In this paper, the authors address the serious neglect of the 'classical' virtues in ethical reflection upon mental health nursing. The virtues are offered as a possible alternative paradigm for mental health nursing in its search for new models and approaches. Embodied in the notion of a moral community, the virtues have important implications in addressing problems adherent in various 'dualis...

What, if anything, can medical ethics offer to assist in the care of the "difficult" patient? We begin with a discussion of virtue theory and its application to medical ethics. We conceptualize the "difficult" patient as an example of a "moral stress test" that especially challenges the physician's character, requiring the good physician to display the virtues of courage and compassion. We then...

Much recent work in epistemology has focused on the analysis of cognitive character traits. These traits comprise an important kind of intellectual virtue. 1 Among the intellectual virtues that have received extended treatment in the literature are responsibility, conscientiousness, honesty, courage, open-mindedness, firmness, humility, charity, and wisdom. 2 To my knowledge, no philosopher has...

Abstract The overlap between virtue epistemology and the philosophy of education has been dominated by discussions epistemic qualities good learners, that is, intellectual virtues must be nurtured in students. Not much said about teachers expressed virtue-theoretic terms. This paper offers a preliminary account such qualities, which are designated as pedagogical virtues. I use Battaly's plurali...

Today, modern Western medicine is facing a quality-of-care crisis that is undermining the patient-physician relationship. In this paper, a notion of the epistemically virtuous clinician is proposed in terms of both the reliabilist and responsibilist versions of virtue epistemology, in order to help address this crisis. To that end, a clinical case study from the literature is first reconstructe...