Monday, September 13, 2010

Not for Profit, Episode 5: Beyond Mere Moral Education

In chapter 3 of her Not for Profit, Martha Nussbaum discusses the education of the moral and anti-moral emotions. She notes that Gandhi "understood very well that the political struggle for freedom and equality must first of all be a struggle within each person, as compassion and respect contend against fear, greed, and narcissistic aggression (p. 29)." Also, in the comments section of the first post in this series on Nussbaum's book, Michael Cholbi expressed this thought: "One topic I hope we might explore in this reading group is what pedagogically distinguishes humanistic education from 'mere' education in the humanities." In this post, I will offer some reflections on these related points.

Philosophy instructors are perhaps at their best constructing and analyzing arguments, offering objections, and raising doubts about philosophical positions. This is very important and is essential to an education in the humanities. As Nussbaum puts it, "Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior (p. 81)."  However, if this is all we do, then it seems to me that we have failed to advance from a mere education in the humanities to a humanistic education.

In my view, a humanistic education must not merely address how students think, though it must address that, but it must also engage the emotions and even the character of students. And my hunch is that this is something we (and I'm including myself here) are often not very skilled at doing. I must admit that when I seek to address the emotions of my students, or to encourage them to value and seek to acquire some particular virtue, I feel a little bit uncomfortable. Part of the challenge, I think, is to move beyond our comfort zones in this area and advocate certain human values discussed in Nussbaum's book such as respect, compassion, equality, and responsibility. Regarding this last value, I appreciated the following quotation from p. 54: "When people see their ideas as their own responsibility, they are more likely, too, to see their deeds as their own responsibility." A humanistic education will help students connect these two realms of life- their thoughts and their actions.

Here are some initial thoughts regarding how to go about humanistically educating students, drawn from Nussbaum's book as well as some of my own experiences:
  1. We should encourage our students to engage in Socratic self-examination, not just about their beliefs, but about other aspects of their character as well (pp. 47-51).
  2.  We should seek to develop the "narrative imagination" of our students. This includes cultivating sympathy and the ability to imagine what it might be like to be in another person's shoes who is very different from oneself (pp. 95-96). In a philosophy class this might include the reading of the right kind of fiction or history, or the viewing of an appropriate film. This engages students at an emotional level which may then reinforce what they are thinking about more abstractly in class. Most students don't get the emotional charge some of us do when reading Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, or _______ (insert favorite philosopher here)!
  3.  From my experience, a deeper discussion of particular virtues can be an effective and enjoyable way to seek to accomplish some of the goals of a humanistic education. I've used White's Radical Virtues in the past to foster this sort of discussion. White's book also nicely includes a discussion between each virtue and some contemporary moral issue (courage--masculine ideal, pacifism; temperance--environmentalism; justice--social justice; compassion--animal liberation; wisdom--multiculturalism). I've found that discussing what it means to be courageous, wise, compassionate, temperate, and just to be better than a protracted discussion of the categorical imperative or social contract theory.
  4. I've found that offering students a way to implement some of the material in their lives can be helpful. For example, when I teach Singer's argument that we're obligated to donate money to famine relief, most of my student are not yet convinced. However, I find that they are open to performing other actions, which I describe in class, such as visiting the Hunger Site; taking part in the ONE Campaign; or assisting the world's poor not by donating to Oxfam, but giving to Kiva.
  5. As a final suggestion, the development of philosophy courses that include a service learning component might help accomplish the sort of education I'm discussing in this post, and which Nussbaum is advocating as well.
In closing, I am arguing that we need to take the following words from Aristotle to heart and begin to try to put them into action not just in the other humanistic disciplines, but also to some extent within philosophy: 
The purpose of our examination is not to know what virtue is, but to become good...otherwise the inquiry would be of no benefit.
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If readers are interested in offering some comments related to the above, perhaps specific pedagogical practices aimed at a humanistic education rather than a mere education in the humanities is a topic worth discussing. Or maybe a discussion of some more general questions might be helpful, such as: Should philosophy instructors (and others in the humanities) be seeking to foster certain moral virtues in their students? What are the advantages of this? The dangers? Why are we hesitant to do this? If we decide to do this, which values should we emphasize?

