Virtue Ethics and Moral Education (Routledge International Studies in the Philosophy of Education)

284 Pages·1999·1.7 MB·English

by  David Carr

VIRTUE ETHICS AND MORAL EDUCATION
The post-war revival of interest in virtue ethics has yielded enormous
advances in our understanding of moral psychology and development.
However, despite the widespread interest of educational philosophers in
virtue theorists from Aristotle to Alasdair MacIntyre, it would appear that the
theory and practice of moral education have yet to draw upon virtue ethics to
any appreciable degree.
This collection of original essays on virtue ethics and moral education seeks
to fill this gap in the recent literature of moral education, combining broader
analyses with detailed coverage of:
• the varieties of virtue
(cid:127) weakness and integrity
(cid:127) relativism and rival traditions
(cid:127) means and methods of educating the virtues.
This rare collaboration of professional ethical theorists and educational
philosophers constitutes a ground-breaking work and an exciting new focus in
a growing area of research.
David Carr is Reader in the Faculty of Education at the University of
Edinburgh. He is editor of Education, Knowledge and Truth (Routledge 1998)
and is writing a book on Ethical Issues in Teaching (forthcoming with
Routledge).
Jan Steutel is Reader in Philosophy of Education at the Free University,
Amsterdam. The Netherlands.
ROUTLEDGE INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN THE
PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
1 EDUCATION AND WORK IN GREAT BRITAIN, GERMANY AND ITALY
Edited by A.Jobert, C.Marry, L.Tanguy and H.Rainbird
2 EDUCATION, AUTONOMY AND DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP
Philosophy in a changing world
Edited by David Bridges
3 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN LEARNING
Christopher Winch
4 EDUCATION, KNOWLEDGE AND TRUTH
Beyond the Postmodern Impasse
Edited by David Carr
5 VIRTUE ETHICS AND MORAL EDUCATION
Edited by David Carr and Jan Steutel
6 DURKHEIM AND MODERN EDUCATION
Edited by Geoffrey Walford and W.S.F.Pickering
7 THE AIMS OF EDUCATION
Edited by Roger Marples
8 EDUCATION IN MORALITY
J.Mark Halstead and Terence H.McLaughlin
VIRTUE ETHICS AND
MORAL EDUCATION
Edited by
David Carr and Jan Steutel
London and New York
First published 1999
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Editorial material and selection
© 1999 David Carr and Jan Steutel
Individual chapters © the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Virtue Ethics and Moral Education
Edited by David Carr and Jan Steutel
288 p. 15.6×23.4 cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index
I. Moral Education 2. Virtue
3. Ethics—I. Carr, David, 1944–
II. Steutel, J.W. (Jan Willem), 1948–
LC268.V57 1999
370.11′4– dc21 98–47913 CIP
ISBN 0-203-97836-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-17073-7 (Print Edition)
CONTENTS
List of figures vii
Contributors viii
Preface and acknowledgements xi
PART 1 Introduction 1
1 Virtue ethics and the virtue approach to moral education 3
JAN STEUTEL AND DAVID CARR
PART 2 General issues 19
2 Virtue, eudaimonia and teleological ethics 21
NICHOLAS DENT
3 Character development and Aristotelian virtue 35
NANCY SHERMAN
4 Virtue, phronesis and learning 51
JOSEPH DUNNE
PART 3 Varieties of virtue 67
5 Cultivating the intellectual and moral virtues 69
RANDALL CURREN
6 Virtues of benevolence and justice 85
JAMES D.WALLACE
7 Self-regarding and other-regarding virtues 99
MICHAEL SLOTE
PART 4 Weakness and integrity 111
8 Moral growth and the unity of the virtues 113
BONNIE KENT
9 The virtues of will-power: self-control and deliberation 129
JAN STEUTEL
vi
10 Virtue, akrasia and moral weakness 143
DAVID CARR
PART 5 Relativism and rival traditions 157
11 Virtue, truth and relativism 159
JOHN HALDANE
12 Justice, care and other virtues: a critique of Kohlberg’s 173
theory of moral development
PAUL CRITTENDEN
13 Liberal virtue and moral enfeeblement 189
EAMONN CALLAN
PART 6 Educating the virtues: means and methods 203
14 Virtues, character and moral dispositions 205
JOEL J.KUPPERMAN
15 Habituation and training in early moral upbringing 217
BEN SPIECKER
16 Trust, traditions and pluralism: human flourishing and 231
liberal polity
KENNETH A.STRIKE
PART 7 Conclusion 245
17 The virtue approach to moral education: pointers, problems 247
and prospects
DAVID CARR AND JAN STEUTEL
Index 263
FIGURES
1.1 The virtue approach in the broad and the narrow sense 7
1.2 An ethics of virtue as an aretaic ethics 11
CONTRIBUTORS
Eamonn Callan is Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University
of Alberta. He is the author of Creating Citizens (Oxford University Press
1997), Autonomy and Schooling (McGill-Queen’s University Press 1988),
