The Ethics of Ignorance in the Light of Agnotology

This article examines some general views on the social and moral functions of ignorance, according to a study approach called Agnotology. Based on these views, an attempt is made to analyze some concrete examples of social benefits or moral virtues based on ignorance, i.e. categories, such as social freedom, habit, skill, forgetfulness, confidentiality, privacy, professionalism, and moral censorship. Various types of ignorance or various divisions of the unknowns are also the basis for the continuation of the present article. What is the relationship between ethics and each of these categories of ignorance is discussed in the final part of the article, which tries to better explain it using a long-standing, but neglected distinction between the two concepts of virtue and moral advantage.