Virtue Ethics Workshop with Rosalind Hursthouse

4-5 September 2014, 9.30 am - 5.15 pm

Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature (CSMN)

University of Oslo, Georg Morgenstiernes hus, room 652.


Organized by Christel Fricke & Julia Annas.


Is ethical goodness a kind of natural goodness? Is what makes us good as
human beings like the features that make other living beings flourishing
examples of their kind? Aristotelian naturalism answers yes to these
questions. The path-breaking work of Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse
has clarified the way in which the goodness of rational beings is
relevantly similar to the goodness we evaluate in good specimens of other
living beings. In placing us humans and our ethical strivings firmly in the
natural systems that we try to understand, Aristotelian naturalism takes a
stand against reductionism, scientism and the idea that evaluations are
merely expressions of attitudes towards evaluatively neutral facts.

The workshop brings together several notable contributors to debate on
Aristotelian naturalism, and there will be responses by one of its most
famous pioneering defenders, Rosalind Hursthouse. Speakers include Jennifer
Frey (University of South Carolina), John Hacker-Wright (Guelph), Micah
Lott (Boston College), Sascha Settegast (Oslo), Michael Thompson
(Pittsburgh), and Paul Woodruff (University of Texas, Austin).

Since available spaces are limited, we ask participants to register in time
via