Philosophy

Events

“Virtue Ethics” and the Problem of Advising Fools by Eric Brown (University of Washington at St. Louis)

Date: November 5 2010, 3:30pm Location: John R. Howard Hall 202

“Virtue ethics” tells us to do what the virtuous person would do in our circumstances. But if we are not virtuous—if we are “fools”—then the virtuous person would not be in our circumstances. What, then, can virtue theory say to advise a fool about what to do? I quickly suggest reasons to be pessimistic about recent approaches to this problem, and then I turn to the ancients’ eudaimonism for a more a fresh alternative. The ancient Socratics, including especially the Stoics, counsel not causally promoting one’s virtue or trying to follow “v-rules” but approximating virtue. I argue that Stoic psychopathology offers considerable help in making sense of how fools might approximate virtue and how advisers might use Socratic eudaimonism’s conception of virtue to guide fools to the best action in their circumstances.