Reenchanting practice : Stanley Fish and the challenge of virtue ethics

Cahill , Maria; O'Callaghan, Patrick

Reenchanting practice : Stanley Fish and the challenge of virtue ethics

Files

Final Draft Chapter on Fish and Virtue Jurisprudence_29082022_CORA.pdf(303.83 KB)

Accepted Version

Date

2023

Authors

Cahill , Maria

O'Callaghan, Patrick

Publisher

Hart Publishing

Abstract

In this chapter, we critique Stanley Fish’s essay Dennis Martinez and the Uses of Theory, a key contribution to the ‘Fish-Dworkin debate’. Our core argument is that Fish’s central distinction between engaging in a practice and discoursing on that practice is too sharp, and that the two corollary claims that he makes – that practice is not generated by theory and that theory does not offer a genuine account of how practice unfolds – fail to convince. Behind Fish’s distinction is an attempt to reframe practice: to uncouple it from the sort of abstract theorising that takes place in a vacuum and to throw light on how practitioners actually carry out their activities. In what follows, we also seek to reframe practice, perhaps even to reenchant it, by drawing on the depth and richness of conceptions of practice available in the fields of virtue ethics and virtue jurisprudence. In Part 1, we outline the central distinction, while in Part II we examine how Fish applies that distinction to the practice of judging. In Part III, we examine how well the distinction stands up against understandings of practice that emerge from the field of virtue ethics. In Parts IV and V, we critique Fish’s two corollary claims by reference to insights from virtue ethics and virtue jurisprudence.

Keywords

Stanley Fish , Dennis Martinez and the Uses of Theory , Fish-Dworkin debate

Citation

Cahill, M. and O'Callaghan, P. (2023) 'Reenchanting practice : Stanley Fish and the challenge of virtue ethics', in Bustamante, T. and Martin, M. (eds.) New essays on the Fish-Dworkin debate. New York: Hart Publishing, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing.