Expansive other-regarding virtues and civic excellence

This paper is concerned with the civic significance and cultivation of three constructs that involve different ways of having an expansive and virtuous concern for others. Identification with all humanity involves caring for an expansive domain of others, identifying with humanity generally and not just with one’s ingroup. Others-centeredness involves caring about others to an expansive extent, putting others’ interests ahead of one’s own. Last, the virtues of intellectual dependability involve caring for an expansive range of others’ goods, including their intellectual goods. Our aims are to explain the nature of these traits in further detail, to present evidence of their relationship to certain kinds of civic engagement, and to identify strategies for cultivating them and educating for them.