This chapter explores some central features of morality in terms of what are commonly regarded as virtues. A virtue is a disposition that is an important feature of one’s character. As such, a virtue endures over an extended period of time, not just for a brief moment. Still, a virtue such as honesty implies its regular exercise. However, one can occasionally behave dishonestly without this undermining its standing as one’s virtue. The notion that some emphasis on basic moral virtues should be included in K-12 and college education has long received strong public support. However, there has also been widespread disagreement about just how this should be done and with what ends in mind. Presumably, some general uncertainty, if not disagreement, about the nature and foundation of morality accounts for much of this. This uncertainty is discussed in terms of reasonableness.

Kant’s contribution to moral education is deep, wide, and operates at several levels, including moral theory, the theory of judgment (both theoretical and moral), ethics and politics, anthropology, and culture. Kant’s pedagogy runs through his “system,” including the three Critiques but also his articles and books detailing empirical concerns, such as, for example, his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. The scholarship on Kant’s notion of education is equally broad and discusses each and all these themes. A taste of the range of scholarship is provided to the reader who is unfamiliar with the literature on Kant’s pedagogy and the role of it in his theoretical, moral, ethical-political, and cultural accounts. This will extend from a broad introduction of the scholarship to specific scholars and their respective accounts. Finally, five questions bearing on Kant’s account of education and its relationship to his other works and for present circumstances are drawn as indications for future scholarly directions.

Care ethics is a relational approach to moral education and learning to care is a critical educational aim. Research on care ethics in practice in educational settings has clarified what it means to care for students and has led to critiques that inform what care might look like in practice across differences, such as race, class, and gender. In light of these movements in care ethics, a current societal moral dilemma, the global teacher exodus, is examined as a failure to care for teachers so that they might care for students.

The theme of recognition is one of the most intensively discussed topics in the humanities and social sciences in the last decades. This chapter discusses its relevance for moral education. We begin with two examples illustrating lack of recognition in the school class, one concerning cultural difference and the other economic and social inequality. Secondly, we introduce the idea of recognition, its importance for individual and social life and some basic ways to think about its various forms. Thirdly, we discuss some specificities of school education that are necessary to bear in mind when applying the concept of recognition in this context. Finally, we tie these conceptual and theoretical considerations back to the two examples and show how a recognition-theoretical perspective can helpfully illuminate them. The conclusion summarizes our most important findings.

This chapter proposes a way of thinking about virtue theory that draws from Aristotle and Alasdair MacIntyre, but also moves beyond them. The central question is what a virtue theory might look like which is not universalistic, but rather culturally inclusive, pragmatic, and situational. A theme throughout is the importance of thinking about education as the process through which virtues are formed, sustained, and improved over time.

In this chapter, I argue that when common school teachers engage in moral education under conditions of deep disagreement, they cannot live up to liberal standards of justice. These standards demand that teachers treat a wide range of moral beliefs fairly. In practice, teachers who engage in moral education cannot avoid stigmatizing a range of students who hold legitimate moral beliefs. In support of this claim, I present a common approach to moral education that I regard as most likely to meet liberal standards of justice. I then argue that under conditions of deep disagreement, even the most skilled and well-intentioned teachers could not have the time or resources to treat all of their students’ views fairly. Finally, I suggest ways that teachers can mitigate the problem, in the hope that others will find better solutions.

In this chapter, I argue that the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche is of central importance to the theory and practice of moral education in the 21st century. To make this case, I examine an oft-neglected text of Nietzsche’s early philosophical work: Schopenhauer as Educator. I argue that this text advances a theory of moral education with three key components: (i) a view about the particular cultural context of moral education in modernity, (ii) a conception of the proper aims of moral education, and (iii) an account of the appropriate pedagogical methods of moral education. I then discuss the kind of theory Nietzsche advances. I show that Nietzsche’s theory fits within a broadly exemplarist outlook, though it expands the standard theory and practice of exemplarist moral education in important ways. I argue that Nietzsche’s theory of moral education suggests two novel forms of exemplarist motivation – self-exemplarism and fallibilistic exemplarism – and further specifies the psychological conditions for moral aspiration and transformation to occur in educational spaces.

In this chapter, I outline Aristotle’s theory of moral education and the central role friendships can play in the cultivation of virtue in students. I pay special attention to what are referred to as friendships of virtue, or perfect friendships, or character friendships. I examine the necessary connection Aristotle sees between virtue and a flourishing life, as well as how Aristotle believes virtue is developed in human beings. Then, I discuss the way friendships can contribute to the virtue-formation process. Finally, after examining Aristotle’s theory of friendship I discuss the implications of his theory for contemporary educational settings, and I make a case for how educators might encourage moral growth in their students by helping them develop the right kinds of friends.

