The Priority of Phronesis. How to Rescue Virtue Theory From Its Critics.

In this Chapter we defend a “virtue molecularist account” in virtue theory by arguing for the conceptual, epistemological, and ontological priority of practical wisdom, conceived as skill, over individual virtues. Our aim is to show how such account is better equipped than rival theories to address three challenges that come to virtue theory from contemporary social and cognitive psychology. First, we argue that virtue molecularism can rebut the so-called “situationist challenge” better than alternative virtue-theory accounts. Second, we consider a possible anti-rationalist objection to the importance they attribute to practical wisdom, which could make virtue molecularism seem to appeal to an obsolete hierarchical vision of the mind. Against this charge, we claim that “virtue molecularism not only implies declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge, but also a concurrent affective orientation to virtuous ends, as well as a cognitive-emotional ability to perceive the moral requirements at stake in a given situation” (p. 40). Third, ww argue that virtue molecularism is immune to the “automaticity challenge,” which is instead effective against more traditional skill-based accounts of the individual virtues.