This book offers a contribution in experimental philosophy (x-phi) to the existing literature on self-cultivation with an empirical account of the processes and practices of self-directed character development on the Internet. Each of the ten chapters of this volume offers a first-personal account of the online cultivation of the character, one which is based on interviews with a representative sample of individuals who have engaged in a protracted process of self-cultivation. The book begins with a critical introduction of x-phi that argues for the use of qualitative data in contemporary philosophical debates, as well as suggesting why it can help in the philosophical investigation of the cultivation of character online specifically. It closes with an Epilogue reflecting on the findings.

While experimental philosophers have been good at enlisting previous empirical studies into philosophical debates, they have also speculated on the value of positive programmes that would direct, for example, psychological, social, or cultural research towards a philosophical question. My paper surveys the extent to which x-phi offers the resources to bring greater philosophical clarity to the question of the cultural relativity of virtue. I start by summarising the historical use of empirical data in practical philosophy from the anthropological texts comprising Aristotle's Parva Naturalia to the work of contemporary thinkers such as Doris and Macintyre. I claim that virtue theorists have traditionally been receptive to work in the empirical sciences throughout the history of their discipline, but that they would benefit from bringing the question of the relationship between philosophical and empirical research into much sharper resolution. After this I sketch what a positive programme of x-phi in virtue ethics could look like, focusing its potential to help answer the question of the universality of virtues specifically.