Virtue epistemology is an exciting, new movement receiving an enormous amount of attention from top epistemologists and ethicists; this pioneering volume reflects the best work in that vein. Featuring superb writing from contemporary American philosophers, it includes thirteen never before published essays that focus on the place of the concept of virtue in epistemology. In recent years, philosophers have been debating how this concept functions in definitions of knowledge. They question the extent to which knowledge is both normative (i.e., with a moral component) and non-normative, and many of them dispute the focus on justification, which has proven to be too restrictive. Epistemologists are searching for a way to combine the traditional concepts of ethical theory with epistemic concepts; the result is a new approach called virtue epistemology — one that has established itself as a particularly favorable alternative. Containing the fruits of recent study on virtue epistemology, this volume offers a superb selection of contributors — including Robert Audi, Simon Blackburn, Richard Foley, Alvin Goldman, Hilary Kornblith, Keith Lehrer, Ernest Sosa, and Linda Zagzebski — whose work brings epistemology into dialogue with everyday issues. ~ Product Description

Table of Contents

• • Contributors
  • 1    Introduction    3
  • 2    Reason, Virtue, and Knowledge    15
  • 3    The Unity of the Epistemic Virtues    30
  • 4    For the Love of Truth?    49
  • 5    Epistemic Motivation    63
  • 6    Epistemic Virtue and Justified Belief    82
  • 7    Thin Concepts of the Rescue: Thinning the Concepts of Epistemic Justification and Intellectual Virtue    98
  • 8    Virtues and Rules in Epistemology    117
  • 9    Must Knowers Be Agents?    142
  • 10    Epistemic Luck in Light of the Virtues    158
  • 11    Epistemic Akrasia and Epistemic Virtue    178
  • 12    The Virtue of Knowledge    200
  • 13    The Foundational Role of Epistemology in a General Theory of Rationality    214
  • 14    Epistemic Obligation and the Possibility of Internalism    231
  • Index    249