Out Of The "Justification" Dilemma

Virtue epistemology is a new branch of the contemporary epistemology, the starting point of the theory is regards the epistemology as a normative discipline. Virtue epistemology is based on the internalism and externalism, it is aims at explain the normativity cognition by using the basic concepts of ethics, especially Aristotle’s concept of "virtue".If Sosa is the founder of virtue epistemology, than Linda Zagzebski is a master of virtue epistemology. Zagzebski’s book "Virtues of the Mind" that pubished in 1996 marks the final formation of virtue epistemology.According to the traditional "Plato’s definition", knowledge is defined as a justified true belief. We can see that justification, turth and belief make up the knowledge, and the "justification" is the main topic of contemporary philosophers. The theories such as foundationalism, coherentism, internalism and externalism are all related with the justification of knowledge. Different epistemologists hold different theories, they explain the justification through foundationalism or coherentism, attacking each other and incompatible. Virtue epistemology is another way, they use intellectual virtues instead of justification. Throughout Zagzebski’s virtue epistemology, we can easily find that her thoughts is like other epistemologists, aim at response the "justificatio" dilemma. Therefore, she turns to the "virtue", and defines virtue as "a deep and enduring acquired excellence of a person, involving a characteristic motivation to produce a certain desired end and reliable success in bringing about that end", also associated with good, skills, habits, motivation. Zagzebski uses "virtue" as the theoretical standpoint, and put forward the New Aristotelianism, that is, modeled on Aristotle’s description of virtue, and make unified description of intellectual virtue and moral virtue. At the same time, Zagzebski put forward the Exemplarist Virtue TheoryIt can be said, Linda Zagzebski not only discusses in detail with the similarities of virtue epistemology and virtue ethics, but also puts forward the virtue epistemology that is different from Sosa’s, and study on her theory contribute to the overall understanding of virtue epistemology. The exemplarist virtue theory is based on the The example of good of intellectual virtue, directly references to the moral concepts of theory, provides a new idea to solve the problems of foundationalism, coherentism, internalism and externalism.