Oliver Kletz

This paper seeks to articulate an individual’s general capacity towards emotions with virtue epistemology. Using the contrasting frameworks of virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism, emotionality can be articulated, in different senses, as a faculty or a trait virtue, and assessed according to pre-existing criteria for making this distinction. Additionally, emotionality can be articulated within the context of being a self- or otherregarding virtue, differently in different circumstances. Finally, the significance of this is explored by evaluating emotionality’s epistemic goods with regard to different forms of epistemic justice, testimonial and hermeneutical. Emotionality is epistemically nonneutral, but its nature and impact as an epistemic virtue are difficult to unpack and vary dramatically according to the circumstances.