Moral Education And The Ethics Of Self Cultivation

Educational philosophies of self-cultivation as the cultural foundation and philosophical ethos for education have strong and historically effective traditions stretching back to antiquity in the classical ‘cradle’ civilizations of China and East Asia, India and Pakistan, Greece and Anatolia, focused on the cultural traditions in Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism in the East and Hellenistic philosophy in the West. This volume in East-West dialogues in philosophy of education examines both Confucian and Western classical traditions revealing that although each provides its own distinct figure of the virtuous person, they are remarkably similar in their conception and emphasis on moral self-cultivation as a practical answer to how humans become virtuous. The collection also examines self-cultivation in Japanese traditions and also the nature of Michel Foucault’s work in relation to ethical and aesthetic ideals of Hellenistic self-cultivation.

The aim of Ethics and Self-Cultivation is to establish and explore a new ‘cultivation of the self’ strand within contemporary moral philosophy. Although the revival of virtue ethics has helped reintroduce the eudaimonic tradition into mainstream philosophical debates, it has by and large been a revival of Aristotelian ethics combined with a modern preoccupation with standards for the moral rightness of actions. The essays comprising this volume offer a fresh approach to the eudaimonic tradition: instead of conditions for rightness of actions, it focuses on conceptions of human life that are best for the one living it. The first section of essays looks at the Hellenistic schools and the way they influenced modern thinkers like Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, Hadot, and Foucault in their thinking about self-cultivation. The second section offers contemporary perspectives on ethical self-cultivation by drawing on work in moral psychology, epistemology of self-knowledge, philosophy of mind, and meta-ethics.

Given that morality involves being a good person, an important issue for moral thinkers is moral cultivation, or our projects aimed at becoming better people. In explaining this issue, the authors collected in this book bring to bear various traditions of moral thought to address questions about what constitutes moral cultivation and what resources and methods we have at our disposal for engaging in these projects.

A concise and accessible introduction to the evolution of the concept of moral self-cultivation in the Chinese Confucian tradition, this volume begins with an explanation of the pre-philosophical development of ideas central to this concept, followed by an examination of the specific treatment of self cultivation in the philosophy of Kongzi ("Confucius"), Mengzi ("Mencius"), Xunzi, Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming, Yan Yuan and Dai Zhen. In addition to providing a survey of the views of some of the most influential Confucian thinkers on an issue of fundamental importance to the tradition, Ivanhoe also relates their concern with moral self-cultivation to a number of topics in the Western ethical tradition. Bibliography and index are included.

In this book, Ying Zhou argues that educational reform filled a critical role in bridging the precarious gap between democratic ideals and political realities in late Qing and Republican China, where institutional change in education and the cultivation of a qualified citizenry were two sides of the same coin in the development of democratic education. Through a multi-level analysis of the (re)arrangements of national education and teachings of citizenship, Zhou unravels the complex political and educational nexus in China between 1901–1937, where the hope of education was to bring both political modernity and social progress.

Nishihira Tadashi, one of Japan's leading philosophers, introduces the deeply experiential philosophy of no-mind (mushin). In everyday Japanese, mushin is when one loses oneself in the reality of the present and becomes one with it, resulting in one's best performance. However, behind this everyday use is a concept that touches the core of Japanese spirituality. This book explores no-mind in its dynamic complexity. It is both the letting go of the calculations of mind and at the same time the arising of a vibrant consciousness in unity with reality. This gives rise to various tensions: Is it about negating or affirming self? Is stillness or activity? How does it relate with social ethics, or religious transcendence? And what is stopping no-mind from descending into mere mindlessness? These tensional facets are explored through philosophy and history of thought in Japan, from pre-Buddhist Japanese thought, to Zen Buddhism in D.T. Suzuki and Toshihiko Izutsu, to swordsmanship and Noh theater. These historical approaches are brought to the here-and-now, dialoguing with psychology, ethics, and the experiences of everyday life, and ending with two preliminary practical explorations-What does it mean to care for another and to educate from the point of view of no-mind?

Though virtue ethics is enjoying a resurgence, the topic of virtue cultivation has been largely neglected by philosophers. This book features essays by philosophers, theologians, and psychologists at the forefront of research into virtue.--Publisher's description.

This collection of original essays on virtue ethics and moral education seeks to fill this gap in the recent literature of moral education, combining broader analyses with detailed coverage of: * the varieties of virtue * weakness and integrity * relativism and rival traditions * means and methods of educating the virtues The rare collaboration of professional ethical theorists and educational philosophers provides a ground-breaking work and an exciting new focus in a growing area of research.