[MaFLa] Adrey Anton (IAS CEU): “Pernicious Ignorance According to Aristotle” - május 13., szerda, 11::00

[StB at elte.hu]

Audrey Anton

Junior Thyssen Fellow at IAS, CEU

 

“Pernicious Ignorance 

According to Aristotle”

Wednesday, 13 May, 11:00 a.m.

 

(Zoom invitation will be sent to the participants until 13 May)

 

 

In this talk, I provide a brief and accessible overview of my current book project, Aristotle’s Vice, a comprehensive study of the Aristotelean vicious character. Of all characters, vice is the most perplexing. The person of virtue (ἀρετή) knows, promotes, and values the good appropriately. The continent (ἐγκρατής) recognizes the good and acts in accordance with it, but lacks harmony between reason and appetite. The incontinent (ἄκρατος) recognizes the good but fails to perform good actions. The vicious (κακός) is uniquely ignorant of the good. As a result, the vicious neither acts in accordance with nor feels appropriately towards the good. 

Understanding the vicious person’s ignorance, I argue, is key to understanding Aristotle’s theory of vice. Aristotle distinguishes vicious ignorance from the everyday honest mistakes most humans make without malice. Unlike standard ignorance, which can often excuse bad behavior, vicious ignorance is pernicious and all-encompassing. Theirs is a culpable ignorance; far from being an excuse, vicious ignorance is itself an offense. In addition to surveying the book project as a whole (which necessarily involves detours into character development, moral perception, and similar but importantly distinct moral conditions (such as akrasia)), this talk will focus on the nature of vicious ignorance according to Aristotle, and how it is that the vicious are blameworthy for the very ignorance that makes them incurable.

 



image: George Fuller The Little Dunce

 

 

Audrey Anton is a Junior Thyssen Fellow at the IAS and an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western Kentucky University. Anton specializes in Ancient Philosophy, Ethics, and Philosophical Gerontology. She has published two books: one a monograph on her own theory of desert of praise and blame (Moral Responsibility and Desert of Praise and Blame, Lexington Books, 2015) and another an edited volume on the connection between moral and intellectual virtues (The Bright and the Good: The Connection between Intellectual and Moral Virtues, Rowman and Littlefield International, 2018). She has also authored over two dozen articles and book chapters. In addition to her fellowship at IAS, she is a recipient of research grants from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, the National Humanities Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the J. William Fulbright foundation. In addition to teaching “mainstream” courses, she enjoys teaching in incarcerated settings and offering “public philosophy” options for those not affiliated with a university.

 

 

For non IAS Fellows: Please RSVP Andrey Demidov at DemidovA at ceu.edu <mailto:DemidovA at ceu.edu> 



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