Critical Moral Thinking Or Refinement of Disposition? What Is the Aim of Moral Education?*

Epistrophè Revue d’Éthique Professionnelle en Philosophie et en Éducation. Études et Pratiques Journal of Professional Ethics in Philosophy and Education. Studies and Practices [EPREPE] vol. 2, 2018-2019 http://eprepe.pse.aegean.gr/ ISSN: 1234-5678-9000 Critical moral thinking or refinement of disposition? What is the aim of moral education?* Raisonnement moral critique ou raffinement de la disposition? Qui est le but de l’éducation morale? Eleni Kalokairinou Department of Philosophy and Education Aristotle University of Thessaloniki In the present paper I examine the possibility of moral Dans cet article, J’examine la possibilité de l’éducation education. It is pointed out that, even though religion is morale. Je souligne que, quoique la religion est officially taught in primary and secondary education, this is officiellement enseignée à l’éducation primaire et not the case with ethics and moral education. I then secondaire, la situation est complètement différente avec explore the kind of moral education we should offer the l’éthique et l’éducation morale. Le but de mon article est youth in the likely event that ethics is officially introduced d’explorer le genre de l’éducation morale que nous in primary and secondary education. We examine R.M. devrons offrir aux jeunes personnes dans le cas où Hare’s claim that moral education involves teaching the l’éthique est officiellement introduite à l’éducation young men the moral language and moral thinking and primaire et secondaire. J’examine la thèse que R. M. Hare reasoning, and we find his suggestion lacking in certain soutient que l’éducation morale contient l’enseignement important respects. On the contrary, we come up with the de la langue morale et du raisonnement moral. Nous suggestion that Aristotle and Kant hold that moral considérons que cette thèse est faible. Au contraire, notre education consists in both: making young students more proposition suit la thèse d’Aristote et de Kant que competent to think and reason morally and at the same l’éducation morale comprend à moins deux choses: time cultivating their feelings and dispositions and refining enseigner les jeunes étudiants à raisonner moralement their characters in such a way as to sympathize d’une manière critique, mais aussi les enseigner à adoucir compassionately with the others’ misfortunes. leurs moeurs et leurs dispositions de façon qu’ils puissent sympathiser compationnellement avec les misères des Keywords: Moral, universal prescriptivism, utilitarianism, autres. act, agent, virtue, Aristotle, Kant. Mots–clés: éthique, éducation morale, prescriptivisme universel, utilitarisme, action, vertu, Aristote, Kant. Eleni Kalokairinou: Critical moral thinking or refinement of disposition? What is the aim of moral education? Even though religious education, mainly in primary would violate the principle of neutrality, which is the and secondary education, has engaged the Greek only one which is accepted by liberal democracies, or thinkers and politicians quite a lot, however, moral it would violate the equal respect which we should education, and by and large aesthetic education, attribute to different moral principles 3 . As a seems not to have engaged them or bothered them consequence, the question with which we will deal in at all. Having said that, we must underline that we the present article is, of what kind the moral notice nowadays phenomena or incidents of violence education of young people should be, or how, in what and barbarism among the young people, students or way do we educate young students, when we claim non-students, and quite often actions of indecency1. that we educate them morally? However, contemporary researchers and As we argued on another occasion, we must philosophers of education acknowledge the emphasize that when we educate morally young imperative need for moral education of young people people, we must be careful not to slip into any kind of and for the cultivation of a sense of beauty in them. dogmatism or propaganda4. Following in this the Vassiliki Karavakou, for example, in one of her articles British philosopher of the 20th century R.M. Hare, we recognizes that «the established education seems to contend that moral dogmatism has nothing to do remain indifferent as to how we educate young with either the method or the content of education5. people in human rights, disregarding to a great On the contrary, it has to do rather with the aim of extent the importance of moral education» 2 . education (and in particular of moral education). Certainly, academic courses which aim at the moral Whereas the teacher aims with his teaching to teach education of students would raise a lot of questions the youth to think critically whether about issues of and cause a lot of irony and laughter nowadays, in the science, or about topics of religion, morals or politics, era of liberalism and democracy. We should and to reach the conclusions to which his reasoning emphasize that in the contemporary liberal leads him, the person who thinks in a dogmatic democracies moral education cannot promote certain manner, the propagandist, aims to teach the young values rather others nor a certain notion of good man his own views, whether scientific, religious, rather another. And this is because in this way it moral or political, and to make him adopt the very *Dedicated to the memory of my good friend and same beliefs that he supports6. In this way, as Hare colleague Vassiliki Karavakou. 