Abstract
How can we reconcile the fact that in order to act virtuously we appear to need to refer to the concept of a free will, while, at the same time, there are convincing philosophical arguments (aligned with a contemporary scientific understanding of natural causation) discrediting any viable notion of an unconstrained or uncaused will? Taking its cue from this important question, this chapter will proceed along the following lines. First, I aim to substantiate the link between contemporary character education and the concept of the free will so as to illustrate the interdependency between the two. Next, I will scrutinize the concept of a free will, raising some philosophical concerns about its validity in a contemporary educational context. This involves looking at the philosophical stakes involved in proposing a unique capacity to intervene with the causal order of nature. At this point, I will suggest that there is a way out of this conundrum, and I will continue by proposing a radically different understanding of the will, offered by the seventeenth-century rationalist Spinoza. The chapter will close by looking at some of the practical consequences of grounding contemporary character education in a Spinozistic conception of the will.
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- 1.
Correspondingly, to be able to make choices is generally taken to be what constitutes being free. For a choice to be genuinely autonomous, in turn, it is generally required that one is the cause of one’s choice. Accordingly, in the context of educational theory, Kenneth A. Strike offers the following three conditions of freedom:
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“A person must be able to do what he chooses. This includes possessing relevant abilities and skills of execution as well as not being prohibited or physically prevented from taking a chosen course of action.
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A person must possess those reasoning skills which enable him to evaluate various courses of action. This is a matter of having learned to apply those criteria relevant to making various sorts of judgments.
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A person must be psychologically constituted such that it is possible for the exercise of such reasoning skills to become the actual determinates of choice and action” (1972, p. 274).
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Stefaan E. Cuypers, for example, contends that “[t]he complementary issues of manipulation and autonomy in the metaphysics of free will cover, to a large extent, the same domain as that of indoctrination and authenticity in the philosophy of education” (2009, p. 124).
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For a helpful discussion on how the four cardinal western virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance correspond to Buddhist virtues (identifying both similarities and differences), see Keown (2007, pp. 101–104).
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For a brief overview of the shifting historical role and the recent revival of Confucianism in Chinese public education, see Wu and Wenning (2016, pp. 559–565).
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Accordingly Carr writes: “The Christian idea of the will as something which operates as an independent source of motivation and choice and which is open to the influence of good or evil is quite different in these crucial respects from Plato’s thumos and probably makes its first entrance into western thought with St Augustine” (1991, p. 37).
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Cf. Aristotle (1984), NE, Book III, 5.
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Similarly, Allen W. Wood offers the following helpful explanation of transcendental freedom: “When we think of ourselves as appearances, we are determined, but when we think of ourselves as moral agents, we transport ourselves into the intelligible world, where we are transcendentally free” (2008, p. 135).
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Authentic education, on Cuypers’ view, is conceived as “opposed to indoctrinative education” insofar as it “consists of necessary educational interferences that are conducive to the attainment of the primary educational aim of transforming children into morally responsible agents” (2009, p. 135).
- 10.
Cf. Kant 1999, A532–58/B560–86.
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Similarly, Young Pai concludes that “[t]he feeling of being able to act contrary to his [the agent’s] character may be nothing but an illusion, but it is a psychological fact” (1966, p. 143).
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Passages in Spinoza’s Ethics will be referred to using the following abbreviations: D(-efinition), p(-roposition), s(-cholium), and pref(-ace). Hence, E3p9s refers to the scholium of the 9th proposition of Part 3 of the Ethics. All references to the Ethics are to Curley’s (1985a) translation.
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References to Spinoza’s correspondence are to Shirley’s translation in Spinoza: Complete Works (2002).
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References to Spinoza’s Metaphysical Thoughts (CM) are to Curley’s (1985b) translation.
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Dahlbeck, J. (2018). Becoming Virtuous: Character Education and the Problem of Free Will. In: Smeyers, P. (eds) International Handbook of Philosophy of Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72761-5_65
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