An Aristotelian Model of Moral Development

Despite the Aristotelian renaissance in the philosophy of education, the development of virtue has not received much attention. This is unfortunate, because an attempt to draft an Aristotelian model of moral development can help philosophers to evaluate the contribution Aristotelian virtue ethics can make to our understanding of moral development, provide psychologists with a potentially richer account of morality and its development, and help educators to understand the developmental phase people are in. In the article, it is argued that the Aristotelian categories of the ‘morally indifferent’, ‘un‐self‐controlled’, ‘self‐controlled’ and ‘properly virtuous’ can be interpreted as the successive stages or levels of a comprehensive developmental model. For each stage, it will be made clear whether people are committed to virtue, whether they act virtuously or not, whether they act with pleasure or pain, and which desires and reasons they have for acting. The article closes with suggestions about what needs to be done if the proposed Aristotelian account of moral development is to become psychologically more realistic and educationally useful.     

助人不乐现象归因分析与社会德育管理导向问津

中国自古就有助人为乐的高尚民风,遗憾的是,而今时有助人不乐的现象发生。究其原因,有伦理规范不整、道德教育缺失、管理监控相对滞后等诸多方面。鉴于此,明确现实社会的道德内核、加强普世伦理的宣传教育、完善道德奉献与道德回报保障机制,理应成为社会德育管理的客观选择。     

Moral beauty and education

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to rekindle a version of the age-old view that aesthetic education can contribute to the development of virtue. It proceeds as follows. First, it introduces the moral beauty view, whereby the moral virtues are beautiful, and the moral vices ugly, character traits. Second, two ways in which moral beauty and ugliness can manifest themselves are considered: in people and in artworks. Third, it is argued that character education couched partly in aesthetic terms, and coupled with the cultivation of a sensitivity to moral beauty and ugliness, promise a solid and motivationally robust anchor for moral character development. It is suggested that introducing the notions of moral beauty and ugliness in our conceptual repertoire, coupled with the presence of moral beauty in our surroundings, can undergird more traditional pathways to virtue, whilst being congenial to the maintenance of virtue. Before closing, three objections against these suggestions are addressed, and some avenues for exploring the notion of moral beauty vis-à-vis moral motivation and education are proposed.     

Art Education and the Moral Injunction to be Oneself

A primary function of schooling is to impart moral discipline, and art education distills this role to its core imperative of mandated pleasure, summarised by Jacques Lacan as the ‘will to enjoy’. This manifests in the insistence that, despite producing similar outcomes, students come to recognise themselves as unique and creative. In the twentieth century, art education in the USA has developed methods for extracting supposedly intimate personal expressions from young people, albeit without demanding the technical versatility, historical knowledge and critical reflection required of mature artists – the exception to this, despite its many flaws, being so‐called Discipline‐Based Art Education, or DBAE. In this article, I begin with reflections on the untapped potential of DBAE to relate to contemporary art practices. My ideas on moral instruction are expanded upon in the second section, when I undertake a ‘backwards’ history of British and American art education, in which the ideal of art class as a site of intrinsic and authentic meaning‐making is challenged by the functional requirements of education. My last section takes up a critique of critical pedagogy, in which I use the example of a project my high school students did about Michael Jackson to challenge ways in which trauma and pleasure are seen by critical pedagogues as features of experience that conflict fatally with the educational ends of individualist autonomy.     

法律在伦理上的“善”与“恶”

法律与伦理之间的冲突一直是理论研究者最敏感的话题,站在伦理的角度评价法律的价值,只有设想一个秩序是＂委托＂另一个秩序的,才有可能从完全相同的观点把法律和道德看作是同时有效的。法律在伦理上究竟是＂善＂的还是＂恶＂的,当法律进入道德的领域,对于那些批判则显得无辜。通过法律可以减少社会上的罪恶,可以稳定人心,可以得到伦理上的＂善＂和＂快乐＂,使得法律的工具价值得到了充分的肯定。然而多数情况下,法律与道德发生了冲突,人们更倾向于不确定论。法律在伦理上的功能分析可以更好地促进社会主义法治与德治和谐、健康发展。     

Educating children and young people with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders: constructing personalised pathways to learning

