The structure of virtue was investigated through the development and construct validation of the Virtues Scale (VS), a 140-item self-report measure of virtues. A factor analysis of responses from 390 participants revealed four factors: Empathy, Order, Resourcefulness, and Serenity. Four virtue subscales constructed from the highest loading items on each factor were correlated with the Revised N...

Gassendi, who was influenced in the development ofhis moral theory by Epicurus,2 was, as was Epicurus, a vegetarian. Gassendi argues, in his Philosophiae Epicuri Syntagma,3 his reconstruction of Epicurus' theory, and in his Syntagma Philosophicum,4 presenting his own ethics, that abstaining from flesh is a moral requirement, i.e., a requirement for "doing well."5 Further, Gassendi represents, a...

This paper compares epistemic virtue from the viewpoints of Zagzebski and Mulla Sadra, aiming to determine the extent to which their viewpoints on epistemic virtue are similar. Zagzebski, the contemporary philosopher, considers epistemic virtue as the basis on which knowledge is interpreted. She sees epistemic virtue as a requirement for achieving knowledge. Mulla Sadra, the founder of Transcen...

the present essay is a critical study of zagzebski’s reading and criticism of plantinga’s virtue-epistemology. zagzebski, on the account of her definition of knowledge and the role that she assigns to ‘volition’ and ‘awareness’ in virtuous acts, along with her acceptance of the uniformity of moral and epistemic virtue, challenges plantinga’s theory of knowledge. zagzebski believes that although...

The central idea of the Moral Impact Theory is that legal obligations are those genuine obligations that obtain in virtue of the actions of legal institutions. (If we formulate this idea in terms of moral obligations, the paradigm of genuine obligations, we get the view that legal obligations are those moral obligations that obtain in virtue of the actions of legal institutions.) What philosoph...

This essay extends my side of a discussion begun earlier with Duncan Pritchard, the recent author of Epistemic Luck. Pritchard’s work contributes significantly to improving the “diagnostic appeal” of a neo-Moorean philosophical response to radical scepticism. While agreeing with Pritchard in many respects, the paper questions the need for his concession to the sceptic that the neo-Moorean is ca...

linda zagzebski presents a new kind of foundational moral theory in her exemplarist virtue theory which exemplary persons have considered as the foundation. in this theory all of the basic moral concepts such as good ends and right acts are defined by direct reference to paradigmatically good person. one of the most important consequences of this theory is that moral propositions are a posterio...