74. Ethical & Epistemic Normativity: Lonergan & Virtue Epistemology by Dalibor Renic, SJ. ISBN-13: 978-0-87462-809-8. ISBN-10: 0-87462-809-1. Paper. 270 pp. $29. Bibliography. Index.
Epistemology uses some concepts that are usually understood as normative and evaluative. We talk about what a person should or should not believe or judge in certain epistemic circumstances. We evaluate beliefs or judgments with respect not only to whether they are true, but also to whether they are justified. We evaluate the person’s intellectual qualities and motivations with respect to whether she is reasonable, rational, wise, impartial, and epistemically responsible in general. This book is about this “value turn” in epistemology, about the ethical factors in epistemology.
“This book initiates a dialogue that is needed, with respect both to Lonergan and to the potential interlocutors. And it raises a question that needs to be raised, regarding how one is to understand what clearly are ethical elements in Lonergan’s cognitional theory and epistemology. The suggestion that Lonergan’s epistemology is best understood as a version of ‘virtue reliabilist epistemology’ makes eminent sense to me.”
Robert M Doran, SJ
Emmett Doerr Chair in Catholic Systematic Theology
Marquette University
Dalibor Renic, SJ (PhD, Milltown Institute, National University of Ireland), is Senior Assistant Lecturer at the Jesuit Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, Croatia.
Marquette University Press
