ABSTRACT Amidst trends that emphasize languishing patterns in teen mental health, there is a bright spot: social science research indicates that adolescents who develop relationships with adult mentors demonstrate increased signs of flourishing. This social science research on mentors, though limited to school performance outcome goals, offers a lifeline to character educators. I offer a theoretical framework based on Aristotelian principles, informed by anecdotal case studies of authentic moral dilemmas that emerged from the direct experiences of mentees, to suggest a (...) framework to explain why adolescents with adult mentors have an advantage. Patterns of conversation in trusted mentoring relationships developed over time, and in a school context that provides sufficient professional development for mentors, support the youth: (1) to advance in practical wisdom (phronesis) by honing skills for emotional regulation as well as cognitive skills to recognize goods in conflict and (2) to learn how to engage in civic friendship through these friendships of inequality with mentors. (shrink)

Human flourishing is the topic of an increasing number of books and articles in educational philosophy. Flourishing should be regarded as an ideal aim of education. If this is defended, the first step should be to elucidate what is meant by flourishing, and what exactly the concept entails. Listing formal criteria can facilitate reflection on the ideal of flourishing as an aim of education. We took Aristotelian eudaimonia as a prototype to construct two criteria for the concept of human flourishing: (...) human flourishing is regarded as intrinsically worthwhile and flourishing means ‘actualisation of human potential’. The second criterion has three sub-criteria: flourishing is about a whole life, it is a ‘dynamic state’ and flourishing presupposes there being objective goods. (shrink)

Full virtue and practical wisdom comprise the end of neo-Aristotelian moral development, but wisdom cannot be cultivated straight away through arguments and teaching. Wisdom is integrated with, and builds upon, habituation: the acquisition of virtuous character traits through the repeated practice of corresponding virtuous actions. Habit formation equips people with a taste for, and commitment to, the good life; furthermore it provides one with discriminatory and reflective capacities to know how to act in particular circumstances. Unfortunately, habituation is often understood (...) primarily as a method suitable only for children. This article examines whether Aristotle limited habituation to children and, if not, what the relationship between habituation and wisdom beyond childhood might look like. This article concludes that wisdom-guided habituation is also possible for adults who continue and confirm their already established virtuous habits. The implications of this for professional moral education are subsequently discussed. (shrink)

This article will derive a definition and account of the physically educated person, through an examination of the philosophy of Andrew Reid, Richard Peters and Aristotle. Initially, Reid’s interpretation of Peters’ views about the educational significance of practical knowledge (and physical education) will be considered. While it will be acknowledged that Peters was rather disparaging about the educational merit of some practical activities in Ethics and Education, it will be argued that he elsewhere suggests that such practical activities could be (...) educationally worthwhile in and of themselves. In Education and the educated man he specified that practical activities should be regarded as educationally important if they are either transformed by theoretical understanding and/or pursued to the point of excellence. In suggesting that education involves the cultivation of both theoretical and practical human excellences it is argued that Peters’ philosophy of education begins to take on a more Aristotelian bent. After exploring Aristotle’s notion of virtue (human excellence) and his discussion of physical training in The politics, it is claimed that physical education activities might be most worthwhile when they extend the moral habits and/or modes of thought of pupils, towards excellence. It is concluded that physically educated persons should be defined as those who have learned to arrange their lives in such a way that the physical activities they freely engage in make a distinctive contribution to their long-term flourishing. (shrink)

This paper is about the interplay between intuition and reason in Aristotle’s moral psychology. After discussing briefly some other uses of ‘intuition’ in Aristotle’s texts, I look closely at A...

