Abstract
The aim of this address is to understand manipulativeness, focusing on the character trait of being manipulative, not on manipulation itself. I take it that manipulativeness is a vice, but also take seriously the claims of some that one can go too far in the opposite direction. I employ an Aristotelian model, according to which virtue is a mean, lying between extremes. If manipulativeness is one extreme, what vice or vices are there in the opposite direction? And what would be the corresponding virtue? Through this approach I try to figure out what makes manipulativeness a vice, looking not only at egregious cases of manipulativeness, but at forms of manipulativeness that some see as virtuous.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association |
| Publisher | American Philosophical Association |
| Pages | 36-54 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Publication status | Published - 2003 |