Linda Zagzebski Quotes on Knowledge
Linda Zagzebski’s Virtues of the Mind (1996) and the more recent Epistemic Authority (2012) and Exemplarist Moral Theory (2017) give contemporary virtue epistemology its most influential systematic statement. The central thesis of Virtues of the Mind is that knowledge is best analyzed not through the addition of further conditions to true belief but through the parallel structure of the moral and intellectual virtues: the intellectually virtuous agent is the agent whose stable cognitive dispositions reliably produce true beliefs through the motivational and inquiry-directing processes the moral agent’s virtues parallel in the practical domain. The framework, drawing on Aristotle and the broader virtue-ethical tradition, shaped contemporary virtue epistemology through Ernest Sosa, John Greco, and the broader engagement between epistemology and moral philosophy.
Quotes
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Attributed to Linda Zagzebski:
“Knowledge is a state of cognitive contact with reality arising out of acts of intellectual virtue.”
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Attributed to Linda Zagzebski:
“Admiration is the seed of moral knowledge; we know the good first by recognizing it in others.”
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Attributed to Linda Zagzebski:
“An exemplarist moral theory begins with persons, not with principles.”
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Attributed to Linda Zagzebski:
“The intellectual and moral virtues are not two sets of virtues; they are aspects of one good life.”
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Attributed to Linda Zagzebski:
“Trust in the testimony of others is not a leap of faith, but a normal mode of rational life.”