Virtues and Their Vices

Virtues and Their Vices is the only extant contemporary, comprehensive treatment of specific virtues and, where applicable, their competing vices. Each of the essays, written exclusively for this volume, not only locates discussion of that virtue in its historical context, but also advances the discussion and debate concerning the understanding and role of the virtues. Each of the first four sections focuses on a particular, historically important class of virtues: the cardinal virtues, the capital vices (or 'seven deadly sins') and the corrective virtues, intellectual virtues, and the theological virtues. The final section discusses the role virtue theory and the virtues themselves play in a number of disciplines, ranging from theology and political theory to neurobiology and feminism. The treatment of the virtues in this present volume is sensitive to the historical heritage of the virtues, including their theological heritage, without paying undue attention to the historical and theological issues. Virtues and Their Vices engages contemporary philosophical scholarship as well as relevant scholarship from related disciplines throughout. It is a unique and compelling addition to the philosophical treatment of the virtues as well as their import in a wide spectrum of disciplines.

Dr. Kevin Timpe is professor of philosophy at Northwest Nazarene University, having previously been a research fellow at St. Peter's College, Oxford University. His research focuses primarily on the metaphysics of free will and moral responsibility, and issues in the philosophy of religion. He is the author of Free Will: Sourcehood and its Alternatives, 2e and the editor of Arguing about Religion and Metaphysics and God. Dr. Craig A. Boyd is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Core Curriculum in the School for Professional Studies at St. Louis University and holds a secondary appointment as an Associate Professor of Theology in the School of Arts and Sciences. He has published two books: A Shared Morality: A Narrative Defense of Natural Law Ethics and Visions of Agapé: Problems and Possibilities in Divine and Human Love.