The first lecture (March 2, 2016) placed the examination of epistemic virtues in the continuity of the lectures on "the value of knowledge" (2011) and "practical knowledge" (2015), which had concluded with the rejection of a clear-cut opposition between theoretical or propositional knowledge and practical knowledge or savoir faire: knowledge can be reduced neither to the "contemplation" of facts, propositions, maxims, principles and truths, excluding emotions and feelings, nor to "sense", "understanding", "embodied" and "situated" aptitudes, dispositions and abilities. The "measured" intellectualist sees all knowledge, theoretical and practical, as an inquiry, conceived less as a question-and-answer process than as a to-and-fro from beliefs challenged by solid reasons (the shock of a recalcitrant reality) to beliefs fixed, at least temporarily, which the agent thus engaged controls, criticizes and is ready to reject, his only guide being reality, not his tastes or preferences, and even less such family, community, religious or political authority. Unlike "habituation", a simple trick or "trick of the hand" made of "chewing", or expertise, knowledge is more akin to a dynamic performance, if not well-founded or perfectly justified, at least reliable and endowed with a certain guarantee, the success of which must be aimed for. The epistemic agent is like the archer facing his target, trying to understand how he can best "achieve what he must"(Nicomachean Ethics, I, 1094a, 20-25): he must be precise, skilful, well-tuned, but also precise because he is skilful. The act of knowing is "a kind of success derived from aptitude" (E. Sosa), in short, a certain excellence, or virtue. As much as we focus on the content of what is believed, we need to look at the person who believes, the agent of knowledge, and the virtues (faculties? character traits?) he or she must possess. For the Cartesian "generous" or the Aristotelian "magnanimous" to "follow virtue perfectly" is not to draw up a list of virtues, to be a donkey of virtue, but to establish what it is necessary to know and how, in order to think: understood in this way, virtue is inseparable, not from morality, but from an ethics of thought. Hence the importance of reflecting on what might constitute the conditions of possibility for an authentic intellectual ethic.
14:30 - 16:00
