Intellectual Virtues

2020 ◽  
pp. 93-107
Author(s):  
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Long Period

This chapter defends the view that intellectual virtues are deep and enduring acquired intellectual excellences, supported by the underlying idea in Exemplarist Moral Theory that excellences are admirable traits, and admirable traits are those that people admire on reflection and that have features identified in empirical studies. The intellectual virtues require both admirable intellectual motivations and reliable success in reaching the truth, and the defense of this claim is that that is what people admire on reflection. The connection of intellectual virtue with moral virtue also explains admirable states like wisdom that are recently getting attention in philosophy and psychology after a long period of neglect.

Nowhere Motel, Light beyond Being

2000 ◽  
Vol 182 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-80
Author(s):  
Brian Jorgensen
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Human Brain ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
College Teachers ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Influence Behavior

and therefore inevitably encourages moral virtue—or, if the college is a Nowhere Motel, vice. Since Aristotle and recent research on the human brain indicate that, throughout the college years, reason gains power to influence behavior, college is a logical place to study virtue. Many characteristics of college students suggest areas for attention to the teaching of moral virtue; but the essence of college is the development of intellectual virtue, which influences moral virtue. College teachers teach intellectual virtue through their approach to their subject, their conducting of the game or ritual of the classroom, and their moving back and forth between fact and spirit. Because the strongest intellectual virtues can go the most profoundly wrong, Socrates and Confucius suggest that, with the exceptionally gifted, the teacher keep in mind the Good, thought of as a light beyond being. Virtue is inevitably taught in college because real learning is learning to love, and love shapes virtue.

3. The intellectual virtues

2021 ◽  
pp. 39-54
Author(s):  
Craig A. Boyd ◽  
Kevin Timpe
Keyword(s):  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Intellectual Curiosity ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Intellectual Courage ◽  
Intellectual Honesty ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Habits Of The Mind

This chapter examines the intellectual virtues. The belief that there are specific intellectual virtues goes back as far as ancient Greece. Intellectual virtues are habits of the mind that facilitate the pursuit of truth, the avoidance of error, or other epistemic goods. Conversely, intellectual vices are habits of the mind that frustrate these goals. And it is possible that a person with intellectual virtue might not necessarily possess moral virtue. The chapter then considers different intellectual virtues: intellectual honesty; intellectual curiosity; intellectual open-mindedness; intellectual courage and perseverance; and intellectual charity.

scholarly journals The Moral Philosophy of Maria Montessori

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
PATRICK FRIERSON
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
Maria Montessori ◽  
Individual Character ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Shared Agency

Abstract This paper lays out the moral theory of philosopher and educator Maria Montessori (1870–1952). Based on a moral epistemology wherein moral concepts are grounded in a well-cultivated moral sense, Montessori develops a threefold account of moral life. She starts with an account of character as an ideal of individual self-perfection through concentrated attention on effortful work. She shows how respect for others grows from and supplements individual character, and she further develops a notion of social solidarity that goes beyond cooperation toward shared agency. Partly because she attends to children's ethical lives, Montessori highlights how character, respect, and solidarity all appear first as prereflective, embodied orientations of agency. Full moral virtue takes up prereflective orientations reflectively and extends them through moral concepts. Overall, Montessori's ethic improves on features similar to some in Nietzschean, Kantian, Hegelian, or Aristotelian ethical theories while situating these within a developmental and perfectionist ethics.

How to Distinguish Aristotle's Virtues

Phronesis ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marguerite Deslauriers
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Art ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis paper considers the distinctions Aristotle draws (1) between the intellectual virtue of phronêsis and the moral virtues and (2) among the moral virtues, in light of his commitment to the reciprocity of the virtues. I argue that Aristotle takes the intellectual virtues to be numerically distinct hexeis from the moral virtues. By contrast, I argue, he treats the moral virtues as numerically one hexis, although he allows that they are many hexeis 'in being'. The paper has three parts. In the first, I set out Aristotle's account of the structure of the faculties of the soul, and determine that desire is a distinct faculty. The rationality of a desire is not then a question of whether or not the faculty that produces that desire is rational, but rather a question of whether or not the object of the desire is good. In the second section I show that the reciprocity of phronêsis and the moral virtues requires this structure of the faculties. In the third section I show that the way in which Aristotle distinguishes the faculties requires that we individuate moral virtues according to the objects of the desires that enter into a given virtue, and with reference to the circumstances in which these desires are generated. I then explore what it might mean for the moral virtues to be different in being but not in number, given the way in which the moral virtues are individuated. I argue that Aristotle takes phronêsis and the political art to be a numerical unity in a particular way, and that he suggests that the moral virtues are, by analogy, the same kind of unity.

scholarly journals ARE INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES TRUTH-RELEVANT?

