ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that if people become attuned to it, and attend to it with all senses, rather than merely with intellect, then 'Going Home' can provide us with an object lesson in the epistemic virtues. This is the phrase used by Richard Smith 'to indicate the full range of qualities of apprehension, understanding and interpretation'. Smith charts how in the area of inquiry that has come to be known as 'virtue epistemology', attention is now directed towards the 'intellectual character virtues' evidenced by the good knower. The epistemic ambivalence of 'Going Home' is encapsulated in the fact that it hovers somewhere between a poem and a song. It is this fundamental ambiguity that provides Leonard Cohen with an ideal medium for revelling in the 'paradox of being knowing about unknowing'. Cohen seems to embody the 'quieter' virtues of modesty and diffidence through his ironic and literally harmonious self-description.
