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Practical Wisdom, Situationism, and Virtue Conflicts: Exploring Gopal Sreenivasan’s Emotion and Virtue

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Abstract

Gopal Sreenivasan’s new book, Emotion and Virtue, is an incredibly rich and impressive achievement. It is required reading for anyone working on issues related to character. In the spirit of book discussions in this journal, I will focus less on raising objections and more on exploring how the discussion could be extended in new directions or connected with related topics. The plan is to focus on four topics: (i) the scope of Sreenivasan’s project, (ii) his response to the situationist challenge, (iii) some implications of his view for practical wisdom, and (iv) his account of virtue conflicts.

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Notes

  1. Sreenivasan (2020). All parenthetical citations in the text will be to this book.

  2. Harman (1999, 2000) and Doris (1998, 2002).

  3. I have participated in that discussion in a number of places. See in particular Miller (2013, 2014).

  4. Sreenivasan (2002).

  5. Hursthouse (1999).

  6. Doris even writes that, “As I see it, the Hartshorne and May and Newcomb studies are important not so much for their evidential role as for the interpretive perspective they provide” (2002: 63).

  7. This is a point that I and others made early on in response to Harman and Doris. See Miller (2003) and for a review, see Miller (2014): chapter eight.

  8. He returns to it in chapter twelve and makes a plausible case that this form of practical relevance would still apply even if most people do not meet the threshold requirements for kindness.

  9. See Miller (2013, 2014).

  10. Adapted from Miller (2013: 51).

  11. Miller (2013, 2014).

  12. Miller (2021a). Some material in this section is adapted from this paper and is used with permission of Routledge Press.

  13. I won’t be able to consider here how other approaches—such as Humean or Nietzschean ones—tend to conceive of practical wisdom.

  14. Russell (2009: 13), Roberts and Wood (2007: 305), Kristjánsson (2014: 155), Darnell et al. (2019: 112), and Van Zyl (2019: 78).

  15. Roberts and Wood (2007: 305), Kristjánsson (2014: 155), Darnell et al. (2019: 112), and Van Zyl (2019: 78).

  16. Kristjánsson (2014: 155), Darnell et al. (2019: 112, 115–116), and Van Zyl (2019: 77, 82–84).

  17. Russell 2009: x, Kristjánsson (2014: 155, 162) and Darnell et al. (2019: 112).

  18. Miller (2021a).

  19. Russell (2009: 25–26, 31), Roberts and Wood (2007: 312), Zagzebski (1996: 221–224), Kristjánsson (2014: 155, 162), and Darnell et al. (2019: 119–120).

  20. Russell (2009: x), Roberts and Wood (2007: 306), Kristjánsson (2014: 155, 162) and Darnell et al. (2019: 113).

  21. Russell (2009: 7–10, 34, Roberts and Wood (2007: 306), Kristjánsson (2014: 155), Vaccarezza (2018: 253–255, and Darnell et al. (2019: 113).

  22. Russell (2009: x) and Kristjánsson (2014: 155).

  23. Russell (2009: x, 7–11, 21–22, 25, 361), Roberts and Wood (2007: 306), Vaccarezza (2018: 253–255), De Caro et al. (2018: 295), and Van Zyl (2019: 79).

  24. See Miller (2021a).

  25. See Miller (2021a).

  26. This concern is related to a recent challenge by Paul Bloomfield to the virtue status of many character traits (Bloomfield 2022).

  27. What follows is derived from Miller (2021b), with permission from Oxford University Press.

  28. Carson (2010: 19–20).

  29. See Miller (2021b).

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Work on this paper was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

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  1. Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, 27109, USA

    Christian B. Miller

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Miller, C.B. Practical Wisdom, Situationism, and Virtue Conflicts: Exploring Gopal Sreenivasan’s Emotion and Virtue. Criminal Law, Philosophy 18, 265–279 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-022-09649-1

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