MLAG RESEARCH SEMINAR 2016-2017

WILLIAMS (AND SARTRE) ON VIRTUE AND AUTHENTICITY

Prof. Alan Thomas
(University of York)

21 de outubro 2016 (sexta-feira)

15h00 | Sala do Departamento de Filosofia (Torre B - Piso 1)

Entrada livre

Resumo: Virtue ethicists have struggled to justify Anscombe’s claim that virtue ethics is a privileged approach to the reflective understanding of ethics. The claim that other approaches only value the virtues instrumentally has been refuted; Mooreans, for example, can value the virtues for their own sake. This paper examines a line of argument in Bernard Williams’s work that seems to offer some hope to the virtue ethicist: the issue is not one of instrumentality, but rather the very idea of an “objectified” view of one’s own character. In developing the argument a close parallelism between Williams’s views and those of Sartre demonstrate the apparent radicalism of the commitments Williams would take on were he to endorse this line of argument. It is argued that, in fact, some of Sartre’s key claims can be transposed into a less radical key: his thesis of the ‘tragedy' of consciousness can be interpreted as a thesis about normative commitment; to think of oneself 'merely as another' can be interpreted as a trope of ethical irony. So in order to defend this “foundational” argument for the reflective priority of virtue ethics Williams would only have to defend his claim that practical reasoning is essentially first personal.

Imagem: Georgia O'Keeffe , Blue-02 (1916). Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, USA

Programa MLAG Research Seminars: https://ifilosofia.up.pt/activities/mlag-research-seminar-2016-2017

Organização:
Research Group Mind Language and Action Group (MLAG)
MLAG Seminars 2016-2017 (Sofia Miguens, Luís Veríssimo, Brena Fernandez, Diana Couto)

Instituto de Filosofia da Universidade do Porto - FIL/00502
Financiamento: FCT