Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb - cehum - Universidade do Minho

ELITISM AND THE ETHICS OF VIRTUE
inaccessible to her. Th erefore there is no obvious connection between acting
from virtue and exemplary virtuousness. [11]
Recognizing this allows us to deny that the task of defi ning virtue is to
be unquestionably left to the phronimoi. Since we have to admit that they
cannot display all the virtues than ordinary, more or less cognitively defective
people can (as the case of modestly shows), we have no good reason to
grant that task to them.
Driver’s argument is, however, incapable of demonstrating that VE has
no need to commit itself to VEE. Although it purports to show that at least
the virtue of modesty is inaccessible to the practically wise, it does not demonstrate
that the people having not as accurate ethical insight as the practically
wise could act as systematically virtuously as they and therefore have a
reason to defi ne what is virtuous on their own.
For were the underestimation of one’s own worth to be appropriate in
some context, a practically wise person would see that by means of her
accurate ethical insight and therefore underestimate his own worth in that
context – and do all that from virtue. However, the practically wise person,
unlike the one who is modest due to her defective ethical insight, would
not be modest in the contexts in which modesty would be inappropriate.
Th erefore having less accurate insight than the practically wise would still
be an undesirable character trait on the whole in spite of resulting virtuous
conduct in a limited range of contexts. For even in those contexts the
practically wise would do at least as well as the less insightful people and
in all other contexts they would probably do better. And surely it would be
more reasonable to leave the defi nition of virtue to those, who see the most
appropriate choices and do well with 1/n probability – to the practically
wise – than to Driver’s modest persons who see correctly with