ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that evidentialism and virtue epistemology (VE) in their best formulations are compatible and that they can be derived as secondary theories from a more fundamental rationalist theory. I defend this claim after explaining why evidentialism and VE in their best forms seem to be converging, but why neither is a satisfying fundamental theory. After making some preliminary remarks in Section 2 about how to understand evidentialism and VE, I review in Section 3 why evidentialism needs virtue, but also show that there is a natural way to understand evidentialism so that virtue needn’t be added as an extra component. But I observe that an explanatory problem remains. In Section 4, I use the lingering troubles for evidentialism and VE to argue that we shouldn’t use one as the foundation for the other, but should derive both as secondary theories from a third rationalist theory. Section 5 describes that theory and how it explains the epistemic role of evidence and virtue.
