Abstract

Counterspeech is a form of communication aiming at counteracting the potential harms of other communication. Concerning specifically toxic speech, counterspeech is an attempt to directly respond to the toxic message, trying to undermine it, and can be exercised either by the citizens or by the state. When it comes to ordinary citizens, however, several issues arise, including social pressure, a deficit of authority, the lack of skills, and the burdensomeness of such demand. In this paper, we will discuss whether moral exemplars in Zagzebski’s exemplarist moral theory are particularly capable of– and required to– exercising counterspeech, avoiding some of the problems that affect other ordinary citizens. Our answer will be only partially positive; by highlighting problems in taking moral exemplars as paradigmatic counterspeakers, we will be able to identify a more promising category of counterspeakers, who share in some features of moral exemplars but seem also capable of avoiding the problems the latter pose: namely, that of what we will call moral influencers. By doing so, we aim also at extending the debate over exemplarism to issues traditionally left out of the neo-Aristotelian scholarship, and at exploring the potentialities of non-conventional exemplars.