Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how the notion of moral responsibility applies to the activity of theoretical knowledge, in order to delineate the nature and scope of an ethics of knowing. The expression "ethics of knowing" does not here designate the problem of determining how practical reason can guide human conduct. Instead, it designates a normative inquiry into the moral or immoral use of reason. Questions to be raised include: Do our choices as moral agents have any bearing on the concrete orientation of our cognitive activity? Do there exist good dispositions toward the pursuit of knowledge that can be cultivated or vitiated by the knowing subject? How can the activity of theoretical knowing contribute to, or detract from, the development of moral goodness in the individual? Inquiry into such questions has frequently been neglected within the context of modernity, in contrast to the approach of the ancients and medievals, who integrated this mode of questioning into their discourse about reason. Thomas Aquinas, in particular, is noteworthy for his systematic treatment of the conditions required for an ethical pursuit of knowledge. Accordingly, he serves as a guide for our discussion of this theme. ;Speech concerning "epistemic responsibility" is grounded in the presupposition that epistemic acts are in some way freely chosen, thus permitting their denomination as moral or immoral. However, to posit the activity of thinking as a species of voluntary action appears to counter the equally important presupposition that good thinking depends on objective criteria, and not on the voluntary preferences of the agent. To resolve this difficulty, Thomas's distinction between "exercise" and "specification" is applied to cognitive acts, in order to show that the exercise of such acts is always voluntary, while their specification is grounded in objective factors independent of the will. This distinction is subsequently extended into an analysis of the dispositions required for the virtuous functioning of the intellect. Intellectual virtues rectify the faculty of reason in the line of its objective specification, while the moral virtue of studiositas rectifies its voluntary employment by the faculty of will.