Phronesis has become a buzzword in contemporary medical ethics. Yet, the use of this single term conceals a number of significant conceptual controversies based on divergent philosophical assumptions. This paper explores three of them: on phronesis as universalist or relativist, generalist or particularist, and natural/painless or painful/ambivalent. It also reveals tensions between Alasdair MacIntyre’s take on phronesis, typically drawn upon in professional ethics discourses, and Aristotle’s original concept. The paper offers these four binaries as a possible analytical framework for classifying (...) and evaluating accounts of phronesis in the medical ethics literature. It argues that to make sense of phronesis as a putative ideal in professional medical ethics—for example, with the further aim of crafting interventions to cultivate phronesis in medical ethics education—the preliminary question of which conception of phronesis is most serviceable for the aim in question needs to be answered. The paper identifies considerable lack of clarity in the current discursive field on phronesis and suggests how that shortcoming can be ameliorated. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to offer a mitigated moral justification of a much maligned emotional trait, pity, in the Aristotelian sense of ‘pain at deserved bad fortune’. I lay out Aristotle's taxonomic map of pity and its surrounding conceptual terrain and argue – by rehearsing modern accounts – that this map is not anachronistic with respect to contemporary conceptions. I then offer an ‘Aristotelian’ moral justification of pity, not as a full virtue intrinsically related to eudaimonia but as (...) a positive moral quality that has instrumental value in developing and sustaining a certain intrinsically valuable state of character – namely compassion. The justification offered is mitigated in the sense that it does not elevate pity to a virtuous disposition, constitutive of the good life; yet it does offer a crucial counterweight to Aristotle's own denunciation of pity. (shrink)

Emotion education is enjoying new-found popularity. This paper explores the ‘cosy consensus’ that seems to have developed in education circles, according to which approaches to emotion education are immune from metaethical considerations such as contrasting rationalist and sentimentalist views about the moral ontology of emotions. I spell out five common assumptions of recent approaches to emotion education and explore their potential compatibility with four paradigmatic moral ontologies. I argue that three of these ontologies fail to harmonise with the common assumptions. (...) Either those three must therefore be rejected or, if we want to retain one or more of them, we need to revise our assumptions about the practice of emotion education in ways that are both radical and, I argue, ultimately unacceptable. (shrink)

This essay introduces the present special issue on wisdom and moral education, which draws on a conference held in Oxford in 2017. Some of the seven contributions (by Sanderse; Ferkany; and Hatchimonji et al.) make use of the Aristotelian concept of phronesis, or practical wisdom, while others focus more on the wisdom concept as it has developed in contemporary psychology (Huynh and Grossman; Ardelt; and Brocato, Hix and Jayawickreme). One (by Swartwood) straddles the distinction between the two. All the contributions, (...) however, address in different ways practical questions about how wisdom can be evaluated and how it relates to issues of moral development and education. (shrink)

Recent virtue theorists in psychology implicitly assume the truth of motivational internalism, and this assumption restricts the force and scope of the message that they venture to offer as scientists. I aim to contrive a way out of their impasse by arguing for a version of Aristotelian motivational externalism and suggesting why these psychologists should adopt it. There is a more general problem, however. Although motivational externalism has strong intuitive appeal, at least for moral realists and ‘Humeans’ about motivation, it (...) continues to be threatened by Smith’s fetishisation argument and burdened by the inability of its familiar counter-examples to internalism (of the immoral, wicked, listless and amoral persons) to bear full scrutiny. I argue that Aristotle’s example of the continent person (as distinct from the fully virtuous) offers a more persuasive counter-example to internalism. The moral judgements of continent persons do not motivate them intrinsically, yet the continent cannot be counted as practically irrational with regard to morality. If Aristotelian motivational externalism holds true, psychologists can offer full-fledged theories of virtue without the danger of turning the science of psychology into a prescriptive moralism. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to make a case for Aristotelian friendship as a ‘method’ of moral education qua mutual character development. After setting out some Aristotelian assumptions about friendship and education in the “Aristotle and Beyond: Some Basics about Character Friendship and Education”section, I devote the “Role-Model Moral Education Contrasted with Learning from Character Friends” section to role modelling and how it differs from the idea of cultivating character through friendships. “The Mechanisms of Learning from Character Friends” section (...) then explores the mechanisms of Aristotelian friendship education directly: those identified by him and those which can be elicited more obliquely from his texts. I end in the “Concluding Remarks and Classroom Applications” section with some reflections on how this model of friendship as a moral method could be applied in current educational contexts. While the idea of character friendship as an educational method comes with many assets, it also imports various liabilities that may lead to painful friendship terminations. I have put the spotlight on those liabilities in two previous articles. In contrast, the goal here is to impart a new edge and added force to the idea that a certain Aristotle-defined type of deep friendships may have a unique role to play in facilitating moral growth, above and beyond other developmental learning mechanisms. (shrink)

