This volume showcases new and interesting ways in which the possession of civic virtues can contribute to people’s abilities to engage in public life in meaningful ways. What is the role of civic ...virtues in public life? How does possessing civic virtues affect persons and their capacities for participation in the public order? The chapters in this volume combine philosophical and empirically informed work to show how civic virtues can be informed by larger virtue ethical perspectives. The first two chapters discuss virtues of individuals that have not received significant empirical attention—authenticity and wisdom and psychological resilience. The next two chapters address education and the ways in which civic virtues can help us to better serve schoolchildren who are socially and economically disadvantaged, as well as to broaden students’ horizons with respect to character and sustainability education. The final four chapters explore the roles for virtues within various political and public realms. They offer perspectives on how virtues affect contentious politics in democratic societies, and study virtues in contexts in which democracy has been stifled or torn apart by war. Together, the chapters highlight the ever-widening impact of the virtues on our lives and in society. The Self, Civic Virtue, and Public Life will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in ethics, political philosophy, psychology, and philosophy of education. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International license.
This essay raises concerns about positive psychology's classification of character strengths and virtues and issues of measurement. Part I examines the process whereby the classification was ...compiled. Part II turns to issues of measurement and questions about positive psychologists' sensitivity to variations in the meanings of the constructs they purport to measure, both within and across cultures. I argue that attempts to find a 'deep structure' of the character strengths and virtues should proceed hand in hand with efforts to render positive psychology and its measurement tools more sensitive to variability in character strengths and virtues across and within cultures. The essay concludes with suggestions for future research.
Academic research is increasingly centering on interdisciplinary work. Strong interdisciplinary research (SIR), involving researchers from very different fields, such as scientists and humanists, is ...often encouraged, if not required, by funding agencies. I argue that two intellectual virtues, open-mindedness and intellectual humility, are crucial for overcoming obstacles to SIR and achieving success. In part I, I provide a primer on intellectual virtue and the two virtues in question. In part II, I distinguish SIR from weak interdisciplinary research (WIR), which involves research teams from neighboring fields, such as physics and chemistry, and from disciplinary research (DR), which involves researchers from the same discipline. I also outline what counts as success in SIR, and explain why it’s more challenging to attain than in WIR and DR. In part III, I explain how both intellectual virtues are essential for achieving success in SIR and for overcoming obstacles that can arise in its pursuit.
Nine articles appear in this special issue of The Journal of Moral Education. Each is the product of a team of multidisciplinary scholars who have researched topics related to the self, virtue, and ...public life. The essays bring fresh perspectives on civic virtues and the self in studies that are conceptually grounded and empirically informed. They bring to the fore novel ideas about what can count as a civic virtue or enhance civic participation, for example, intellectual humility, forgiveness, and a sense that civic engagement is an authentic exercise of agency. Given the present polarization that plagues our societies today, these articles could not be more timely. All explore implications for education, broadly conceived.
What is a science of virtue? Snow, Nancy E.
Journal of moral education,
01/2022, Letnik:
51, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
My remarks will outline, from a philosopher's perspective, challenges and opportunities that I see for a science of virtue. I will touch on three topics: (1) ensuring that the studies are ...philosophically useful; (2) grappling with issues of measurement; and (3) next steps in moving a science of virtue forward. I approach (1) and (2) through reflections on some recent uses of psychology by philosophers and of philosophy by psychologists; and will argue in part (3) that next steps should entail certain kinds of educational efforts to promote interdisciplinary research. An example is that recently undertaken in a program by the Society of Christian Philosophers that offers opportunities for focused psychological training to philosophy graduate students. These and similar efforts could have far-reaching impacts for the emergence of a philosophically informed science of virtue.
Teaching Virtues in the Military Snow, Nancy E.
Journal of military ethics,
10/02/2023, Letnik:
22, Številka:
3-4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In parts I and II, this article briefly sketches two approaches to virtue ethics - those taken by Aristotle and the contemporary exemplarist moral theory of Linda Zagzebski - with an eye to providing ...resources for miliary educators. Each section concludes with remarks about the pros and cons of the author's experiences of teaching these theories to undergraduates. Part III deals with the social articulation of morality and its implications for war crimes. The social articulation of morality is the idea that moral principles cannot be applied in the abstract, but must be interpreted in terms of social backgrounds and norms. This draws on War Crimes: Causes, Excuses, and Blame (2019) by Talbert and Wolfendale, who consider how social articulations of morality led the military in various countries to commit war crimes in the mistaken belief that they were acting in accordance with moral principles. Democratic countries have commitments to free speech that enable us to resist such abuses. The implications for military education are that virtues such as intellectual discernment should be joined with discussions of ethical issues to ensure that future military leaders do not fall prey to false moral narratives.
