Abstract
This chapter is about one single question: What reasons could there be to make use of the concept of “ethos” in a pedagogical context? What difficulties would we encounter? And what would we gain with it? Ethos has two meanings: (a) a collective one in the sense of the community spirit and the generally accepted norms in a group or an institution; (b) an individual one, as the modes of behaviour of a person considered to be virtuous. Ethos in the collective sense has in school-research proofed to be the central trait that turns a school into a good school. Virtue education respectively Character education, however, must be regarded as a failure for moral-philosophical and for empirical reasons. Virtues do not help when it comes to the question of what we should do in a particular situation, and virtue education cannot begin until the question of the right action has already been answered. However, also an education based solely on action and aimed at promoting moral judgment is in turn insufficient. It is dependent on a lived-in collective ethos and must itself have such an ethos as its goal. The model for this is still Kohlberg’s just-community approach.
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Notes
- 1.
Aristoteles, Eth. Nic. 1103 a 32ff.
- 2.
cf. Cicero, De orat. II, 201
- 3.
In particular, the professional ethos of teachers has attracted attention in recent pedagogical research. (cf. Oser, 1998)
- 4.
- 5.
v. Hentig, H. in: Rutter (1980), S. 23.
- 6.
Cf. Hügli (2004), Sp. 603–605
- 7.
Benner u.a. (1978), S. VIII f.
- 8.
Brumlik (2002).
- 9.
- 10.
The anthology by Klaus Peter Rippe and Peter Schaber (1998) provides a good insight into this debate.
- 11.
Schleiermacher (1957), S. 428
- 12.
- 13.
This distinction runs along the line drawn by G. Ryle (1949), p. 42, with his distinction between “habits” and “intelligent capacities”.
- 14.
Aristoteles, Eth. Nic. 1106 b 36–1107 b 3.
- 15.
Thus, if Aristotle says about justice that within the rights of a polis (to politikon dikaion) there is not only a conventional (nomikon), but also a “natural” (physikon) part, which “has the same authority everywhere and does not depend on the opinion of the people” (Eth. Nic. 1134 b 18–20).
- 16.
Aristoteles, Eth. Nic. 1105 b 9–18
- 17.
Here Philippa Foot claims that good virtue in itself can turn into something bad in certain persons, much like a remedy that under certain circumstances can be poison (Foot (1978), pp. 16–18).
- 18.
Here lies the notorious weak point not only with the Aristotelian (see Aristotle, Eth., Nic., 1105 b 5–7), but also with every other virtue ethic. (Cf. Horster (2005), p. 649)
- 19.
A way out might be to attribute to the virtues not an external, but an internal, a “spiritual” action, as Plato seems to do with respect to the righteousness of the soul as an internal balance of the soul-parts. The unsolved problem is merely: How do we recognize – be it from the outside or the inside perspective – the correctness of these inner actions. See also on this problem Louden (1998). Also, more in the text.
- 20.
Kant (1907), S. 23, Anm. 2
- 21.
a.O. S. 24, Anm.
- 22.
Kant (1903), A 551, B 579, Note. Kant meets here with the equally decided skepticism of Thomas Aquinas: “The motions of the interior, however, which remain hidden, are not subject to the judgment of man, but only the outer actions that appear visibly. And yet to complete the virtues it is required that man ought to be right in both kinds of actions.” (Thomas v. Aquin, Summa Theologica I–II, q.91, a. 4)
- 23.
In order to be able to secure this hypothesis, which is not further substantiated here for reasons of space, a more detailed discussion of further possible alternatives would be required, in particular the Value Clarification Approach, which emerged from the “Romantic educational philosophy” and its psychological theories (see the overview in Hügli (2004), Sp. 602–605). The weakness of all these programs is their inherent ethical relativism, which is morally untenable and in the way of any meaningful action orientation.
- 24.
See, for example, the knowledgeable study by Lutz Koch (2003)
- 25.
On the problem of a teacher training aimed at teachers’ virtues, cf. Hügli (1999), S. 132–138.
- 26.
See for examlpe Gertrud Nunner-Winkler (1998)
- 27.
A good exposition of this dilemma, related to Kohlberg’s program of development of moral judgment, is given by Peters (1981)
- 28.
Rousseau, for example, with his idealization of ancient Sparta, or Hegel, who – well Aristotelian – sees the best path of “pedagogy” as the “art of making people moral”, in making them “citizens of a state of good laws.”, i.e. to insert them into the moral substantiality of “a world of the objective mind”, and thus to ensure that “this spiritual (Geistige)” becomes “habitual” in them (Hegel (1928), § 153, S. 303, § 151, supplement, S. 302.)
- 29.
Habermas (1971), S. 107–126.
- 30.
v. Hentig (1993), S. 224.
- 31.
cf. Hare (1981), pp. 107–116.
- 32.
Cf. in an elaborate form Hare (l981), p. 44–64.
- 33.
However, such internalized rules are nothing other than what in the old tradition were called virtues: To be just or fair is to follow the principle of justice or fairness (see Peters (1981), p. 313).
- 34.
Kohlberg (1987), S. 40.
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Hügli, A. (2021). Ethos and Moral Education: Critical Comments on Virtue Ethics and Virtue Education. In: Oser, F., Heinrichs, K., Bauer, J., Lovat, T. (eds) The International Handbook of Teacher Ethos. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73644-6_7
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