as a counter-example to intellectualist accounts of the nature of virtue. In this paper I engage with the debate about the nature of modesty by proposing a new account. ‘Modesty as kindness’ states that the trait of modesty ought to be considered as intimately connected with the more fundamental virtue of kindness. I set (...) out the account, explain its benefits and defend it against possible objections. I then ask whether or not the intense focus on the trait of modesty has actually furthered our understanding of the nature of virtue more generally, and suggest that alternative approaches ought to be considered. (shrink)

One of the most pressing challenges facing virtue theorists is the conflation problem. This problem concerns the difficulty of explaining the distinction between different types of virtue, such as the distinction between moral virtues and intellectual virtues. Julia Driver has argued that only an outcomes-based understanding of virtue can provide an adequate solution to the conflation problem. In this paper, I argue against Driver’s outcomes-based account, and propose an alternative motivations-based solution. According to this proposal, intellectual virtues can be identified (...) by the shared motivation for cognitive contact with reality, while moral virtues are identified by appeal to the characteristic motivations of kindness and justice. I defend the proposal by demonstrating that it produces plausible verdicts concerning the virtue status of candidate moral and intellectual virtues. (shrink)

Many have assumed that widespread cultural ignorance exculpates those who are involved in otherwise morally problematic practices, such as the ancient slaveholders, 1950s sexists or contemporary meat eaters. In this paper we argue that ignorance can be culpable even in situations of widespread cultural ignorance. However, it is not usually culpable due to a previous self-conscious act of wrongdoing. Nor can we always use the standard attributionist account of such cases on which the acts done in ignorance can nonetheless display (...) bad motivations. Instead, we argue that moral ignorance often results from the exercise of vice, and that this renders subsequent acts blameworthy, regardless of whether the ignorance happens to be widespread. We develop an account of moral-epistemic vice, and argue that two families of moral-epistemic vice may be common. Vices of arrogance involve the motivation to self-aggrandizement, while vices of laziness involve the motivation for comfort. If cases of cultural ignorance involve the operation of these moral-epistemic vices then that ignorance ought to be viewed as culpable. (shrink)

The idea that moral virtues form some sort of “unity” has received considerable attention from virtue theorists. In this paper, I argue that the possibility of unity among intellectual virtues has been wrongly overlooked. My approach has two main components. First, I work to distinguish the variety of different views that are available under the description of a unity thesis. I suggest that these views can be categorised depending on whether they are versions of standard unity or of strong unity. (...) Standard unity claims that the possession of one virtue implies possession of all the others. Strong unity claims that the virtues are, in some sense, all the same thing. By exploring what these different versions of unity would look like when applied to intellectual virtues, I aim to provide a menu of options for future work in virtue epistemology. I then develop and defend one of these options in more detail, arguing that the initially less plausible strong unity has merit when applied to the intellectual sphere. In these two ways, I aim to show that the possibility of unity among the intellectual virtues is deserving of serious consideration. (shrink)

Honesty is widely accepted as a prime example of a moral virtue. And yet, honesty has been surprisingly neglected in the recent drive to account for specific virtuous traits. This paper provides a framework for an increased focus on honesty by proposing success criteria that will need to be met by any plausible account of honesty. It then proposes a motivational account on which honesty centrally involves a deep motivation to avoid deception. It argues that this account satisfies the required (...) success criteria and discusses why (and when) honesty can be accepted as a moral virtue. Finally, it highlights some implications of accepting a motivational account of honesty for future work on encouraging the development of honesty, and on the relationship between different types of virtue. (shrink)

This review essay provides a critical discussion of Linda Zagzebski’s Exemplarist Moral Theory. We agree that emt is a book of impressive scope that will be of interest to ethical theorists, as well as epistemologists, philosophers of language, and philosophers of religion. Throughout the critical discussion we argue that exemplarism faces a number of important challenges, firstly, in dealing with the fallibility of admiration, which plays a central role in the theoretical framework, and secondly, in serving as a practical guide (...) for moral development. Despite this, we maintain that emt points the way for significant future theoretical and empirical research into some of the most well-established questions in ethical theory. (shrink)