and many articles in the philosophy of education.
David Carr is Reader in the Faculty of Education of the University of
Edinburgh. He is editor of Knowledge, Truth and Education (Routledge
1998) and author of Educating the Virtues (Routledge 1991) as well as of
numerous philosophical and educational articles. He is currently writing a
book on Ethical Issues in Teaching (also for Routledge).
Paul Crittenden is Professor of Philosophy in the School of Philosophy,
University of Sydney. He is the author of Learning To Be Moral (Humanities
Press International 1990) and teaches and writes mainly in ethics and
sociopolitical theory, especially in relation to Greek philosophy and recent
European philosophy.
Randall Curren is Associate Professor in both the Department of
Philosophy and the Warner Graduate School of Education and Human
Development at the University of Rochester. He is the author of a
forthcoming book, Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education (Rowman &
Littlefield), and other works in ethics, ancient philosophy, legal and
political philosophy, and philosophy of education.
Nicholas Dent is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham
where he has worked since 1979. He is presently Head of the School of
Humanities in the university. His publications include The Moral Psychology
of the Virtues (Cambridge University Press 1984) and Rousseau (Blackwell
1988).
Joseph Dunne teaches philosophy and philosophy of education at St.
Patrick’s College, Dublin. He is author of Back to the Rough Ground: Practical
Judgment and the Lure of Technique (University of Notre Dame Press 1993),
now available in paperback with a new foreword by Alasdair MacIntyre.
Currently completing a collection of essays in ‘public philosophy’, he also
has research interests in history and philosophy of childhood.
ix
John Haldane is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for
Philosophy and Public Affairs in the University of St Andrews. He has
published widely in various branches of philosophy and is co-author with
J.J. C.Smart of Atheism and Theism (Blackwell 1996) and Faithful Reason
(Routledge 1999).
Bonnie Kent is Associate Professor of Religion at Columbia University and
author of Virtues of the Will (Catholic University Press 1995). Her
publications include ‘Habits and virtues’, in Ethics on the Ethics of St.
Thomas Aquinas (Georgetown University Press, forthcoming), ‘Moral
provincialism’, in Religious Studies (1994), and other articles on virtue
ethics and its history.
Joel Kupperman is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Connecticut, with special interests in ethics. His books include Character
(Oxford University Press 1991), Value… And What Follows (Oxford
University Press, forthcoming) and Learning From Asian Philosophy (which
is being completed and will be published by Oxford University Press).
Nancy Sherman is a Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University and
Visiting Distinguished Chair of Ethics at the United States Naval Academy.
She previously taught at Yale University for seven years, and has held
visiting posts at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University.
She is the author of Making a Necessity of Virtue (Cambridge University
Press 1997) and The Fabric of Character (Oxford University Press 1989). In
addition, she has written numerous articles in the areas of ethics and moral
psychology.
Michael Slote is Professor of Philosophy and department chair at the
University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of From Morality To
Virtue (Oxford University Press 1992) and, most recently, the co-author of
Three Methods of Ethics (Blackwell 1997). He is currently working on issues
concerning the importance of love in virtue ethics.
Ben Spiecker is Professor of Philosophy of Education at the Department of
Psychology and Education at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. His many
publications and research interests lie in the areas of moral, civic and
sexual education. He is a member of the board of the Journal of Philosophy
of Education and Studies in Philosophy and Education.
Jan W.Steutel is Reader in Philosophy of Education at the Vrije Universiteit
of Amsterdam. His many publications and work in progress focus on civic
and moral education, in particular on virtue theory and the cultivation of
the virtues. He is a member of the board of the Journal of Moral Education.
Kenneth A.Strike is Professor of Philosophy of Education at Cornell
University. He has been a distinguished visiting professor at the University
of Alberta and is a member of the National Academy of Education. His
principal interests are professional ethics and political philosophy as