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ERIC Number: EJ1027668
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014-Jul
Pages: 21
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1477-8785
EISSN: N/A
"Phronesis" and Moral Education: Treading beyond the Truisms
Kristjánsson, Kristján
Theory and Research in Education, v12 n2 p151-171 Jul 2014
Whereas most latter-day Aristotelian approaches to moral education highlight the early habituation phase of moral development, they rarely have much to say, beyond truisms from the "Nicomachean ethics," about the ultimate Aristotelian goal of cultivating fully fledged "phronesis." The aim of this article is to repair the dearth of attention given to "phronesis" in moral education circles and to bring considerations from other, but related, discourses (such as general Aristotelian scholarship and wisdom studies in psychology) to bear on it. I pay special attention to the so-called skill analogy, which considers virtue acquisition on par with the acquisition of ordinary practical skills, but argue that current articulations of it fail to account fully for the integrative, as distinct from the constitutive, function of "phronesis." I argue that the skill analogy needs to be extended to account for the fact that in order to develop fully, "phronesis" requires direct teaching about the nature of the well-rounded life, providing the learner with an indirect blueprint for "eudaimonia." Such a blueprint cannot eschew consequentialist considerations, and to be taught well within current school systems, it needs a discrete place in the school timetable.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - General
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A