This paper reports findings from a study about young people’s preferences for social interaction with similar and different others, in terms of a tension between social inclusion and homophily – the concept that similarity breeds connection. The issue was explored empirically using moral dilemmas scenarios to conduct in-depth semi-structured interviews with young people with Asperger syndrome, visual impairment and without disabilities. The data indicates that homophily and inclusion can come into a tension with an ethical dimension, since they represent, respectively, a personal preference to be among similar others and the moral imperative of including all people. The paper argues that this tension is constructive as it can challenge our understanding of what the ethical obligation to inclusion entails, and what treating the students respectfully means. Respect is often seen as an attempt to avoid the humiliation that any kind of recognition of difference can bring, and has tended to be translated into a demand for inclusion for all. However, the recognition of difference is an acknowledgement of young people’s right to make their own decisions, and can be reflected in provision and translated into educational and life opportunities; as such, it is also an expression of respect. Negotiating a way between the two understandings through dialogue can ensure that inclusion would be a shared value.     

“德美一体”语文教学模式初探

语文教学承担着德育、智育、美育等多重育人任务。构建“德美一体”的语文教学模式,就是充分利用健康向上、包含丰富道德底蕴的文学作品,以及社会生活、文化中美好的事物来启发、诱导、熏陶学生对美好、高尚品德的向往和追求。把关育与德育相结合,把做人的道理蕴涵在具体可感的形象中,用美引善、以美诱善,使学生产生对可贵品质的敬仰、亲近、向往的情感。教师通过创设充满审美愉悦的课堂氛围激趣引思,借助美术、音乐等艺术形式丰富文学内涵,使学生在接受精神审美,享受审美带来的愉悦的同时,活跃思维,提升兴趣,使德育、智育、美育互相渗透、互相促进、协调发展。这种模式既是对提升教学有效性的有益尝试,也是对落实语文学科“文道统一”的本质的积极实践。     

“德福矛盾”问题的解析

现实生活中的＂德福矛盾＂要在制度的不完善、道德观念的转轨、公民意识的缺失以及媒体的负面引导等方面找原因。在理论上可以论证德福之间的关系是一致的,在实践上可以通过完善制度、开展荣辱观教育、提升公民意识、发挥媒体舆论的正面作用等方面解决德福之间的矛盾,实现德福一致。     

关于陆机、陆云思想中的儒玄冲突对其创作心态的影响

儒、玄文化的冲突是陆机、陆云思想矛盾的重要原因，也导致了二陆创作的复杂心态，具体表现为：追求功名与向往自由；追求仁德与及时享乐。     

The Virtue Approach to Moral Education: Some Conceptual Clarifications

There is a lot of talking and writing on virtues and education nowadays. In spite of this, a clear and convincing account of the defining characteristics of the virtue approach to moral education is still lacking. This paper suggests and discusses three different definitions of such an approach. With reference to each definition it is examined whether the virtue approach can be distinguished from other main perspectives on moral education, in particular from the so-called cognitive-developmental approach (including the just community approach). It is argued that only the definition that refers to an ethics of virtue will have the required differentiating capacity. Consequently, only on the basis of this definition can the virtue approach be regarded as a qualitatively new development in research on moral education.     

“见死不救”的道德困境:功利主义需超越的目标

"最大多数人的最大快乐"是功利主义目的论伦理学基本原则,即通过苦乐的计算,来选择行为中那些最有助于增进快乐总量的行为。然而由于功利主义原则具有内在的缺陷,容易使其在实践上陷入"见死不救"的困境。因此,只有把这种功利性的追求,建立在自身内在的目的——德性的基础之上,履行行为者自身的义务,才能走出"见死不救"的道德困境。     

亚里士多德自制概念研究

自制是亚里士多德伦理学中的一个重要范畴,亚里士多德把自制界定为处于德性和恶之间的品质,把自制作为达到德性的中间性环节。亚里士多德用他的典型的道德哲学讨论方法探讨了关于自制、不能自制与节制的区别及其疑难。亚里士多德把自制和不能自制看作是一对相反的中间品质,认为不能把它们看作与德性和恶是一回事,但又不能看作与德性和恶根本不同;亚里士多德在对知识的分析中解决了自制和不能自制的疑难,强调了自制与人的理性、正确的逻各斯的积极的联系,阐明了自制是一种好品质,它能使人们在习惯修养中达到节制的德性,并能使我们生活得好,过上幸福生活。     