While interest in the emotion of awe has surged in psychology, philosophers have yet to devote a single self-standing article to awe’s conceptual contours and moral standing. The present article aims to rectify this imbalance and begin to make up for the unwarranted philosophical neglect. In order to do so, awe is given the standard Aristotelian treatment to uncover its conceptual contours and moral relevance. Aristotelianism typically provides the most useful entry point to ‘size up’ any emotion – more problematically (...) here, however, as Aristotle did not himself explicitly identify awe. The article critiques and proposes to improve upon existing psychological conceptual analyses of awe, probes the question why Aristotle ignored it and addresses an often-presumed link between awe and humility which bears on its moral status. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer a reconstruction of gratitude as an Aristotelian virtue. The account I propose is meant to be essentially Aristotelian although it is clearly not Aristotle’s own account. I start in section “Current Discourses on Gratitude” with an overview of recent discourses on gratitude in philosophy and psychology. I then proceed, in section “Putting the Aristotelian Pieces Together”, to spell out a formal characterisation of gratitude as an Aristotelian emotional virtue. Section “Reappraising Aristotle on (...) megalopsychia and Gratitude” pauses to explore how such a characterisation can be squared with Aristotle’s apparently unambiguous remarks about gratitude as a non-component of the virtuous makeup of the megalopsychoi. Finally, I conclude in section “Gratitude and Poetic Justice” by demonstrating the virtuosity of gratitude—what makes it intrinsically valuable as part of eudaimonia—by elucidating its association with the overarching emotional virtue of nemesis. (shrink)

Originating from philosophy and science, many different ideas have made their way into educational policies. Educational policies often take such ideas completely out of context, and enforce them as general norms to every aspect of education; even opposing ideals make their way into school’s curricula, teaching techniques, assignments, and procedures. Meanwhile, inside the actual classrooms, teachers and students are left in limbo, trying to comply with, techniques, evaluation forms and a growing technical educational vocabulary. Here I would like to propose (...) an antidote to this absurdity by reminding us what teachers and students already know. Such an antidote can be found in J. L. Austin’s speech act theory. In this paper, I propose we revisit speech act theory and treat it as an educational theory. That might help us dismantle false dichotomies troubling education for decades. The point is not that the discussion over educational policies and priorities should stop, but that it should be kept in appropriate perspective. A modified speech act theory can help us facilitate such a perspective. (shrink)

In Aristotelian virtue theories, phronesis is foundational to being good, but to date accounts of how this particularly important virtue can emerge are sketchy. This article plumbs recent thinking in Aristotelian virtue ethics and developmental theorizing to explore how far its emergence can be understood developmentally, i.e., in terms of the growth in ordinary conditions of underlying psychological capacities, dispositions, and the like. The purpose is not to explicate Aristotle, nor to assimilate Aristotelian ideas to cognitive developmental moral theorizing, but (...) to draw on both to build an independently plausible theory of practical intelligence and its development. It is argued that one fruitful direction attends to the psychology of virtues Aristotle associates with practical intelligence, including comprehension, understanding, sense, and cleverness, instead of Aristotle’s remarks distinguishing fully virtuous persons from the continent, incontinent and the many. (shrink)

ABSTRACTModern Kantians often address the conception of Kant as ‘cold hearted rationalist’ by arguing that there is a place, in Kantian moral theory, for the emotions. This theme of reconciling Kantianism with the emotions is concurrent with a recent interest, on the part of some Kantians, in issues pertaining to character education. This paper will argue that Kantianism has much to offer character education; in particular, inclusiveness of those who might have difficulty experiencing appropriate moral emotion. Nevertheless, I will argue (...) that this inclusivity can only be maintained if Kantians refrain from over-emotionalising their accounts. (shrink)

