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759Aristotele e le virtù sociali: EN IV, 1126b 1-1128b 9Acta Philosophica 21 (2). 2012.In EN II, 1108 9-1108 b10 e più estesamente in EN IV, 1126b 10-1128b 9 Aristotele analizza tre virtù (amichevolezza, sincerità e arguzia) che, coinvolgendo il linguaggio e il senso dell’umorismo, riguardano quell’aspetto fondamentale della natura umana che è la socialità, al punto che pare giustificato l’utilizzo dell’etichetta “virtù sociali” per riferirsi ad esse. Tali virtù, infatti, rappresentano le eccellenze nell’ambito dei rapporti sociali non connotati da affetto e amicizia, ma caratteri…Read more
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606Phronesis as Ethical Expertise: Naturalism of Second Nature and the Unity of VirtueJournal of Value Inquiry 52 (3): 287-305. 2018.This paper has a twofold aim. On the one hand, we will discuss the much debated question of the source of normativity (which traditionally has nature and practical reason as the two main contenders to this role) and propose a new answer to it. Second, in answering this question, we will present a new account of practical wisdom, which conceives of the ethical virtues as ultimately unified in the chief virtue of phronesis, understood as ethical expertise. To do so, we will first criticize the mai…Read more
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518Educating through Exemplars: Alternative Paths to VirtueTheory and Research in Education 15 (1): 5-19. 2017.This paper confronts Zagzebski’s exemplarism with the intertwined debates over the conditions of exemplarity and the unity-disunity of the virtues, to show the advantages of a pluralistic exemplar-based approach to moral education (PEBAME). PEBAME is based on a prima facie disunitarist perspective in moral theory, which amounts to admitting both exemplarity in all respects and single-virtue exemplarity. First, we account for the advantages of PEBAME, and we show how two figures in recent Italian…Read more
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492Civility in the Post-truth Age: An Aristotelian AccountHumana.Mente - Journal of Philosophical Studies 39 (39): 127-150. 2021.This paper investigates civility from an Aristotelian perspective and has two objectives. The first is to offer a novel account of this virtue based on Aristotle’s remarks about civic friendship. The proposed account distinguishes two main components of civility—civic benevolence and civil deliberation—and shows how Aristotle’s insights can speak to the needs of our communities today. The notion of civil deliberation is then unpacked into three main dimensions: motivational, inquiry-related, and…Read more
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391Santi, eroi e l’unità delle virtù. Una proposta esemplarista di educazione moraleIride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 3. 2016.This article sheds light on moral education from an exemplarist perspective. Following Linda Zagzebski's Exemplarist Virtue Theory, we relate several fundamental exemplarist intuitions to the classical virtue ethical debate over the unity-disunity of the virtues, to endorse a pluralistic exemplar-based approach to moral education ("Empe"). After a few preliminary remarks, we argue that Empe amounts to defending "a prima facie" disunitarist perspective in moral theory, which admits both exemplari…Read more
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374Saving the Contingent. A Dialogue Between Iris Murdoch and AquinasNew Blackfriars 97 (1067): 22-38. 2016.
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213Etica delle virtù. Un'introduzioneCarocci Editore. 2017.ll volume è la prima trattazione in lingua italiana, introduttiva ma il più possibile completa e aggiornata, dell’Etica delle virtù (Virtue Ethics), una corrente dell’etica contemporanea ancora poco conosciuta e coltivata nell’Europa continentale, che pone al suo centro proprio la nozione di virtù. Nonostante questo termine non sia oggi particolarmente usato e apprezzato sul piano del linguaggio comune, l’interesse che esso ha suscitato da qualche decennio permette di presentare la Virtue Ethics…Read more
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206Wittgenstein's Non-non-cognitivismIn Roberta Dreon (ed.), SENZA TRAMPOLI Saggi filosofici per Luigi Perissinotto, Mimesis. pp. 1-8. 2023.In this paper, we present one of the main starting points of naturalism in ethics: Geach’s challenge against non-cognitivism. We try to find an answer to Geach’s challenge in the notion of family resemblance applied to ethics. In doing so we recover a not much-discussed influence of Moore on Wittgenstein’s conception of family resemblance, which leads us to define Wittgenstein as non-non-cognitivist in ethics. Pre print (some changes in the published edition)
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150Paths to flourishing: ancient models of the exemplary lifeEthics and Education 15 (2): 144-157. 2020.The current “exemplarist turn” within virtue ethics is increasingly shedding light on the importance of exemplars both as enabling one to identify the virtues and for the importance they bear for orienting one’s conduct, as well as for educating the novice. However, even if categorizations of exemplars have already been proposed, there seems to be a lack of discussion on the kind of imitation different exemplars are supposed to elicit. In order to offer a preliminary answer to this question, in …Read more
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131La Pretesa Del Bene: Teoria dell'azione ed etica in Tommaso D'Aquino (edited book)Orthotes. 2012.Da un lato al bene, ovvero a ciò che ci compie, non possiamo non tendere sempre, dall’altro il bene stesso esercita un’attrazione e una pretesa sulla nostra vita.