Virtue as Social Intelligence: An Empirically Grounded Theory takes on the claims of philosophical situationism, the ethical theory that is skeptical about the possibility of human virtue. Influenced ...by social psychological studies, philosophical situationists argue that human personality is too fluid and fragmented to support a stable set of virtues. They claim that virtue cannot be grounded in empirical psychology. This book argues otherwise.
Drawing on the work of psychologists Walter Mischel and Yuichi Shoda, Nancy E. Snow argues that the social psychological experiments that philosophical situationists rely on look at the wrong kinds of situations to test for behavioral consistency. Rather than looking at situations that are objectively similar, researchers need to compare situations that have similar meanings for the subject . When this is done, subjects exhibit behavioral consistencies that warrant the attribution of enduring traits, and virtues are a subset of these traits. Virtue can therefore be empirically grounded and virtue ethics has nothing to fear from philosophical situationism.
"Reports of the death of character are greatly exaggerated. Nancy Snow does a wonderful job of defending the empirical viability of virtue ethics, not by dismissing or ignoring the importance of the social psychological literature, but by properly understanding its significance. This is a must-read for anyone interested in psychologically realistic ethics."
-Edward Slingerland, University of British Columbia, Canada
"Snow’s book is fascinating and timely. No other book on virtue ethics goes nearly so far in dealing with psychological studies. A must-read for anyone interested in virtue as a category for moral evaluation."
-Linda Zagzebski, University of Oklahoma, USA
"Nancy Snow’s book, with its focus on the social psychological underpinnings of virtue ethics, is a major contribution to virtue ethical theorizing. In a much needed and insightful discussion, and opposing the situationist critique, she shows how character traits as traditionally conceived have reality and importance."
-Christine Swanton, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Nancy E. Snow is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She has published on empathy, compassion, humility, and other topics relevant to moral psychology and virtue ethics.
Introduction
Chapter One, "In Search of Global Traits"
Chapter Two, "Habitual Virtuous Actions and Automaticity"
Chapter Three, "Social Intelligence and Why It Matters"
Chapter Four, "Virtue as Social Intelligence"
Chapter Five, "Philosophical Situationism Revisited"
Conclusion
The SAGE Handbook of Propaganda unpacks the ever-present and exciting topic of propaganda to explain how it invades the human psyche, in what ways it does so, and in what contexts.
Hope as a Democratic Civic Virtue Snow, Nancy E.
Metaphilosophy,
April 2018, 2018-04-00, 20180401, Letnik:
49, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Against the backdrop of the recent emergence of disturbing currents of populism in several countries, including the United States, this article argues for a conception of hope as a democratic civic ...virtue. In section 1, it offers a general overview of hope and sketches an initial conception of hope as a democratic civic virtue. In section 2, the stage is set for further theorizing of this conception in the present American context. Drawing on the work of Ghassan Hage, the article makes the point that the United States is in the process of becoming a nation of worriers in part because of the failure of the government to distribute social hope. Section 3 fleshes out what hope as a democratic civic virtue could look like in the United States today. Section 4 concludes with brief comments about theorizing civic hope in the context of a modified pragmatism.
The second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, co-edited by two leading scholars in the international relations subfield of public diplomacy, includes 16 more chapters from the ...first. Ten years later, a new global landscape of public diplomacy has taken shape, with major programs in graduate-level public diplomacy studies worldwide.
What separates this handbook from others is its legacy and continuity from the first edition. This first edition line-up was more military-focused than this edition, a nod to the work of Philip M. Taylor, to whom this updated edition is dedicated. This edition includes US content, but all case studies are outside the United States, not only to appeal to a global audience of scholars and practitioners, but also as a way of offering something fresher than the US/UK-centric competition. In Parts 1–4, original contributors are retained, many with revised editions, but new faces emerge. Parts 5 and 6 include 16 global case studies in public diplomacy, expanding the number of contributors by ten. The concluding part of the book includes chapters on digital and corporate public diplomacy, and a signature final chapter on the noosphere and noopolitik as they relate to public diplomacy.
Designed for a broad audience, the Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy is encyclopedic in its range and depth of content, yet is written in an accessible style that will appeal to both undergraduate and postgraduate students.
