Care about the virtue moral education.doc

1、Care about the virtue moral educationAbstract: We have got used to take the moral only as the external manipulation of community to individual consciousness and behavior, for it has been long based on the rule ethics that has inherent limitations. And this made moral education showing a demoralizati

2、on and dehumanization tendency, and alienation into some corresponding dilemma like rules indoctrination and training. To perspective the gist that the virtue ethics rejects the normative ethics, we can know the revival of virtue ethics has profound requirements to the moral education. That is conte

3、mporary moral education return to virtue ethics calls for the shaping of virtue, and it is the practical needs of overcoming the theoretical dilemma of rule ethics, and also the inevitable requirement of its return to its own authentic. Key words: Moral education, Rule, Virtue ethics, Care of virtue

4、 Fund project：This thesis is the phased result of “the study of western virtue ethics“ supported by national social science funds. 1. Real Difficulties of Moral Education To certain extent, moral philosophy influences and determines the specific state of existence of moral education. Making further

5、exploration into the moral philosophy background behind moral education is fundamental to comprehending and uncovering the illness of moral education. Therefore, to deal with the real difficulties of moral education, we must first go back to the ethical view, and discuss the internal limitation of r

6、ule ethics which is the foundation of moral education. However, people of ethics all know, that for the two major types of rule ethics the consequentialism stressing effects and the kantian deontology encouraging no-purpose, they are striving to mix different moral rules according to conceit and eve

7、n perfect rational objective logic, trying to make morality into a kind of rigid and general legal rule, a consistent system, by which to establish a set of universal rules that can be applied in the whole society. Among this “rule” is based on the assumption of self-absract anthroposophy, which the

8、n bring out certain “rule”, making valid or invalid judgment to whether this behaviour correspond to this rule, showing a kind of “consistent” principle of cognition. 1p(63-68) The result is the disappearance of humanity caused by regularization. Furthermore, in behaviour guidance this rule ethics w

9、ill, make people live for nonego, or for rules (responsibility). The starting point and objective is nothing but establishing rules for behaviour. According to this logic, the meaning of morality for human lies in obedience to rules, as rules reflect the value of morality. From another perspective,

10、the value of morality attaches to the formal rules, while rules always exist in a stationary and inconsistent way. Hereby, moral value becomes an inconsistent steady value, and its carrior becomes depersonalized. That is, rational conceit leads to general guidance for behaviour only in the way of ru

11、les, but never noticed the subject or behaver doing this behaviour, having this motivation and following this rules, in which no specific context, history or individual has appeared, hereby losing the concern for subject. In Macintyres view, since modern times, due to abandoning of Aristotles philos

12、ophy, moral construction has evolved into argument to moral rules. The result is that morality only means obedience to rules, that is, the so-called “rule morality”. Obviously, this regularized morality has the tendency of instrumentalizing morality. Such a abstract and sere theory lacking and isola

13、ting subject, on how to treat people, “in Tuorhes words, under the tyranny of principle, man disappears. Living according to consequentialism/utilitarianism and deontology means only caring about principle, rules and obligation, instead of real man”. Or in other words, “only see rules but man”, and

14、morality hereby becomes irrelevant thing to “man”. Beyond all doubt, the consequence of the above mentioned ethical logic is the depersonalization of moral values carrier, disappearance of the real meaning of moral education or deficiency of subject, and isolation of individual moral consciousness a

15、nd value identification. This determines that the moral education based on it will necessarily come upon some real difficulties: on one hand, significance of morality is arrogated, and moral education can easily become rootless. This is because that no matter in what way the morality taught in the m

16、oral education exist, the focus is that morality becomes important only because of rules instead of individuals. From this perspective, moral education is to make the educated understand, accept and abbey these rules. Moral education then becomes rule education inevitably. Rule education replaces mo

17、ral education, which actually makes rule into morality. Hereby, the man taught by moral education is not moral man but rule man, or the one wanted by political power holders. Finally, moral education can easily change into instrumental existence and lose its direction, which will not get reasonable

18、defense on the meaning of noumenon. On the other hand, isolation of morality with man results in the separation of moral education to subject in methodology. As the carrier of moral value is not man, its conclusion in methodology will necessarily alienate from mans subjectivity. In fact, the alienat

19、ion of morality and education caused by rule ethics mainly find its expression in the methodology guiding moral reasoning and judgment, that is, moral rules become objective and hereby separate the internal connection between morality and man as the carrier of moral significance. As for certain mora

20、l philosophy, “if there exists such kind of methodology, pass this methodology on to all man of part of them. Cultivation of intension of living according to the conclusion of this methodology in our mind must be the fundamental purpose of moral education.” 3p(365) Any moral philosophy in its method

21、ology always implies certain moral education philosophy or contents containing moral education significance. From this, based on the methodology of rule ethics, morality for man actually becomes an external means instead of the ultimate meaning pursued by man, thus moral education is not the “moral

