Vendredi 10 avril 2026, 15h-17h (Local W-5215)
Eric Brown (Washington University in St. Louis)
‘Virtue Ethics’ and the Problem of Advising Fools
*La conférence sera en anglais
“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. How, then, can virtue theory 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 fresh alternative. The ancient Socratics, including especially the Stoics, counsel not trying to causally promote one's virtue or trying to follow "v-rules" but approximating virtue. I extract this lesson from Stoic psychopathology and Stoic advice to fools, which together offer considerable help in making sense of how fools might approximate virtue and how advisors might use Socratic eudaimonism's conception of virtue to guide fools to the best action in their circumstances.