Robert Sparrow (2014) argues that moral bioenhancement - the project of attempting to improving moral character via medical or biological means - ought to be of great concern to egalitarians. Importantly, Sparrow's argument is meant to apply regardless of whether such bioenhancement is likely to be successful. In this response, I argue against Sparrow's worries concerning successful moral bioenhancement. This response highlights that it may not be possible to separate moral questions of the permissibility of bioenhancement from scientific and conceptual (...) questions regarding its possibility. (shrink)

Theorists have recently been exploring the prospects for a virtue-centred approach to aesthetics. Virtue aesthetics encourages a re-focusing of philosophical attention onto the aesthetic character traits of agents, in the same way that virtue ethics and virtue epistemology have encouraged us to focus on moral and intellectual traits. In this paper, I aim to contribute to the development of virtue aesthetics by discussing aesthetic courage, the aesthetic analogue of one of the most widely acknowledged moral virtues. In addition to proposing (...) an account of the nature of this trait, I also argue that aesthetic courage is vital for any sort of aesthetically virtuous life. It is not possible to possess any aesthetic virtue without possessing aesthetic courage. It is important, therefore, for any future development of virtue aesthetics to acknowledge the central importance of aesthetic courage. (shrink)

The use of deception for the purposes of research is a widespread practice within many areas of study. If we want to avoid either absolute acceptance or absolute rejection of this practice then we require some method of distinguishing between those uses of deception which are morally acceptable and those which are not. In this article I discuss the concept of counterfactual consent, and propose a related distinction between counterfactual-defeating deception and counterfactual-compatible deception. The aim is to show that this (...) proposed distinction will be useful in furthering the debate regarding the use of deception for the purposes of research. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists have recently been focusing on the important question of how positive character traits are developed. Within philosophy, these positive character traits are referred to as virtues. In this chapter, I examine one intuitively appealing proposal concerning virtue development - the idea that the path to moral virtue can begin with the experience of admiration for a moral exemplar. My aim is to provide a model of how this process might work by identifying the different stages it would (...) involve. I then highlight three ways in which admiration might nevertheless fail to result in the development of moral virtue. It is hoped that providing this model, and identifying the potential problems, will be helpful for those interested in virtue education. (shrink)

In this paper, I highlight three objections to vice-based accounts of moral evil: (1) the worry that vice-based accounts of evil are explanatorily inadequate; (2) the worry that even extreme vice is not sufficient for evil; and (3) the worry that not all vices are inversions of virtue (and so vice-based accounts will struggle to explain the “mirror thesis”). I argue that it is possible to respond to these objections by developing a vice-based account of evil that draws on insights (...) from virtue (and vice) epistemology. In this way, I seek to defend the strategy of understanding evil in terms of vice, and to provide guidance on how best to develop such an account. I also briefly consider what vice-based accounts of moral evil might imply about evil in other normative domains where it is common to talk of virtue and vice, including the possibilities of epistemic evil and aesthetic evil. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that virtue ethics cannot accommodate the possibility of supererogation. In response, Rebecca Stangl proposes a neo-Aristotelian account of supererogation that, she argues, generates plausible verdicts, while also being compatible with the doctrine of the mean. I argue that Stangl’s response is unsuccessful. First, I demonstrate that the proposal in its current form is problematically indeterminate, meaning that we cannot know what verdicts would be produced in response to classic examples. Second, I argue that anyone attempting (...) to develop the account faces a dilemma, and that both options for responding to this dilemma generate problematic results. (shrink)

Book review of Neither Heroes Nor Saints: Ordinary Virtue, Extraordinary Virtue, and Self-Cultivation by Rebecca Stangl.

Book review of The Impossibility of Perfection: Aristotle, Feminism and the Complexities of Ethics by Michael Slote (2011).

Book review of A Feminist Perspective on Virtue Ethics by Sandrine Berges (2015).

Book review of Virtue by Heather Battaly (2015).