Abstract

What are epistemic vices? Drawing on the cases of two mid-nineteenth-century Orientalists, both of whom were accused of serious vices, this chapter argues that dispositions perceived as detrimental to scholarly work were often difficult to distinguish from social or religious vices. Indeed, when Heinrich Ewald (1803–1875) and Reinhart Dozy (1820–1883) were blamed for “dogmatism” and “rashness,” these were epistemic as much as social and religious vices. This chapter therefore proposes to exchange the concept of epistemic vices for the more inclusive category of scholarly vices. What this alternative phrase seeks to convey is that, for at least some nineteenth-century academics, the pursuit of epistemic aims was inseparable from meeting social expectations, engaging in political projects, and fulfilling religious duties. The relative importance of these various aims, however, was contested. Accordingly, criticism of Dozy and Ewald was part of a broader debate on the scholarly vocation and not seldom amounted to a form of “boundary work” between competing conceptions of Orientalist scholarship.