The Virtue of Gossip

Abstract

The moral status of gossip is generally defmed negatively from a Western perspective and, I argue, is or should be accorded a more positive role in African accounts of ethics. In a broadly communitarian vein, I argue that a characteristically Western approach to gossip is problematic - in that it casts a fundamental aspect of human life as moral wrongdoing, does not provide an adequate fit between wrongness and censure, and excludes significant morally positive values realised through gossip - and argue for a more nuanced account. Examining and responding to five arguments for the viciousness of gossip, and proposing four candidate virtues, I develop an account that distinguishes vicious from virtuous forms of gossip.