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124The exemplary and the right. Contemporary virtue ethics, action guidance, and action assessmentRivista di Storia Della Filosofia 1 148-164. 2023.In this paper, I will account for the importance of the notion of exemplarity within the contemporary virtue-ethical debate, both in its classic formulation (e.g., Hursthouse 1999) and in the recent exemplarist moral theory advanced by Linda T. Zagzebski (2015; 2017). Despite their differences, which I will discuss extensively, both theories are centered on a characterization of an exemplary virtuous agent that serves as a standard for determining what, in a given situation, is right, wrong, dut…Read more
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103Let the donkeys be donkeys: in defense of inspiring envyIn Sara Protasi (ed.), The Moral Psychology of Envy, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 111-127. 2022.Once upon a time, Aesop says, there was a donkey who wanted to be a pet dog. The pet dog was given many treats by the master and the household servants, and the donkey was envious of him. Hence, the donkey began emulating the pet dog. What happened next? The story ends up with the donkey beaten senseless, chased off to the stables, exhausted and barely alive. Who is to blame for the poor donkey’s unfortunate fate? Well, there could be disagreement upon this, but we think emulation is to blame. A…Read more
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99Ergon and Practical Reason. Anscombe’s Legacy and Natural NormativityActa Philosophica 32 (2): 400-406. 2023.One of Elizabeth Anscombe’s most decisive legacies is the rejection of modern legalistic morality, in the name of a rescue of Aristotelian-inspired natural normativity. However, as I will argue in this contribution, this legacy does not seem to have been fully collected, neither by those who, like Philippa Foot, are explicitly inspired by Anscombe’s work, nor by those who, while apparently opposing its assumptions, have also somehow recovered it by different routes, as emblematically does Christ…Read more
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84The Dark Side of the Exceptional: On Moral Exemplars, Character Education, and Negative EmotionsJournal of Moral Education 48 (3): 332-345. 2019.This paper focuses on negative exemplarity-related emotions (NEREs) and on their educational implications. In this paper, we will first argue for the nonexpendability of negative emotions broadly conceived (section 2) by defending their instrumental and intrinsic role in a good and flourishing life. In section 3, we will make the claim more specific by focusing on the narrower domain of NEREs and argue for their moral and educational significance by evaluating whether they fit the arguments prov…Read more
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84Virtue ethics: an anti-moralistic defencePhilosophical Inquiries 7 (1): 29-44. 2019.The aim of this paper is to single out four main kinds of moralism, which might be associated to virtue ethics, and to offer a virtue-ethical response to each. By doing so, I aim at defending virtue ethics, properly understood, from the intrinsic danger of a moralistic drift. I begin by proposing a definition of moralism and a list of its main forms. Then, I list the main features of the virtue-ethical perspective I embrace, and finally, I argue that such normative approach can prevent a moralis…Read more
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81"Le donne tramano qualcosa". Iris Murdoch e l'etica delle virtùla Società Degli Individui 76 (26): 24-37. forthcoming.In this paper, I will highlight the role played, within the group of Oxonian philosophers who revived virtue ethics beginning in the 1950s, by perhaps the most heterodox and elusive figure, Iris Murdoch. In particular, I will discuss whether Murdoch can be considered, like Anscombe and Foot, a promoter of virtue ethics, or whether points of contact with that strand are limited to the polemical goals that the philosopher and novelist shared, for a thirty-year period, with her colleagues and frien…Read more
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74VirtueIn Silvia Caprioglio Panizza & Mark Hopwood (eds.), Murdochian Mind, Routledge. pp. 183-196. 2022.Was Iris Murdoch a virtue ethicist? At first sight, it would appear that she was not. She does not offer an explicit definition of account of the term ‘virtue’, and there are significant differences between her views and those of standard Aristotelian virtue ethicists. There is no reason, however, to think that the standard Aristotelian view represents the only legitimate form of virtue ethics. In this chapter, I begin by recalling (in section 1) the main commonalities between Murdoch’s criticis…Read more
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72Emotional skillfulness and virtue acquisitionIn Daniel Dukes, Andrea Samson & Eric Walle (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Emotional Development, Oxford University Press. pp. 503-512. 2022.In this chapter, we will offer a sketch of the state of the art as concerns existing accounts of virtue acquisition in relation to automaticity. In particular, we will focus on the so-called “skill model,” which we aim to improve by questioning its rather common underlying dualistic picture of the mind. Then we will propose an account of skillful emotions by identifying the features that make them both automatic and embedded in an intelligent practice. Finally, we will show how this view can hel…Read more
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71An Excess of Excellence: Aristotelian Supererogation and the Degrees of VirtueInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 27 (1): 1-11. 2019.ABSTRACTIn this paper, I argue for an Aristotelian way of accommodating supererogation within virtue ethics by retrieving an account of moral heroism and providing a picture of different degrees of virtue. This, I claim, is the most appropriate virtue-ethical background allowing us to talk about supererogation without falling prey to several dangers. After summarizing the main attempts to deny the compatibility of virtue and supererogation, I will present some recent proposals to accommodate sup…Read more