Spinoza’s claim that self-preservation is the foundation of virtue makes for the point of departure of this philosophical investigation into what a Spinozistic model of moral education might look like. It is argued that Spinoza’s metaphysics places constraints on moral education insofar as an educational account would be affected by Spinoza’s denial of the objectivity of moral knowledge, his denial of the existence of free will, and of moral responsibility. This article discusses these challenges in some detail, seeking to construe (...) a credible account of moral education based on the insight that self-preservation is not at odds with benevolence, but that the self-preservation of the teacher is instead conditioned by the intellectual deliberation of the students. However, it is also concluded that while benevolence retains an important place in Spinoza’s ethics, his causal determinism poses a severe threat to a convincing account of moral education insofar as moral education is commonly understood to involve an effort to influence the actions of students relative to some desirable goal. (shrink)

The personhood of the physician is a crucial element in accomplishing the goals of medicine. We review claims made on behalf of the humanities in guiding professional identity formation. We explore the dichotomy that has evolved, since the Renaissance, between the humanities and the natural sciences. The result of this evolution is an historic misconstrual, preoccupying educators and diverting them from the moral development of physicians. We propose a curricular framework based on the recovery of Aristotelian concepts that bridge identity (...) and activity. The humanities and the natural sciences, jointly and severally, can fulfill developmental, characterological and instrumental purposes. (shrink)

Dimensions of character are often overlooked in professional practice at the expense of the development of technical competence and operational efficiency. Drawing on philosophical accounts of virtue ethics and positive psychology, the present work attempts to elevate the role of ‘good’ character in the professional domain. A ‘good’ professional is ideally one that exemplifies dimensions of character informed by sound judgement. A total of 2340 professionals, from five discrete professions, were profiled based on their valuation of qualities pertaining to character (...) and judgement. Profile differences were subsequently examined in the self-reported experience of professional purpose towards a wider societal ‘good’. Analysis of covariance, controlling for stage of career, revealed that professionals valuing character reported higher professional purpose than those overweighting the importance of judgement or valuing neither character nor judgement, F = 7.92, p <.001. No differences were found between the two groups valuing character, irrespective of whether judgement was valued simultaneously. This profiling analysis of entry-level and in-service professionals, based on their holistic character composition, paves the way for fresh philosophical discussion regarding what constitutes a ‘good’ professional and the interplay between character and judgement. The empirical findings may be of substantive value in helping to recognise how the dimensions of character and judgement may impact upon practitioners’ professional purpose. (shrink)

The acquisition of virtue can be conceptualized as a self-regulatory process in which deliberate practice results in increasingly higher levels of skillfulness in leading a virtuous life. This conceptualization resonates with philosophical virtue theories as much as it converges with psychological models about skill development, expertise, goal motivation, and self-regulation. Yet, the conceptualization of virtue as skill acquisition poses the crucial question of motivation: What motivates individuals to self-improvement over time so that they can learn from past experience, correct mistakes, (...) and expand their ethical knowledge to new and unfamiliar circumstances? In this paper, it is argued that the motivation to increase one’s level of skillfulness in leading a virtuous life is supported by a specific identity goal, namely the goal to be a moral person. However, this moral identity goal needs to carry specific goal characteristics in order to effectively provide this motivation. It needs to be sufficiently abstract, internally motivated and promotion- rather than prevention-oriented. Research in developmental psychology suggests that the moral identity of children is rather concrete, externally motivated, and prevention-oriented. With development, higher levels of abstraction, internal motivation, and promotion-orientation gain importance providing an important motivational basis for a self-regulated process of virtue acquisition. (shrink)

This article aims to theoretically analyse so-called character friendship from the perspective of emotions. From this angle, our research enables us to distinguish different types of emotions, and we propose a conceptual model of the hierarchy of the emotions of character friendship and their influence on social behaviour. With this model in hand, the article discusses whether other-oriented emotions fully explain the emotional underpinnings of character friendship. We find other-oriented emotions to be ambiguous because they may or may not be (...) selfless. Thus we question whether these emotions can adequately explain the bonding content of character friendship. We conclude that there is a higher affective tier related to moral emotions and moral behaviour, which we have labelled the ‘bonding feeling’. This feeling is described with reference to its historical precedents (Rof Carballo’s ‘affective warp’), thus explaining its particularity. (shrink)