Philosophy Program Presents

Canonizing the Virtues: The Beginnings of Moral Philosophy

Some intellectual traditions take the four cardinal virtues – wisdom, justice, courage, and self-discipline – to constitute the virtuous (moral and successful) life. This list of canonical virtues, and an account of its sufficiency, is ascribed to Plato. In this presentation, I argue against doing so. Rather than asserting how things stand with virtues, Plato depicts many conversations about an already emerging (fifth-century) view of human goodness as articulable as a cluster of virtues. Throughout his dialogues, his Socrates criticizes the explanatory value of such clusters. A clinched tetrad of virtues sometimes proves dialectically helpful for him but, at the end of his writing career, Plato says that we need to keep investigating the number and nature of the virtues. I argue that Plato is depicting – and is advancing in the very process – perhaps the prime step in the development of ethics as a field of philosophical reflection: debating which virtues matter to the well-lived life.

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For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: Hegeman 204A

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