1 I have in mind the instance of the student who, according to the news, ejaculated at the back of the female student 3 Καλοκαιρινού Ε., «Η αναγκαιότητα της δια βίου ηθικής who was studying at the University library. διαπαιδαγώγησης στη σύγχρονη φιλελεύθερη κοινωνία», in: Καραβάκου, Β., (ed.), Η φιλοσοφία ως διάσταση και 2 Καραβάκου, Β., «Φρόνηση και μετασχηματιστική προοπτική στη δια βίου μάθηση, op.cit., p. 174. μάθηση: μια πρόκληση κοινή για την ηθική μάθηση και τη δια βίου εκπαίδευση», in: Καραβάκου, Β., (ed.), Η 4 Ιbid., p. 174. φιλοσοφία ως διάσταση και προοπτική στη δια βίου μάθηση, Θεσσαλονίκη: εκδόσεις Πανεπιστημίου 5 Ιbid., pp. 174-175. Μακεδονίας, 2018, p. 155. 6 Ιbid., p. 176. 2 Eleni Kalokairinou: Critical moral thinking or refinement of disposition? What is the aim of moral education? points out, whereas the teacher withdraws from the himself, who was a prisoner of war in 1942, after the scene, as soon as the young man has been taught to fall of Singapore, sensed all the atrocities that took think critically and to decide for himself, the place during the war. And he concluded that it was a propagandist does not leave the scene as long as the period during which all human values had lost their young man has difficulties in obeying and following meaning. Morality, the cohesive web of societies, was his views7. lost. And he realized that if we wanted to reverse the situation, we had to create the values right from the Consequently, Hare in his work has made it a point to beginning. Of course, the question that arose then bring out the importance of moral language and to was: on what did we have to base our values if we develop a theory of moral thinking. According to his wanted them to be objective and universal? As a view, moral education includes precisely this: the consequence, Hare had to try hard to find the answer learning of moral language. As he contends, to this question even from the days he was a prisoner nowadays we are quite often led to the acts of of war and was sent to compulsory work on the violence and to the atrocities we are led, because we Burma railway9. have not learnt to employ the moral language properly, because we have not assimilated moral While a prisoner of war, during his free time he did thinking. We often reason on the basis of «of what quite a lot of thinking. And he concluded that values we want to do» and not on the basis of «what we can be based on language, that language was the ought to do». This means that we think in an egoistic common feature shared by all men. He also claimed manner, in a way which is pre-rational and pre-moral. that if we wanted to base human values on In the British philosopher’s opinion, moral thinking is something objective, that was shared by all men, this not something innate but it is being learnt within had to be language. Consequently, he proceeded to society. If this did not happen, then we would have analyze moral language and to offer a logical account remained wild beasts, and the establishment of of it. His aim was to show that by starting from the human societies would have been impossible8. logical analysis of moral language, we can work out and develop a moral account which would help us in This is precisely what happened during the Second answering the questions and in solving the problems World War. Human beings turned into beasts and we face in our everyday life. started killing and effacing one another. As there were no values to retain them, human societies lost He therefore argues that the two logical features of their cohesion and were gradually destroyed. Hare moral language are prescriptivity and universalizability. According to the first logical 7 Ibid., p. 174. And Hare, R., M., «Adolescents into Adults», in: Hare, R., M., Essays on Religion and Education, Oxford: feature, when I utter the moral judgement, «I ought Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. 113-130, particularly p. 130. 8 Ιbid., p. 174. And Hare, R., M., «Adolescents into Adults», 9 Hare, R., M., «Why I am only a Demi-Vegetarian?», in: op. cit., p.

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