Abstract
This paper presents a praxiological analysis of three everyday educational practices or strategies that can be considered as being directed at the moral formation of the emotions. The first consists in requests to imagine other's emotional reactions. The second comprises requests to imitate normative emotional reactions and the third to re-appraise the features of a situation that are relevant to an emotional response. The interest of these categories is not just that they help to organize and recognize the significance of what might otherwise appear to be a disparate set of ordinary moral-educational interactions between children and educators. We suggest, further, that this analysis provides some new insight into what distinguishes the broad and recurrent conceptions of moral education from one another. Rather than being straightforwardly reducible to intractable differences over core normative or meta-ethical questions they can also be seen as correlating with different suppositions about the central role of the emotions in moral life and, correspondingly, different but to a large degree compatible interpretations of what the "education of the moral emotions" primarily means.
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Notes
This is much of what lies behind the fact that rationalizations for failures to meet obligations to people in need often turn on claims about desert: the pittance paid out to recipients of social assistance is justified because such people are lazy (i.e., they could find work if they wanted to); provocative clothing worn by women who are victims of sexual harassment or assault should be considered a mitigating circumstance when assessing the degree of guilt of the male perpetrator, etc. For a general discussion of desert-based emotions see Kristjánsson (2003). On the relationship between sympathy and desert see the classic discussion in Smith (1790/1976).
Nietzsche’s moral psychology represents a rare dissenting view. See, e.g., 2003 .
This is the subject of much philosophical controversy and to elaborate on these complex issues is not relevant to the present discussion. For the purposes of our argument, it is only important that some people actually hold that the construction of moral problems, etc. draws on capacities of empathic response and not whether or not this is the case.
See Steutel and Spiecker (2004), pp. 542–543 for a detailed account of the operation of habituation.
The assumption that feelings can be avoided by avoiding the situations that cause the feelings seems to underlie the legal measure known as a “restraining orders” where men found guilty of domestic violence are legally barred from entering the proximity of their former victims and diagnosed paedophiles may not go near schools.
Other examples can be found in the teaching material comprising the well-received Second-Step anti-violence program.
Full rationality is understood in Bernard William’s (1981) broad sense of being based on no false beliefs, having only relevant true beliefs and correct deliberation.
It is also undoubtedly true that Aristotle holds that even a central role of the virtue of phronesis, practical wisdom, is the moderation of unruly emotions by way of re-appraisal. Our point in associating re-appraisal with Kant and imitation with Aristotle is not meant to deny this. Indeed, the richness of Kant’s and Aristolte’s ethics is such we have no hesitation in postulating that one will find in both their work an acknowledgement of all three ways in which emotions have moral significance which we have identified—although differences will be apparent in the fined-grained interpretation of their significance. We claim that Kant’s ethics seems to have a greater affinity with re-appraisal, and Aristotle’s with imitation, mainly because of the centrality that each thinker seems to assign to the respective role of these strategies in the achievement of their respective moral ideals. Though the issues here are of a degree of complexity which resists simple formulation, Kant is wary of more-or-less mindless habituation because it is difficult to square with his ideal of rational autonomy. For his part, Aristotle, and on this point he contrasts sharply with Kant, generally regards the conformity of actions to one’s moral obligations willingly and, in some cases, frankly enjoying it a requirement of virtue. Habituation plays a crucial role in the achievement of this ideal because in many cases—the typical example is facing the enemy courageously in battle—the only way of getting there is by de-sensitising oneself (or, depending on the case, sensitising oneself) by way of repeated experiences where one tries to performing the virtuous act virtuously. Cf. Aristotle (1955), 1103a14ff.
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Special thanks go to Tina Malti for her expert help in our attempt to situate the ideas in paper within the context of contemporary research in social psychology on emotional development and education.
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Maxwell, B., Reichenbach, R. Educating moral emotions: a praxiological analysis. Stud Philos Educ 26, 147–163 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-006-9020-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-006-9020-4