On Some Circumstances of Admiring Exemplars

Linda Zagzebski's Exemplarist Moral Theory (EMT) tries to do justice to the peremptory influence that in our lives has admiring certain persons, e.g., exemplars or models. Zagzebski’s proposal should be welcomed, since it is supported ceteris paribus by our experience. But EMT’s insufficiency comes to the surface if we do not try to specify generalities such as the one that holds that admiration “is shaped by experience, beliefs and the emotional responses of others” (Zagzebski, in: Exemplarist Moral Theory, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017, p. 20). (My paper has benefited from the suggestions made by the editor and a reviewer)). A step forward in the direction of a greater specificity comes from paying due attention to the loving context in which the emotion of admiration and the ensuing process of imitation occurred in people for the first time. Another specification of the circumstances in which admiration and imitation occur comes from considering that they are sustained by narrative contexts. By considering the importance of our loves in our lives and that they are hierarchically organized (the core of our emotions’ focus), the description of those circumstances makes the explanation of the admiration of models and their subsequent imitation or emulation by exemplarist moral theory more accurate.