Justine Kingsbury

Virtue and Inquiry: Bridging the Transfer Gap

When the benefits of tertiary education are listed, the development of critical thinking is often near the top of the list (Bok 2006). The critical thinker can, among other things, assess evidence, judge the relevance of new information to existing beliefs, and break down a complex problem into less complex parts and work through them in an orderly way. Abilities like these are useful in myriad contexts beyond the classroom. It is easy to see why critical thinking is seized upon as an important part of higher education’s contribution to transforming students into lifelong learners.

The Artful Species, by Stephen Davies

we learn to correct for the undue partiality of some of our emotions. Third, the pride we feel when we and others approve of our virtue both motivates us to continue to develop the virtues and gives us the self-confidence we need in order to see and respond to the value and needs of others [271–3]. In Chapter 13, Talbot Brewer explores a) how workers in a service economy become alienated from their emotions and b) why this is a problem. He argues that emotions are ‘the lens through which I discern the good’ [290]. But they are not always a well-focused lens. The project of becoming more discerning in our emotional responses and more articulate about our evaluative outlook is an important constituent of a flourishing life. Within many service professions, however, employees are required to reshape their emotions not in response to the goods they perceive but in order to conform with ‘their employer’s profit interests’ [278]. And this interferes at a deep level with their ability to live an active, self-directed, flourishing, distinctively human life. As with most multi-author volumes, the quality of the chapters in this collection is somewhat varied. Nevertheless, each of the chapters has the potential to repay a careful reading. And there are some outstanding pieces in the book. For example, the chapters by Michael Brady and John Deigh are particularly well argued and pose challenges that (in Brady’s case) perceptual accounts of the emotions and (in Deigh’s) Wallaceand Darwall-style accounts of moral responsibility will have to address. Those unfamiliar with Talbot Brewer’s The Retrieval of Ethics [Oxford 2009] will find his chapter on alienated emotions a congenial introduction to his overall approach to ethics. The book is primarily aimed at specialists who are already acquainted with current debates in normative and meta-ethics. However, Carla Bagnoli has written a nice introduction that will help bring the non-specialist up to speed. And, given the wide range of perspectives represented in the book, it is well suited for use in a graduate seminar or (perhaps) an advanced undergraduate class (although the latter may find some of the chapters rather demanding) that was designed to explore the different roles emotions might play in ethics.