Setting an Example: The Aesthetic Dimension of Moral Activity (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Uses of Example in Moral Education
Journal of Philosophy of Education, 1997
This article raises the problem of how to bridge the gap between moral thinking and moral life. As mediating terms between the two realms it picks out rules, skills and examples. After an introductory critique of rationalism and contextualism in ethics, the article makes a case for the uses of example in moral education in a wide sense, suggesting a poetics of ethics.
Exemplars and nudges: Combining two strategies for moral education
Journal of Moral Education
This article defends the use of narratives about morally exemplary individuals in moral education and appraises the role that ‘nudge’ strategies can play in combination with such an appeal to exemplars. It presents a general conception of the aims of moral education and explains how the proposed combination of both moral strategies serves these aims. An important aim of moral education is to make the ethical perspective of the subject—the person being educated—more structured, more salient and therefore more ‘navigable’. This article argues why and how moral exemplars and nudge strategies are crucial aids in this respect. It gives an empirically grounded account of how the emotion of admiration can be triggered most effectively by a thoughtful presentation of narratives about moral exemplars. It also answers possible objections and concludes that a combined appeal to exemplars and nudges provides a neglected but valuable resource for moral education.
Which moral exemplars inspire prosociality?
2022
Some stories of moral exemplars motivate us to emulate their admirable attitudes and behaviors, but why do some exemplars motivate us more than others? We systematically studied how motivation to emulate is influenced by the similarity between a reader and an exemplar in social or cultural background (Relatability) and how personally costly or demanding the exemplar’s actions are (Attainability). Study 1 found that university students reported more inspiration and related feelings after reading true stories about the good deeds of a recent fellow alum, compared to a famous moral exemplar from decades past. Study 2A developed a battery of short moral exemplar stories that more systematically varied Relatability and Attainability, along with a set of non-moral exemplar stories for comparison. Studies 2B and 2C examined the path from the story type to relatively low stakes altruism (donating to charity and intentions to volunteer) through perceived attainability and relatability, as we...
Importance of Examples for Moral Education (1)
The paper develops and contrasts two views about the role of examples in moral education -one based on R.M. Hare's recent "two-level" conception of moral reasoning and one based on Aristotle's conception ofphronesis. It concludes that a Harean view leads to a harmful and impoverished form of moral education by encouraging children to ignore or distort the complexity of particular moral judgments. It also concludes that an Aristotelian view, by emphasizing the importance of rich examples such as those found in literature, enables children to develop and exercise a capacity for moral judgment that is sensitive to the complexities of particular moral judgments. Finally, the role of examples in public moral education in liberal pluralist societies is examined.
Public Integrity
Discussion of moral exemplars tends to focus on individuals who occupy exalted positions, but everyday leaders and street-level bureaucrats can also be exemplars. This article uses a model of exemplar behavior based both on good character (recognizing and reflecting on ethical issues, and translating this into ethical actions) and on the more demanding high character (making a substantial contribution and being prepared to exhibit sacrifice or courage for the common good). The profile of one everyday moral exemplar is used to illustrate the argument.