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70Connecting Virtues: Advances in Ethics, Epistemology, and Political Philosophy (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2018.Connecting Virtues examines the significant advances within the fast-growing field of virtue theory and shows how research has contributed to the current debates in moral philosophy, epistemology, and political philosophy. It includes groundbreaking chapters offering original solutions to long-standing issues, such as the plausibility of different lists of virtues, the relationship between virtues and the vices that oppose them, and the connection between moral and intellectual virtues. In addit…Read more
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57Connecting Virtues: IntroductionMetaphilosophy 49 (3): 191-203. 2018.This article introduces the special issue “Connecting Virtues,” which aims to advance virtue theory by bringing into a conversation works on the virtues in epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. The collection covers several key themes within virtue theory. It includes ground‐breaking articles offering original solutions to long‐standing issues in virtue theory, such as the plausibility of different lists of virtues, the relationship between virtues and their opposing vices and the conn…Read more
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54Virtues, Democracy, and Online Media: Ethical and Epistemic Issues (edited book)Routledge. 2021.This book addresses current threats to citizenship and democratic values posed by the spread of post-truth communication. The contributors apply research on moral, civic, and epistemic virtues to issues involving post-truth culture. The spread of post-truth communication affects ordinary citizens' commitment to truth and attitudes toward information sources, thereby threatening the promotion of democratic ideals in public debate. The chapters in this volume investigate the importance of helping …Read more
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52The Unity of the Virtues Reconsidered. Competing Accounts in Philosophy and Positive PsychologyReview of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (3): 637-651. 2017.In this paper, I show that the conception of a virtue in positive psychology is a mishmash of two competing accounts of what virtues are: a Common Sense View and an Aristotelian View. Distinguishing the strengths and weaknesses of these two frameworks leads also to a reconsideration of an old debate, namely, that concerning the Unity of the Virtues thesis. Such thesis is rejected by positive psychologist, as well as by some philosophers among the virtue-ethical field, on the basis, I argue, of a…Read more
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48Why Practical Wisdom Cannot be EliminatedTopoi 1-16. forthcoming.Practical wisdom eliminativism has recently been proposed in both philosophy and psychology, on the grounds of the alleged redundancy of practical wisdom (Miller 2021 ) and its purported developmental/psychological implausibility (Lapsley 2021 ). Here we respond to these challenges by drawing on an improved version of a view of practical wisdom, the “Aretai model”, that we have presented elsewhere (De Caro et al. 2021 ; Vaccarezza et al. 2023 ; De Caro et al. forthcoming ). According to this mod…Read more
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48An Eye on Particulars with the End in Sight: An Account of Aristotelian PhronesisMetaphilosophy 49 (3): 246-261. 2018.This paper focuses on Aristotelian phronesis and aims at highlighting its nature as an eye on particulars with general ends in sight. More specifically, it challenges the particularistic interpretation of phronesis and Aristotelian ethics in order to argue for a “qualified generalism.” After sketching a radical Particularistic Reading (PR), the paper defends an interpretation it calls the Priority of Particulars Reading (PPR). First, it shows how PPR effectively accounts for the Aristotelian pri…Read more
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43Admiration, moral knowledge and transformative experiencesHumana Mente 12 (35). 2019.In this paper, I examine the role played by the emotion of admiration in formulating moral judgments. First, I discuss whether and when admiration is a reliable source of moral knowledge, or, on the contrary, it misleads the subject, leaving her prey to forms of uncritical devotion to unworthy objects of admiration. To do so, I try to elucidate which underlying theory of emotions best allows one to characterize admiration as a reliable source of moral knowledge. Second, I introduce the notion of…Read more
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37Questo lavoro è diviso in due parti: una monografica in cui viene indagata l’autentica posizione aristotelica in merito allo statuto della phronesis e della conoscenza morale, e l'altra in cui si offre una nuova traduzione del VI libro ...
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32Linda T. Zagzebski, Exemplarist Moral Theory, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, 274 pp., £48.49 , ISBN 9780190655846 (review)Dialectica 72 (4): 633-640. 2018.
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29Practical Wisdom: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives (edited book)Routledge. 2021.Featuring original essays from leading scholars in philosophy and psychology, this volume investigates and rethinks the role of practical wisdom in light of the most recent developments in virtue theory and moral, social and developmental psychology. The concept of phronesis has long held a prominent place in the development of Aristotelian virtue ethics and moral education. However, the nature and development of phronesis is still in need of investigation, especially because of the new insights…Read more
Areas of Specialization
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Objections to Virtue Ethics |
Topics in Virtue Ethics |
Moral Emotion |
Aristotle: Ethics |
Thomas Aquinas |
Philippa Foot |