A Marquette University professor has received a $2.6 million grant from the Templeton Religion Trust to conduct interdisciplinary research on virtue, character and morality, the university announced on Thursday.
The three-year grant was awarded to Dr. Nancy Snow, professor of philosophy in the Klingler College of Arts and Sciences, who is at the head of a research initiative known as “The Self, Motivation, and Virtue.” Snow is collaborating with Dr. Darcia Narvaez, professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, on the initiative, which also includes the development of 10 new research projects, an interdisciplinary forum, interdisciplinary conferences featuring international scholars, a project website and multiple book projects.
“Many approaches to the study of character and virtue consider personality to be foundational to character and virtue,” Snow said. “Our project hypothesizes that the self is the site of virtue. Key to this examination will be an important collaboration among scientists, humanists, theologians, psychologists and philosophers.”
The focus of the project will largely center on how individuals develop virtue and how that virtue “is translated into practical efforts such as education.”
“We will also look at the development of virtue in the emerging person – what happens as we grow up and develop into people,” Snow said. “We want to take a deeper dive into whether the development of virtue involves memories, genetics, etc. In this way we can develop a more comprehensive picture of how key periods in our lives – adolescence, retirement, physical decline, traumatic incidents – play a role.”
Snow ultimately aims to “generate an appreciate of what virtue is, the importance of motivation to virtue and how virtue can be cultivated,” she said.
Snow and Narvaez plan to launch the project on Sept. 1.
The Templeton Religion Trust supports “discoveries relating to the big questions of human purpose and ultimate reality,” according to Marquette.
