The Structure of Virtue (I)

As a long-time worker in the field of virtue ethics I cannot but be pleased by its recent increased importance in ethical theory, and also by the recent emergence of a form of virtue epistemology which takes its inspiration from virtue ethics. This has been due to the work of Linda Zagzebski, especially her book Virtues of the Mind, which has opened up many exciting paths of research exploring the links between virtue ethics and epistemology. This is a gripping and seminal book, which will surely change the contours of its field, and bring together two areas which have functioned in mutual isolation and can only gain from the discovery of their links. We all owe Zagzebski thanks for her pioneering work and its effects. My own contribution comes from the direction of virtue ethics, and I shall be exploring two aspects of the structure of virtue, as that has developed in the ancient virtue ethics tradition, which have implications for the relevance of virtue to epistemology. I shall have less to say about the details of the application, since epistemology, at least modern epistemology, is not my area of specialization ; but I am fairly confident that they are central to the project of using a rich notion of virtue to illuminate epistemological issues.
The issues I shall focus on are those of virtue and skill, and virtue and success. In both cases we get a clearer picture if we look at the whole ancient virtue tradition, rather than emphasizing Aristotle. For contingent historical reasons Aristotle’s has been the theory on which most philosophers focus when they turn to virtue. But treating Aristotle as authoritative for virtue ethics fails to do justice even to the ancient tradition. For hundreds of years different theories were proposed within the framework of happiness and virtue, and there was extensive inter-theory debate. As a result, we can separate the framework and main assumptions of virtue ethics from the specificities of Aristotle’s own theory. Sometimes this can turn out to make a large difference as to what is implied by the use of a ‘virtue ethics’ approach, and I shall be arguing that for these two issues it does. In both cases, if we look at the whole virtue tradition, we find important implications for the relation of the moral to the intellectual virtues, and, hence, for the relation of ethics to epistemology.

by julia annas
http://www.u.arizona.edu/