Moral education is an unavoidable aspect of classroom interactions between teachers and students. Every decision teachers make about their educational practice is colored by the moral and cultural environment in which they teach. Not only are contemporary classrooms infused with moral, cultural, and personal values, but contemporary life is rife with moral hazards that urge us to prepare the youth appropriately for their particular challenges. In this introductory chapter, we discuss some of these hazards and outline how the present volume provides various theoretical and conceptual resources for addressing them. In addition, we give an overview of the other important topics discussed in this volume. These topics include neo-Aristotelian, postclassical, neo-Kantian, and care-based ethics and their role in reconceiving the aims and methods of moral education, as well as new perspectives on moral education that have grown out of the capability approach to democratic justice and recognition theory.

In this chapter, I offer some of the reasons to think that Plato has a substantial contribution to make to contemporary thinking about moral education. To allow a sense of how wide the range of reasons is, I start by listing ten miscellaneous reasons that one can compellingly offer, some of which scholars have offered. Then I present my preferred reason, which involves a way of approaching Plato that is new and unorthodox. When you approach Plato this way, you don’t try to interpret him correctly. Instead, you use his writings simply as a tool for theorizing, and what you theorize about is how best to carry out the Socratic project of leading other people to self-examination.

This chapter focuses on the relationship between consent and the moral educational aims of the liberal state. Consent is oft-cited as a condition for the legitimate use of coercive state power. Moral requirements are generally non-coercive on the face of it; nobody has the right to rule over our conscience. Curiously, liberal states often see the moral formation of citizens as subject to political requirements (e.g. compulsory civic education). How does the consent condition bear on these requirements? The general argument is that reasons for withholding consent to a liberal state moral education are often motivated by a specific worry about the relationship between morality and political authority, that is, that such authority will have undesirable downstream effects on these norms and attitudes. The chapter characterizes this worry in philosophical terms and proposes a solution in the form of a consent standard specific to the justification of a liberal state education.

Abstract: Moral growth is an evolutionary process, for both the individual and the society. Democracy requires a certain kind of respect that is different from the expression of respect called for in other settings. Here, an object of respect is the capacity of the individual and the society to shape their own development and to determine their own idea of a good life. This calls for an education that aims to promote self-consciousness about existing and emerging possibilities and that enables rising citizens, both as individuals and as part of collective enterprises, to recognize their capacity for growth.

Both democratic education and moral education have significant formative components. That is to say, educators in both domains are concerned not only with imparting knowledge and understanding and equipping pupils with skills and competences, but also with cultivating dispositions and attitudes. A central aim of democratic education is to dispose children toward democracy and a central aim of moral education is to make children moral. My particular interest in this chapter is in how we should understand the relationship between these two formative projects. Is the cultivation of democratic dispositions and attitudes an exercise in moral formation? Are democratic educators, to that extent at least, also moral educators?

Covers the last century of the school’s activity, including lesser-known figures such as Euphrates, Hierocles, Cleomedes, Philopator and Aurelius Heraclides, as well as Marcus Aurelius. Emphasizes the amount of activity in physics and logic as well as in ethics.

The chapter is devoted to the work of Posidonius in all its aspects and argues that he created a second major synthesis of Stoic thought, expanding the school’s attention to the sciences and history while making innovations in logic, physics and ethics. Argues that Posidonius was a more conservative Stoic than is often thought.

Representative selections from the Discourses, the Handbook and some fragments.

Chapter 1 examines the moralization of work and stigmatization of laziness in the works of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ottoman moralists between the first and the second constitutional period (the 1870s to 1908). At the center of this chapter are Ottoman morality texts, a genre, yet to be fully explored, reconfigured in the nineteenth century. These texts articulated many emerging discourses and anxieties of the Ottoman reform period on a normative level. After an overview of the question of laziness in Ottoman thinking, attention is drawn to how a novel kind of knowledge was produced in the field of morality, expressing a new subjectivity in relation to modern citizenship; the normative nature of morality texts and the way these texts moralized, nationalized, and even Islamized productivity is then studied. Ottoman moralists identified certain beliefs and practices as handicaps for productivity and declared them un-Islamic and antithetical to progress. This chapter rethinks the construction of morality and Islamic knowledge in modern times, by examining deontological discourses on work that later produced the neologism of the “Islamic work ethic.”

This essay explores the views of Neoplatonic commentators (e.g. Proclus and the anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy) on the relation between Plato’s ethical philosophy and the literary format of the Platonic dialogue. It focuses in particular on the role of visualisation in the process of moral education. The Neoplatonists praise Plato’s dialogues for their 'vividness' (enargeia). They hold that the vivid depiction of good characters (e.g. Socrates) promotes imitation of similar manners, whereas the equally vivid depiction of bad characters (e.g. the ambitious Alcibiades) invites critical self-examination. The Neoplatonists develop their view in part in response to the Stoics, who had argued that moral education should be restricted to the teaching of bare moral rules. The difference between the Stoic and Platonic view on the importance of literature in moral education can be explained from their differing views on the constitution of the human soul. Whereas (most) Stoics hold that the entire soul is rational, the Platonic tradition acknowledges the non-rational aspect of the human soul and holds that moral education should address both the rational and non-rational. Modern psychological research corroborates the Platonic position on the human soul and the need for (literary) examples in moral education.