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Abstract
When we criticize someone for being unjust, deceitful, or imprudent-or commend him as just, truthful, or wise-what is the content of our evaluation? On one way of thinking, evaluating agents in terms that employ aretaic concepts evaluates how they regulate their actions (and judgment-sensitive attitudes) in light of the reasons that bear on them. On this virtue-centered view of practical reasons appraisal, evaluations of agents in terms of ethical virtues (and vices) are, inter alia, evaluations of them as practical reasoners. Here I consider and respond to an objection that threatens to debunk the virtue-centered view.
Introduction
When we criticize someone for being unjust, ungenerous, deceitful, or imprudent-or commend him by means of the respective contraries-what is the content of our evaluation? What, for example, does E. M. Forster take himself to be saying about Rickie Elliot's father in suggesting he is an unkind and cowardly soul? Here is Forster's description:
Mr. Elliot was a barrister. In appearance he resembled his son, being weakly and lame, with hollow little cheeks, a broad white band of forehead, and stiff impoverished hair. His voice, which he did not transmit, was very suave, with a fine command of cynical intonation. By altering it ever so little he could make people wince, especially if they were simple or poor. Nor did he transmit his eyes. Their peculiar flatness, as if the soul looked through dirty windowpanes, the unkindness of them, the cowardice, the fear in diem, were to trouble the world no longer.1
Noting that evaluations of someone as unkind and cowardly employ concepts of vice, one obvious answer to our question is that the person criticized possesses the noted vice (or, in the case of commendation, the noted virtue). In the present state of moral philosophical debate, however, such an answer courts controversy. My aim here is to clarify the nature of the debate and suggest how best to settle it.2
On one way of thinking, evaluating agents in terms that employ concepts of virtue or vice-hereafter, aretaic appraisalamounts to evaluating how they fare with respect to the regulation of their actions (or, more generally, their intentions and other judgment-sensitive attitudes) in light of the reasons that bear on them. On one such view, call...