Online research in philosophy

The philosophical understanding of moral conscience should constitute one of the most significant concerns of any modern theory of moral education that wishes to be credible and reliable in all morally demanding situations. The purpose of this paper is not to contest the widely accepted notion of conscience as the absolute mark of our moral and spiritual integrity. The purpose of the paper is to postulate and stress the importance of certain "contextual" factors without which modern teaching of moral conscience could very easily lose its certainty and significance. It is argued that unless we make such assumptions, our following the dictates of individual conscience could become a trivial and redundant affair, because nothing could prove that this act is something more than "listening to one's inner voice". In the light of this, the paper proposes a qualified theory that avoids looking at individual conscience as a formal schema and embraces it within the broader framework of the educational demands raised by modern democratic culture.

The concept of the artes liberales originates in antiquity and was, especially in the Anglo-Saxon area and during the 17th and 18th centuries, remodelled into a socially, educationally, and politically modern educational concept. In this process, the progress within the empirical sciences and the formation of an early civil public are of the utmost importance. In the course of these transformations, the absolute force of church and state is called into question; educational concepts which have to be called modern emerge from it.

This paper sets out to explore connections between a number of plausible claims concerning education in general and moral education in particular: (i) that education is a matter of broad cultural initiation rather than narrow academic or vocational training; (ii) that any education so conceived would have a key concern with the moral dimensions of personal formation; (iii) that emotional growth is an important part of such moral formation; and (iv) that literature and other arts have an important part to play in such emotional education. It is argued here that what is needed for a clear view of the moral educational relevance of literature and the arts is a conception of moral education that does justice to the interplay between the cognitive and the affective in moral life, and that a non?relativist Aristotelian ethics of virtue holds out the best prospect for such a moral education of reason and feeling.

ch. 1. Conscience--the subjective norm of morality -- ch. 2. Conscience and law -- ch. 3. Relationship between conscience and law -- ch. 4. Holy Scipture on the nature of conscience -- ch. 5. Freedom and commitment of conscience -- ch. 6. The African and conscience with particular reference to the Igbos of Nigeria -- ch. 7. Igbo moral conscience in the light of cross-cultural education: Western civilisation and christianity.