22、education” teaching man how to behave. In general, based on the logic of rule ethics, regarding rule as the carrier of moral value can avoid moral reasoning and judgment guided by personalistic good and evil. This will inevitably make it hard for morality and education to connect with each other, th

23、us causing the alienation of education and morality. In other words, without moral value as the carrier, it is impossible to make further scientific attendance to the intrinsic humanity with morality and its education. This is because it makes us difficult to make scientific philosophical ontology p

24、osition to “morality”. “If moral education doesnt have a scientific philosophical ontology position, moral education cannot facilitate humanity to develop into an ideal state. Moral category and moral laws cannot be deduced from the truth theory about humanity, or declared as proper or duty-bound by

25、 appealing to humans substantive characteristics.” 4p(83-89) Humans moral education practice has actually proved that, the distorted and even wrong philosophical ontology understanding to morality is the fundamental reason for moral education to be baseless, thus losing reality and its due education

26、al effect and authority. 2. Moral Education Requires Model of Virtues Now that the predicament faced by the moral education cannot be solved by drawing up the codes of ethics, it is necessary to find out the new standpoint of the moral education-virtue ethics. In fact, virtue ethics has a long histo

27、ry, but was neglected since modern era. One of the important reasons of its revival is the big flaws in deontology and consequentialism which are main forms of Modern Ruleethics. And the flaws include the emphasis of action, the overlook of quality, the insolubility of the problems under specific co

28、ntexts by the general principle etc. 5p(13) As the revival of the classical virtue ethics, the works of G.E.M.Anscombe is the advances in contemporary moral theories. We will not discuss this point here. I want to say that, “The common belief about virtue ethics is that it will not tell us what shou

29、ld to do. This belief is something that just is indicated in an expressive hypothesis. In a another word, virtue ethics centering on human/ action body not action should focus on being rather doing, the good (bad) quality rather the proper (improper) conduct. And at the same time, it should also put

30、 its attention to think “which kind of people I am” not “what I should do”. 6P(17) All of these are the general features of the contemporary virtue ethics. However what is virtue? As the Professor Jiang Chang said, “Virtue is the fundamental requirement of human nature that makes people seek a bette

31、r living by their own senses or wisdoms. It is likely to make people live better and affect humans activities by the mental orientation, thus leading human and humans activities to being of good qualities- the qualities of ethics.” And virtue has features of tendency, intentionality, multiple dimens

32、ions, unity and universal application. 7 p(30-39) From the standpoint of virtue ethics scholars, it is the simple and mechanical understanding of human morality to stipulate the human action/behavior as the moral rules by rule ethics. But in fact, “when dealing with practical matters, the philosophe

33、rs with the complicated ethic rules is not wiser than doctors, policemen and other people. 8P(6) In another word, it is the morals not the rules to evaluate the suggestions for difficulties. A person of high moral standard, tender and compassion has the ability to make the correct decision without t

34、he rules. And the person with high moral standard is the one who is free of the moral rules. 9P(13)As the American ethicist Pitchum said : “ In the moral life, most of the people is likely to consider the factors of credibility , integrity, goodness and real feelings, not the principles and rules.”

35、10P(26) Virtue ethics puts much attention to virtue and well-being of people. All various researches centering on virtue is trying to prove the basis of ethics is the human itself. And in virtue ethics, ethics comes back to be on action body. The throwback of the research subject shows that the mora

36、ls not only are the public rules, but also include the moral characters and ideals that the individual can accept voluntarily and the moral emotions. Differing from rule ethics, virtue ethics focuses on the action body and does not make use of the topic of the action body to develop rule (virtue) et

37、hics. It regards the action bodies as a unit of human nature and offers a pre-moral basis for the action. 11P(63-68) That is the direction all virtue ethicists are dedicated to. As were mentioned above, the moral education should be built on the foundation of the moral philosophy that emphasizes per

38、sonalities as the carrier of moral values and is just virtue ethics. Only in this way can ethics and education get the perfect integration of noumenon (本体) and methodology so as to solve the theoretical difficulties of rule ethics. And regarding the personalities as the carrier of ethics is the rest

39、oration of the moral values dynamic features and the reflection of the action bodys(主体) value. So the of the education is the people and the formation of virtue rather than the impartment of the rules. Put it simply, ethics and the moral education is to teach people how to behave. It means ethics is

40、 not only the existence of the static value but also the expression that the action body actively pursues the dynamic value. The education in ethics is to make people obey the moral rules and make the pursuit become a moral existence. In another words, the real moral education is to develop the peop

41、les virtue and convert what we “should” do to what we “could” do. And this conversion is the transformation process of static values to dynamic values as well as the discovery process of the moral meaning. Apparently, virtue ethics puts its emphasis on the personalitys bearing of the moral meaning.

42、In the moral practice, the moral education supported by virtue ethics gets the humans subjectivity fully played. Meanwhile the people can discover and experience the moral meaning for human. 12P(34-36) When the moral rules have not integrated with the humans mind, ethics is just the code of social conduct that restrains the peoples behaviors. And the essential attribute of ethics is the rules. However, when the