Educating Virtue as a Mastery of Language |
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Authors: | Sophia Vasalou |
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Institution: | (1) Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, UK |
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Abstract: | That only those who have mastered language can be virtuous is something that may strike us as an obvious truism. It would
seem to follow naturally from, indeed simply restate, a view that is far more commonly held and expressed by philosophers
of the virtues, namely that only those who can reason can be virtuous properly said. My aim in this paper is to draw attention
to this truism and argue its importance. In doing so, I will take the starting point for my reflections from a couple of concrete
occasions in which the desire to offer a foothold to the language of the virtues encounters an obstacle that might be described
as a recalcitrance of language: certain intuitions that seem decidedly linguistic get in the way to suggest that this vocabulary
is out of place or out of order. Taking my cue from the discomfort of our linguistic intuitions, what I will be suggesting
is that certain difficulties do indeed attend our use of the vocabulary of the virtues, and that there is a particular way
of understanding their inevitability, one which is closely connected to the context of moral education. My hope is that reflecting
on these difficulties and on the task of moral education with which they are associated can help us illuminate and recover
the insight that a mastery of language may be indispensable for a mastery of virtue. |
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Keywords: | |
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