Tag: Kristján Kristjánsson

Ten Myths About Character, Virtue and Virtue Education – Plus Three Well-Founded Misgivings

RBJE_COVER_66-02.inddThis 2013 article by our scholar Kristján Kristjánsson has become the first in the British Journal of Educational Studies‘ history to exceed 10,000 downloads! Congratulations, Kristján!

Abstract:

Initiatives to cultivate character and virtue in moral education at school continue to provoke sceptical responses. Most of those echo familiar misgivings about the notions of character, virtue and education in virtue – as unclear, redundant, old-fashioned, religious, paternalistic, anti-democratic, conservative, individualistic, relative and situation dependent. I expose those misgivings as ‘myths’, while at the same time acknowledging three better-founded historical, methodological and practical concerns about the notions in question.

Download for yourself here.

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Photo by Valerie Wallace.

Kristján Kristjánsson is Professor of Character Education and Virtue Ethics;  Deputy Director of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham. He is a scholar with the project Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life.

 

CFP: Practicing Science: Virtues, Values, and the Good Life

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The Notre Dame London Global Gateway is in the Marian Kennedy Fischer Hall, on the northwest corner of Trafalgar Square.

Our scholar Darcia Narvaez, Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame and Advisory Board Member for the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing, has organized the conference “Practicing Science: Virtues, Values, and the Good Life”.  The CFP is below.

The event will include a public lecture by Kristján Kristjánsson, also a scholar with our project, and Professor of Character Education and Virtue Ethics and Deputy Director of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues.

A keynote address will be presented by Prof. Michael Spezio, Associate Professor of Psychology at Scripps College and co-PI on a research grant of the Self, Motivation & Virtue Project, sponsored by the Templeton Religion Trust.
Practicing Science: Virtues, Values, and the Good Life
Sponsored by the Templeton Religion Trust
August 9-12, 2018
University of Notre Dame London Gateway
London, UK
Over the last several decades, virtue has attracted increased attention from philosophers, theologians, and psychologists. However, little of this research on virtue has attended to the development and function of virtue within scientific research and practice.

Since 2016, a multi-disciplinary research team at the University of Notre Dame, and funded by the Templeton Religion Trust, has been exploring the relationship between virtue and scientific practice with a particular focus on laboratory research in biology.

This conference will showcase the team’s findings, and we welcome proposals for contribute papers to enhance these discussions.

Potential research questions include:

  • How can the language of virtue enrich, change, or challenge our understanding of science?
  • Does the contemporary practice of scientific research require or bolster certain virtues (or vices)?
  • How can ideas drawn from virtue ethics or virtue epistemology illuminate (and perhaps improve) the training and mentoring of scientists?
Paper presentations will be 15 minutes, with an additional 10 minutes for discussion.

To submit a proposal, please send a title, abstract (no more than 250 words), and short c.v. to  by February 2, 2018. Decisions about contributed proposals will be communicated to applicants by March 1, 2018.

Further details of the conference program can be found at http://ctshf.nd.edu/news/call-for-papers-practicing-science-virtues-values-and-the-good-life/.

New and forthcoming books by our scholars

9781107155329Michael Gorman, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Catholic University of America is the author of Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union, June 2017, Cambridge University Press.

Kristján Kristjánsson, Deputy Director in the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues and Professor of Character Education and Virtue Ethics at the University of Birmingham, is the author of Virtuous Emotions, forthcoming in May 2018, Oxford University Press.

Heather C. Lench, Associate Professor & Department Head, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M University, is an editor on the volume Functions of Emotion, Springer, in January 2018.

 

51fVH4MrJuL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg514VAhuihzL._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_.jpgOwen Flanagan, James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Neurobiology at Duke University is the author of The Geography of Morals: Varieties of Moral Possibility, Oxford University Press, 2017 and co-editor of The Moral Psychology of Anger, forthcoming from Rowman and Littlefield.

 

 

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Nancy Snow, Director of the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing, edited The Oxford Handbook of Virtue, Oxford University Press; it includes a chapter on Aquinas by Candace Vogler.

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 Paul T. P. Wong,Founding President of the Meaning-Centered Counselling Institute, Inc., has a chapter in The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Positive Psychology, edited by Nicholas J. L. Brown, Tim Lomas, Francisco Jose Eiroa-Orosa. London, UK: Routledge.

Varieties of Virtue Ethics collection features our scholars

We are very happy to announce a new book that will be of great interest to researchers, students, and general readers concerned with the many contemporary varieties and applications of virtue ethics: Varieties of Virtue Ethics, Edited by David Carr, James Arthur, and Kristján Kristjánsson, from Palgrave Macmillan (December 2016). Edited by two of our Project Scholars, David Carr and Kristján Kristjánsson, both at the University of Birmingham Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, the book explores recent developments in ethics of virtue, and includes three essays by scholars of the project Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life.

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The collection acknowledges the Aristotelian roots of modern virtue ethics, with its emphasis on the moral importance of character, while also recognizing that more recent accounts of virtue have been shaped by many other influences, such as Aquinas, Hume, Nietzsche, Hegel and Marx, and Confucius and Lao-tzu. The authors examine the influence of virtue ethics on disciplines such as psychology, sociology and theology, and also look at the wider public, professional and educational implications of virtue ethics.

Essays in the volume include a chapter by our Virtue project scholars John Haldane, who is the J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Distinguished Chair in Philosophy at Baylor University, on “Virtue Ethics in the Medieval Period;” our Principal Investigator Candace Vogler, the David E. and Clara B. Stern Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago on “Virtue, the Common Good, and Self-Transcendence; ” Robert C. Roberts, Professor of Ethics and Emotion Theory at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, and a joint Chair with the Royal Institute of Philosophy, on “Varieties of Virtue Ethics;” and David Carr, Professor Emeritus, University of Edinburgh and Professor of Ethics and Education, University of Birmingham Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, on “Educating for the Wisdom of Virtue.”

For more information, including the table of contents, visit http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137591760.

Holiday Greetings from our Scholars

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December 2016 Working Group Meeting with (most of) the scholars of VHML: (from left) Josef Stern, Heather Lench, Kristján Kristjánsson, Jennifer Frey, Fr Thomas Joseph White, Dan McAdams, Candace Vogler, Marc Berman, Darcia Narvaez, Owen Flanagan, Angela Knobel, Reinhard Huetter, Michael Gorman, Paul Wong, Talbot Brewer, David Shatz.
Photo by Valerie Wallace.