Virtue requires feeling rightly, not acting against inclination

Evidence

Nor would such a genealogy track a rule of reason (veering on or off course) with an undercurrent of emotional strain. Rather it might resituate the art of governance as one modeled after an earlier genre that took as its project the art of knowing oneself as part of the “art of knowing men” (“l’art de connaître les hommes”). As Alasdair MacIntyre writes in his history of moral theory: “Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways. To act virtuously is not to act against inclination; it is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues. Moral education is an ‘éducation sentimentale.’ ” The Indies’ colonial authorities would have agreed. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 446

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the MacIntyre conception of virtue as trained feeling, key to understanding the colonial governance frame.
• XREF: connects to: Aristotle’s hexis names a stable way of being distinct from transient dispositions and affections — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 483