ABSTRACT

This chapter examines what role, if any, new governmental behaviour modification policies, commonly known as nudges, might play in cultivating virtues. It distinguishes between two types of nudge – automatic-behavioural and discernment-developing – and shows that what divides them is the ability of the latter, which the former lacks, to play an educative role in developing practical reason. In so doing, it outlines and defends what it calls the socio-ecological account of critical habituation. It thus provides an answer to the question of whether virtue-cultivating nudges are possible, while remaining neutral on whether virtue cultivation is, or under what conditions it may be, a permissible aim of liberal-democratic states.