2023 Theses Doctoral

Navigating the Harms of Epistemic Life: On the Need to Educate for Intellectual Courage

North, Buddy Boren

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the educational concerns that help or hinder the acquisition and practice of intellectual courage. Compared against some more narrow accounts of intellectual courage found in the philosophical literature, this examination broadens the concept of intellectual courage, and illuminates how a motivation for cultivating intellectual courage means being committed to the distinct motivations of other intellectual virtues.

Furthermore, intellectual courage has an inseparable moral and epistemic dynamic. Thus an understanding of intellectual courage shows that the beliefs we hold—and the intellectual character we cultivate—directly impact the way life is led in a social environment, and in the classroom. Intellectual courage is the motivation to pursue knowledge despite possible risk, and the skills to navigate such threatening obstacles virtuously.