庄子入世思想探析

论及庄子,世人通常以为庄子是一位遗世独立的隐士,认为其思想是出世的。然而看庄子早期的出仕和中年的游历,著书十万言,对现实的激烈批判,对伦理道德的独到见解,对至德之世的向往,对生命的留恋和对百姓的关爱,无不反映了庄子强烈的政治参与意识,显示了他热衷政治,期盼干一番事业的入世之心。     

Beyond the birds and the bees: constituting a discourse of erotics in sexuality education

A tradition of predominately feminist literature has revealed that there is a ‘missing discourse of desire’ in many sex education programmes. Building on this work, this article explores the gendered effects of this de‐eroticized and clinical form of education. It is argued that young women and men's (hetero)sexual subjectivities are differentially affected by the invisibility of desire and pleasure in this curriculum. To offer young women a sense of personal empowerment and entitlement, and young men a broader range of (hetero)sexual subjectivities, it is proposed that sex education include a discourse of erotics. This would comprise more than an acknowledgement of desire and pleasure and incorporate the embodied practicalities of these experiences. As a means of developing this discourse within sexuality programmes, empirical evidence of 17‐ to 19‐year‐olds' experiences of desire and pleasure are examined.     

The role of elevation in moral judgment

ABSTRACT

Elevation is the emotion elicited by witnessing acts of moral beauty and may be framed as the opposite of disgust. Two studies investigated the role of elevation in moral judgment and its relation to disgust. In Study 1 it was investigated whether elevation can attenuate the effects of disgust on moral transgression judgments. Participants were either induced to experience disgust (by giving them a bitter beverage), or to experience disgust and elevation simultaneously (by video induction). No effects of either emotion on moral transgression judgments were found. In Study 2 the nature of causal connectedness between elevation and moral virtue judgments was investigated by testing whether elevation amplifies moral virtue judgments. It was found that participants judged morally good acts as being more morally good when being elevated, suggesting that there is a bidirectional causal link between elevation and judgments of moral virtue.     

诺丁斯的关心理论及其对儿童道德教育的肩示

“关心他人”看起来是较为陈旧的德育内容,然而我们今天所说的“学会关心”具有更为深刻的涵义。关心是一种美德,同时更意味着一种关系。在儿童的道德教育中,通过关心关系的建立,培养儿童各方面的品质,从而促进儿童的全面发展,是当前德育的有效途径。     

Dis(en)abled: legitimating discriminatory practice in the name of inclusion?

This article explores tensions between the policies and practice of inclusion and the lived experiences of disabled young people in education. Drawing on the narratives of two young men who participated in a small pilot study, it utilises theoretical concepts related to disability, structure and agency, and power and control, as it explores the ways in which inclusion can create subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) forms of exclusion. Focusing on the young men's experiences of further and higher education, it is argued that inclusive practices and policies, however well intentioned, can create new and subtle forms of marginalisation through the structures and discourse intended to address exclusion. I conclude by questioning whether, in a diverse and disparate society, in which all our lives are defined by the extent to which we are more or less equal than others, inclusion can ever be anything other than an illusory concept.     

诺丁斯的关心理论及其对儿童道德教育的启示

“关心他人”看起来是较为陈旧的德育内容,然而我们今天所说的“学会关心”具有更为深刻的涵义。关心是一种美德,同时更意味着一种关系。在儿童的道德教育中,通过关心关系的建立,培养儿童各方面的品质,从而促进儿童的全面发展,是当前德育的有效途径。     

青少年诚信教育探微

当前面对多元化的价值选择冲突，青少年这个特殊群体中出现了诚信危机，为此青少年德育工作应该特别重视诚信教育。     

制度伦理优先性的合理性及其意义——罗尔斯政治哲学方法论研究

制度伦理优先于个人德性伦理是西方道德哲学探讨的主题,古典亚里士多德主义在德性伦理的基础上对其作了论证,近代的启蒙思想家也从社会契约论的角度对其作出了证明。然而他们都只是在形而上学的视阈下替制度伦理的优先性寻找理论支持,这是罗尔斯所不能同意的。罗尔斯从道德发生论的角度为制度伦理优先性的合理性重新作了论证,从而克服了道德形而上学传统的缺陷,这对于反思与批判个人伦理原则至上论和制度建设具有非常重要的启发意义。