The influence of models in forming moral identity
International Journal of Educational Research, 1998
Examples are an important element of traditional education. Though the examples chosen by children and adolescents are often identified as central themes in their development (especially the examples presented by the mass media we sometimes worry about), the role of examples in recent moral pedagogics and psychology has rarely been discussed. A survey of 1150 pupils in Austria and Germany suggested that young people take as their examples primarily persons from their social neighborhood and secondarily those from sports and music. From the point of view of those studied, examples can help to master the developmental tasks facing them. Since children and young people identity themselves with their examples, these become elements of their self or their identity, even their moral identity. Examples influence moral attitudes, insofar as they are perceived by the adolescents. Otto Krille, born in 1878, was a German socialist. In his autobiography, he confessed that his moral identity essentially was influenced by his mother. He appreciated her as a model of a powerful and impressive woman committing herself to the concerns of proletarians. Krille came to be an ardent advocate of the poor working class. His moral development as well as his moral identity had been formed by the example of his mother. But is such development possible in our times? When journalists write about examples and models of children and adolescents, they typically talk about stars such as Michael Jackson, Boris Becker, Madonna, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, not parents, grandparents, older siblings, priests, or teachers. Now and then, journalists draw attention to James Dean, especially his film, Rebel ¼ithout a Cause. Many adolescents proved their daring by driving their cars toward steep cliffs and some have been killed in accidents. Bandura (1963) was inspired by such events to conduct his well-known experiments on imitation and learning from models. These journalistic reports allege two issues. First, moral identity of young persons is strongly influenced by models. Young people adopt their values and frequently imitate their behavior. Second, these models are rarely persons from social nearness. Rather they are stars from movies and television, the musical scene, and sport. But is it true that young people admire such models? Which persons are the real models in young persons' lives
Social Virtues in Taking Care of the Image of Others
Academic Journal of Modern Philology, 2018
The Philosophy of Care finds in human life a sort of calling to take care of each other. This vocation for every human being is based on the vulnerability that belongs to the human condition. Among ordinary dimensions of vulnerability/care (such as eating, resting, learning, transporting, nurturing), one that is very ordinary and even broader is that of image. Theory of Politeness deals with this image care, responding to its vulnerabilities. Care is a central reality of human relationality, which requires a process of practical learning. Virtues are the concrete reality of the growth of the person. Pertinent for image care are the virtues related to truth, those related to dependence and autonomy, and the traditionally-called social virtues. After a long evolution of the latter from classical thought to the Middle Ages, it remains a system of virtues that illuminates the current way to perceive the image, its care, and the rights and duties related to image. The current propensity to safeguard goods through laws is transforming the type of "debt" that corresponds to virtues like truthfulness, liberality and affability, earlier acknowledged as being not very coercive. Leaving aside possible political proposals, this phenomenon draws attention to the deep humanity of such fields, where people sometimes presume a responsibility that presses the conscience more than duties endorsed by laws. The vocation to care transforms everybody into a caregiver, with the widest sphere in the case of the image.
In the field of character education role-modelling is advocated as an important pedagogical strategy. It is supposed that students learn from ‘significant others’ who exemplify important virtues and values. However, in these strategies it is not clear what and how students precisely can and should learn from exemplars and how the following of exemplars relates to the educational aim of ‘becoming a self.’ In this article, it is argued that modelling is only a relevant pedagogical strategy if moral exemplars are somehow related to life in its full extent, including its moral complexities and ambiguities. Understanding moral exemplarity demands not only the reappropriation of an Aristotelian conception of emulation but also an understanding of the typical modern relocation of moral exemplarity in the fullness of life, importantly originating from what Charles Taylor calls the Protestant ‘affirmation of ordinary life.’ In addition, a distinction is introduced between ‘role exemplarity’ and ‘existential exemplarity.’ Based on this distinction it is argued that emulation should not be limited to learning from role models, but should also include something that runs deeper, to the depth of our own subjectivity or self.
The Good, the Bad and the Excellent An Exploration of Moral Exemplarism Theory
Dr. Linda Zagzebski's virtue theory, Exemplarist Moral Theory, proposes that through the emotion of admiration we seek moral exemplars who we then emulate and become virtuous ourselves. It is those whom we have admiration for upon reflection that we consider to be exemplars. However, admiration is an emotion and thus is susceptible to cultural forces and other problems. My hypothesis is that if admiration is a tool that allows us to detect moral goodness, then there needs to be a natural orientation to the good that human beings naturally have. I use Thomas Aquinas moral anthropology and Philippa Foot's naturalized virtue ethics to give this claim a theoretical background. I then use this theoretical background to make arguments that will hopefully vindicate the emotion of admiration and also Zagzebski's moral theory. My research gives an overview of Zagzebski's theory, then brings up some problems with the faculty of admiration. Next, I outline Aquinas's and Foot's virtue ethics before finally applying their theories to the problems I brought up previously.