Episteme ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-392
Author(s):  
Blake Roeber
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Narrow Sense ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Ernest Sosa ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
Wide Range

ABSTRACTAccording to attributor virtue epistemology (the view defended by Ernest Sosa, John Greco, and others), S knows that p only if her true belief that p is attributable to some intellectual virtue, competence, or ability that she possesses. Attributor virtue epistemology captures a wide range of our intuitions about the nature and value of knowledge, and it has many able defenders. Unfortunately, it has an unrecognized consequence that many epistemologists will think is sufficient for rejecting it: namely, it makes knowledge depend on factors that aren't truth-relevant, even in the broadest sense of this term, and it also makes knowledge depend in counterintuitive ways on factors that are truth-relevant in the more common narrow sense of this term. As I show in this paper, the primary objection to interest-relative views in the pragmatic encroachment debate can be raised even more effectively against attributor virtue epistemology.

Intellectual Virtues in Higher Education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Floyd Kuntz ◽  
Rebecca M. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Emerging Adults ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Cognitive Limitations ◽  
Intellectual Autonomy ◽  
The Individual

Intellectual virtues are characteristics that motivate individuals to pursue knowledge and understanding. They support the intellectual flourishing of the individual and consequently of society writ large. Scholars are only beginning to examine how these virtues are developed. An interdisciplinary approach that bridges philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and education research is needed to add empirical grounding to philosophical conceptions of intellectual virtues and to provide recommendations for educators to advance these virtues. Schools arguably have a vital role to play in the development of the intellectual virtues. Colleges and universities embrace several core aims, among them fostering the individual flourishing of their students and the broader public good. Interpreted through a philosophical lens, achieving these aims invokes intellectual virtues. Two intellectual virtues—intellectual autonomy and intellectual fairness—are particularly salient for emerging adults in the higher education context. Empirical research has the potential to shed light on how these virtues are developed and what educators can do to better promote them. Although empirical studies suggest that emerging adults in college may be developmentally primed for the virtues of intellectual autonomy and intellectual fairness, many emerging adults do not leave college reliably demonstrating these virtues. Colleges and universities can do more to support their development by (a) providing students with challenging situations and supportive conditions, (b) creating opportunities for self-directed learning and intellectual risk-taking, and (c) raising awareness of cognitive limitations that undermine fairness.

Eudemian Ethics

2014 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Good Fortune ◽  
Eudemian Ethics

This section presents the English translation of Eudemian Ethics, which offers reflections on happiness—described in the text as the noblest, the best, and the most pleasant of human goods—and how it is acquired and attained. Eudemian Ethics also addresses two kinds of virtue, one intellectual and one moral, and goes on to argue that man alone is an originating principle of action. It also discusses examples of moral virtue such as courage, temperance, liberality, pride, and magnificence, as well as the five intellectual virtues: knowledge, craftmanship, wisdom, intelligence, and understanding. Other arguments in the text relate to justice and injustice, continence and incontinence, pleasure, friendship, good fortune, and gentlemanliness.

Virtue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Baehr
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Character Traits ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Intellectual Humility ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge

Intellectual virtues are character traits that facilitate the acquisition and transmission of knowledge and related epistemic goods. This chapter takes up the question of which traits are intellectual virtues in relation to a particular variety of knowledge; namely, knowledge of God. It is argued that moral humility (as distinct from intellectual humility) is an intellectual virtue in this context. This account of moral humility and its epistemically salutary effects is sketched against the backdrop of an account of human pride and the obstacles such pride poses to the acquisition of theistic knowledge. Finally, an objection is considered according to which, owing to other features of human psychology, moral humility may in fact be an intellectual vice in this context.

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