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Example research essay topic: Cambridge Cambridge University Moral Education - 1,191 words

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... intense begins with the very first inklings of pleasure. Only by consolidating desire with the good can conflict be averted. What can educators today learn from Aristotle's analysis of arabia? Can the teaching of ethics really help students act on the virtues they espouse and thereby cleanse the business world of its shady dealings? How might such an education proceed?

What might be its limits? Clearly, Aristotle would say, ethics classes for conflicted business-people offer too little too late. These classes can echo the good which students already acknowledge. But they cannot insure ethical conduct, much less assuage the conflict of arabia. Our students may know the good; they may even agree that the good should be followed. Insofar as they are conflicted, however, the good remains extrinsic to how students see themselves.

They thus are neither invested in the good nor motivated internally to pursue it. Unless students already are disposed to behave as virtuous persons, no amount of reflective analysis can persuade them to act on their knowledge. Aristotle would have us begin moral instruction when children are very young. Three features distinguish education on Aristotle's model. First, instruction would not engage students in analyses of ethical dilemmas.

It rather would focus on children's natural desire for pleasure, striving to harmonize the pursuit of pleasure with the pursuit of virtuous ends. The presumption is that desires can indeed be disciplined; they are no less subject to considered control than the faculty of reason. The focus on pleasure, Aristotle continues, serves a specific purpose. Objects that are a source of pleasure are taken into oneself. By identifying the good with desire, children come to internalize it; to act virtuously thereby becomes part of the child's self-image. Moral education on Aristotle's model thus does not stop with conduct: it strives instead to cultivate character, to develop children who see themselves as persons who pursue the good out of passionate commitment.

Finally, Aristotle would remind us that moral education does not occur in a vacuum. It takes place, rather, within the parameters of social values and norms. Without these norms, educators have no guide for shaping behavior, no "target, " as it were, at which to direct untutored desires and appetites. In this respect, the kind of education one receives very much depends on the kind of society in which one lives. An educational system may explicate society's values. It may even call them into question.

In and of itself, however, a system of instruction on Aristotle's model cannot reform society or "cleanse" it of "shady dealings. " The process of self-evaluation, rather, is everybody's business. Aristotle's vision gives educators much to consider. Nonetheless, two features of Aristotle's model give me pause. First, Aristotle assumes that the effects of environment are cumulative and irreversible. Consequently, if individuals are not consistently exposed to good behavior as children, they will lack the pre-disposition to endorse virtuous conduct as adults. In many cases, this claim seems true.

But is it always the case? Some individuals who witness a great deal of unethical behavior as children manage to overcome the past and grow into adults who act virtuously. Are these people simply exceptional? Or do they reveal something about human nature and the good which Aristotle overlooks? Second, Aristotle's model rests on the premise that "the good" is an intrinsic feature of certain ends. Some pursuits are undeniably good; with proper upbringing, anyone can recognize goodness.

In many ways, this premise is appealing. It presumes, however, a society that is relatively homogeneous. In a pluralistic society, by contrast, the good (pace Newsweek) is not "comparatively easy" to know. The good is less a discovery than a negotiated agreement, resulting from on-going and often painful conversations. Moral education for a pluralistic world thus is a far more complex enterprise than Aristotle might have imagined.

Education today must do more than shape virtuous behavior: it also must engage everyone to define just what "the good" means. For a response to this essay, see Pendlebury. 1 "The Business Ethics Debate, " Newsweek (May 29, 1987): 36. 2 Aristotle, Nicomachea n Ethics, Tr... Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985), 172 - 198. 3 See, for example, how Aristotle treats popular beliefs concerning the association between incontinence and lack of intelligence, and incontinence and intemperance, Ibid. , 175. 4 Ibid. , 174. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. , 175. 7 Ibid. 8 This logic seems manifestly faulty, Aristotle observes. Were incontinence simply the consequence of mere belief, it would not be condemned as roundly as it is. People condemn arabia, because they assume that the arabic does indeed "know better. " Ibid. , 175. 9 Aristotle emphasizes this point in his description of how universal and particular beliefs combine in correct reasoning. "And in the cases where these two beliefs result in (c) one belief, " Aristotle tells us, "it is necessary in purely theoretical beliefs for the soul to affirm what has been concluded, and in beliefs about production (d) to act at once on what has been concluded. " Ibid. , 180. Also see 181. 10 Ibid. , 177 and 178 (emphasis added).

In this regard, Aristotle says, incontinence differs from intemperance. 11 See the discussion in Ibid. , 179. 12 Ibid, 180. 13 See Ibid. , 180, and Irwin's footnote, 351. 14 Ibid. , 181. 15 See Irwin's footnote, Ibid. , 352. 16 See Ibid. , 174 - 176. 17 M. F. Burnyeat, "Aristotle on Learning to Be Good, " in Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 69 - 92. 18 Ibid. , 80. 19 It is Burnyeat's framing of arabia in terms of education which I find so intriguing and which leads me to dwell on it.

Another commentator, Jonathan Lear, also views incontinence as a problem of education. "The logos of ethical virtue can be instilled only through repeated actions, " Lear writes, "through a sustained and thorough ethical upbringing" (184). Unlike Burnyeat, however, Lear does not delineate the features which distinguish moral upbringing. For Lear's complete discussion, see J. Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 174 - 186. For another important treatment of incontinence, see Donald Davidson, "How is Weakness of the Will Possible?" in D. Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 21 - 41. 20 Burnyeat, "Aristotle on Learning to Be Good, " 80. 21 Ibid. , 80.

Aristotle puts the matter like this: "Goodness of character has to do with pleasures and pains. It is pleasure that makes us do what is bad, and pain that makes us abstain from what is right. That is why we require to be trained from our earliest youth, as Plato has it, to feel pleasure and pain at the right things. True education is just that. " Quoted by John Burnett in Aristotle on Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 49. 22 Ethics, 180. 23 See Burnyeat's discussion, "Aristotle on Learning, " 76. 24 Ibid. , 81 25 Quoted in Burnyeat, "Aristotle on Learning, " 75, of Ethics, 10. 9 1179 b 4 - 31


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Research essay sample on Cambridge Cambridge University Moral Education

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