The Self, Civic Virtue, and Public Life by Nancy E Snow

The Self, Civic Virtue, and Public Life by Nancy E Snow

This volume showcases new and interesting ways in which the possession of civic virtues can contribute to people’s abilities to engage in public life in meaningful ways.

What is the role of civic virtues in public life? How does possessing civic virtues affect persons and their capacities for participation in the public order? The chapters in this volume combine philosophical and empirically informed work to show how civic virtues can be informed by larger virtue ethical perspectives. The first two chapters discuss virtues of individuals that have not received significant empirical attention—authenticity and wisdom and psychological resilience. The next two chapters address education and the ways in which civic virtues can help us to better serve schoolchildren who are socially and economically disadvantaged, as well as to broaden students’ horizons with respect to character and sustainability education. The final four chapters explore the roles for virtues within various political and public realms. They offer perspectives on how virtues affect contentious politics in democratic societies, and study virtues in contexts in which democracy has been stifled or torn apart by war. Together, the chapters highlight the ever-widening impact of the virtues on our lives and in society.

The Self, Civic Virtue, and Public Life will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in ethics, political philosophy, psychology, and philosophy of education.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International license.

"This volume discusses the psychological basis of civic virtue, the educational practices that support (or undermine) virtue, as well as political issues from the philosophical perspective of virtue theoryIt is a welcome contribution to the study of civic virtue that crosses disciplinary boundaries."

Victoria Costa, William & Mary University, USA

"A rigorous, timely investigation into the nature and role of civic virtues."

Maria Silvia Vaccarezza, University of Genoa, Italy

Nancy E. Snow joined the KU Philosophy Department as a tenured full professor in late August 2022. She is the author of Virtue as Social Intelligence: An Empirically Grounded Theory (Routledge, 2010), Contemporary Virtue Ethics (2020), and 70 papers on virtue and ethics more broadly. She is the co-author (with Jennifer Cole Wright and Michael T. Warren) of Understanding Virtue: Theory and Measurement (2021) and has edited or co-edited seven volumes. She is the series editor of “The Virtues,” a 15-book series published by Oxford University Press. From 2014 to 2022, she has co-directed, been the PI on, or been heavily involved with interdisciplinary grants totaling a little under $10 million.