The virtues of adventure

If one explores the history of moral philosophy there is one virtue that one will never find listed: adventure. Aristotle's list of the virtues of character includes courage, temperance, justice, and the intellectual virtues. Kant lists several duties to oneself and others, but there is never any mention of a virtue of exploration--to go beyond oneself. This is surprising, given the fact that both thinkers possessed a firm commitment to truth, even when it conflicts with the status quo. The virtue of adventure may be a modern phenomena, achieving expression in the explorations of Lewis and Clark, Von Humboldt, Byrd, Nansen, Rasmussen, etc. But there have been interesting medieval expressions of this virtue such as in Cabeza de Vaca and, for all their horrible excesses, the Conquistadors. The earliest expression of this in the Greek world has got to be Aristeas of Proconnesus. Prehistory is itself a grand tale of this most human virtue. So how come here has been no attempt to describe the unique moral virtue that is present in these men as a Moral Virtue? Much of what is taught in ethics classes is conformity to a limited range of virtues. We essentially give away only that safe and secure set of morals and virtues which society has an interest in cultivating in its drones. It is bad form to even mention the "virtues of artists", precisely because they generally do not have them. When I think of exploration, adventure, testing the limits, I think that there is something of value here, something in the human character that is willing to go outside the fold, to see the world with direct eyes, to be open to transformation in the liminal space.