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26The Two Greatest IdeasProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 91 21-26. 2017.
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149The Dilemma of Freedom and ForeknowledgeOxford University Press. 1991.A compelling contribution to the field, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge will appeal to students and scholars of theistic philosophy and the philosophy ...
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2The Moral Transcendental Argument against SkepticismIn Rodrigo Borges, Branden Fitelson & Cherie Braden (eds.), Knowledge, Scepticism, and Defeat: Themes from Klein, Springer Verlag. 2019.
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36Distinctive Measures of Epistemic Evaluation: Character as the Configuration of TraitsVirtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (1): 203. 2000.
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52Précis of Virtues of the Mind (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (1): 169. 2000.
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13ResponsesVirtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of KnowledgePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (1): 207. 2000.
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297Epistemic authorityEpistemology and Philosophy of Science 53 (3): 92-107. 2017.Contemporary defenders of autonomy and traditional defenders of authority generally assume that they have so little in common as to make it hopeless to attempt a dialogue on the defensibility of epistemic, moral, or religious authority. In this paper I argue that they are mistaken. Under the assumption that the ultimate authority over the self is the self, I defend authority in the realm of belief on the same grounds as Joseph Raz uses in his well-known defense of political authority in the trad…Read more
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79Exemplarist Moral TheoryOup Usa. 2017.In Exemplarist Moral Theory of Linda Zagzebski presents an original moral theory based on direct reference to exemplars of goodness, whom we identify through the emotion of admiration. Using examples of heroes, saints, and sages, she shows how narratives of exemplars and empirical work on the most admirable persons can be incorporated into the theory to serve both theoretical and practical purposes.
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50Emotion and Moral JudgmentPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (1): 104-124. 2003.This paper argues that an emotion is a state of affectively perceiving its intentional object as falling under a “thick affective concept” A, a concept that combines cognitive and affective aspects in a way that cannot be pulled apart. For example, in a state of pity an object is seen as pitiful, where to see something as pitiful is to be in a state that is both cognitive and affective. One way of expressing an emotion is to assert that the intentional object of the emotion falls under the thick…Read more
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Presidential Address delivered at the one hundred thirteenth Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Chicago, IL, on March 4, 2016.
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71Divine Motivation TheoryCambridge University Press. 2004.Widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in contemporary philosophy of religion, this book by Linda Zagzebski is a major contribution to ethical theory and theological ethics. At the core of the book lies a form of virtue theory based on the emotions. Quite distinct from deontological, consequentialist and teleological virtue theories, this one has a particular theological, indeed Christian, foundation. The theory helps to resolve philosophical problems and puzzles of various kinds: the di…Read more
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404Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of KnowledgeCambridge University Press. 1996.Almost all theories of knowledge and justified belief employ moral concepts and forms of argument borrowed from moral theories, but none of them pay attention to the current renaissance in virtue ethics. This remarkable book is the first attempt to establish a theory of knowledge based on the model of virtue theory in ethics. The book develops the concept of an intellectual virtue, and then shows how the concept can be used to give an account of the major concepts in epistemology, including the …Read more
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The Dilemma of Freedom and ForeknowledgeInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 34 (2): 118-120. 1993.This original analysis examines the three leading traditional solutions to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge and human free will--those arising from Boethius, from Ockham, and from Molina. Though all three solutions are rejected in their best-known forms, three new solutions are proposed, and Zagzebski concludes that divine foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom. The discussion includes the relation between the foreknowledge dilemma and problems about the nature of time and the causal …Read more
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31[Book review] virtues of the mind, an inquiry into the nature of virtue and the ethical foundations of knowledge (review)In Stephen Everson (ed.), Ethics: Companions to Ancient Thought, Vol. 4, Cambridge University Press. pp. 808-810. 1998.
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Self-trust and the diversity of religionsIn Philip L. Quinn & Paul J. Weithman (eds.), Liberal Faith: Essays in Honor of Philip Quinn, University of Notre Dame Press. 2008.
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9God, Eternity, and the Nature of Time, by Alan G. Padgett (review)Philosophy in Review 13 (4): 179-181. 1993.
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415From Reliabilism to Virtue EpistemologyThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 5 173-179. 2000.In Virtues of the Mind I object to process reliabilism on the grounds that it does not explain the good of knowledge in addition to the good of true belief. In this paper I wish to develop this objection in more detail, and will then argue that this problem pushes us first in the direction of two offspring of process reliabilism—faculty reliabilism and proper functionalism, and, finally, to a true virtue epistemology.
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70Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment (review)Faith and Philosophy 6 (1): 103-110. 1989.
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1471Epistemic Value and the Primacy of What We Care AboutPhilosophical Papers 33 (3): 353-377. 2004.Abstract In this paper I argue that to understand the ethics of belief we need to put it in a context of what we care about. Epistemic values always arise from something we care about and they arise only from something we care about. It is caring that gives rise to the demand to be epistemically conscientious. The reason morality puts epistemic demands on us is that we care about morality. But there may be a (small) class of beliefs which it is not wrong to hold unconscientiously. I also argue t…Read more
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201Epistemic TrustPhilosophy in the Contemporary World 10 (2): 113-117. 2003.The value of epistemic trust has been neglected, as Townsley rightly observes, but I think a virtue epistemology of the kind I endorse is well suited to provide a framework for understanding it. The Cassandra of Greek legend illustrates the complex relationships among epistemic and non-epistemic goods, as well as the fragility of knowledge. I think her case leads us to a more radical conclusion than the one Townsley proposes.
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8Comprised of readings from ancient to modern times, this volume offers a comprehensive introduction to the central questions of the philosophy of religion. Provides a history of the philosophy of religion, from antiquity up to the twentieth century Each section is preceded by extensive commentary written by the editors, followed by readings that are arranged chronologically Designed to be accessible to both undergraduate and graduate students.
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3Virtue EpistemologyIn Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Genealogy to Iqbal, Routledge. 1996.
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63Must knowers be agentsIn Abrol Fairweather & Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski (eds.), Virtue epistemology: essays on epistemic virtue and responsibility, Oxford University Press. pp. 142--57. 2001.
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3729The Search for the Source of Epistemic GoodMetaphilosophy 34 (1-2): 12-28. 2003.Knowledge has almost always been treated as good, better than mere true belief, but it is remarkably difficult to explain what it is about knowledge that makes it better. I call this “the value problem.” I have previously argued that most forms of reliabilism cannot handle the value problem. In this article I argue that the value problem is more general than a problem for reliabilism, infecting a host of different theories, including some that are internalist. An additional problem is that not a…Read more