Abstract
Virtue theories have become influential in ethics and epistemology. This paper argues for a similar approach to argumentation. Several potential obstacles to virtue theories in general, and to this new application in particular, are considered and rejected. A first attempt is made at a survey of argumentational virtues, and finally it is argued that the dialectical nature of argumentation makes it particularly suited for virtue theoretic analysis.
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Acknowledgments
My first engagement with this topic was a reply I gave at the 2005 Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation Conference to Cohen (2005). I am grateful to the organizers for their invitation, and to Daniel Cohen for discussion and encouragement then and since. I am also grateful to an anonymous referee for a thorough and helpful critique, and to audiences in Amsterdam and Bristol. An earlier version of this article appeared in the Proceedings of the Sixth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation.
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Aberdein, A. Virtue in Argument. Argumentation 24, 165–179 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-009-9160-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-009-9160-0