4 comments:

  1. "We should seek to develop the "narrative imagination" of our students. This includes cultivating sympathy and the ability to imagine what it might be like to be in another person's shoes who is very different from oneself (pp. 95-96). In a philosophy class this might include the reading of the right kind of fiction or history, or the viewing of an appropriate film. This engages students at an emotional level which may then reinforce what they are thinking about more abstractly in class. Most students don't get the emotional charge some of us do when reading Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, or _______ (insert favorite philosopher here)!"

    But let's not take this too far. If every instructor in every course takes this reasoning too literally, every instructor in every course will be assigning the same readings! The individual fields will lose what makes them worth counting as individual fields.

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  2. I remain of the opinion that we ought not be in the business of cultivating any particular moral point of view (and certainly not advocating virtue theory over deontology or consequentialism). The main reason why I think this is that doing so assumes that we are privileged with respect to the truth regarding morals, ethics, the virtues, etc. I see no reason to think that we are. However, we already spend a lot of time teaching our students how to think about these issues. That is not trivial, and I think that it is humanistic rather than the mere humanities. We live in a culture in which it is polite to talk about religion and politics in public but entirely verboten to talk about values. Just getting students comfortable with moral concepts and getting them to use them in a public setting is a huge accomplishment.

    I also worry about being too literal and too contemporary with the ways in which we teach them to be good. I still believe that reading Aristotle makes you a bigger person, that reading Shakespeare exercises the kind of narrative imagination required to flourish as a human, that being literate in the arts provides one with flexibility and resilience. Perhaps most importantly, a grounding in history provides the kind of perspective necessary to a humanistic education - one that focuses less on the self and the now.

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  3. Mike: I find the same discomfort in myself.

    There are two "faces" of teaching philosophy, particularly ethics. There's the investigative face: the part you capture in terms of constructing arguments, offering objections, and the like. Then there's what we might call the developmental face: creating habits of mind, affect, belief, etc. that constitute ethically admirable character.

    Overwhelmingly we're trained so that the investigative face comes easier to us (that's the face that conducts research, etc.). But I feel the pull of the developmental face, especially when I read stuff like this:
    "Today's college students are not as empathetic as college students of the 1980s and '90s, a University of Michigan study shows. ...
    Compared to college students of the late 1970s, the study found, college students today are less likely to agree with statements such as 'I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective' and 'I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.'"
    (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/190368.php)

    But I get nervous about the developmental face and the tasks associated with it.

    First, I'm inclined to agree with Aristotle and think that we university educators are too late to the character development party. If formal education can make a character development difference, the difference will probably be made in the elementary school years, etc.

    Second, I'm not sure I'm qualified to make students more virtuous, in the way I'm qualified to show them flaws in Mill's argument for the principle of utility, say.

    Third, the 'investigator' in me reminds me that I'm not sure what virtue is. Sure, I have philosophical views about right and wrong, etc., but I don't hold these views with sufficient confidence that I'm entirely sure I should be inculcating them in my students.

    Lastly, I worry that adopting the developmental face is at odds with certain things I do value. I want my students to be intellectually and ethically autonomous. And if there are philosophical truths, I want them to discover these truths rather than being presented to them as truth. (This is one reason Nussbaum's invocations of humanistic education at Catholic universities worries me: I'm aware that the climates at such universities vary a great deal, but the philosophical education provided at such institutions is not entirely neutral, being heavily weighted toward the history of philosophy, the Thomistic and natural law traditions, etc.) I know that autonomy, a sense of discovery, etc. aren't strictly incompatible with teaching aimed at developing moral character, but making them compatible is tricky.

    So I'm on board with your suggestion that we should help students connect their thoughts and their actions. But my reservations linger.

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  4. Kris-
    Agreed. My suggestion is that instructors include some supplementary reading in these areas, or perhaps make use of an anthology which includes such things (The Moral of the Story, ed. Singer and Singer; The Moral Life, ed. Pojman and Vaughan).

    Becko-
    Perhaps you are right that we should not cultivate any particular point of view, but I think we should be make some effort to cultivate the moral point of view. This includes a focus "less on the self and the now" as you say. A discussion of individual virtues need not advocate virtue theory over its competitors, though my post sounded like this was my intention. Rather, I think a discussion of such virtues can occur in the context of all of these theories, since each of them in practice would require the agent to possess certain virtues.

    Michael,
    I share some of the same hesitations. However, what do you think about doing what we can, which may not be much, to help students cultivate what I'll just call the moral point of view (by which I mean a concern for the welfare of others, the integrity of oneself, and a willingness to put the interests of others before one's own interests)?

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