Moral Education and Emotional Lying

Moral Education and Emotional Lying

There is a long tradition, fathered by Aristotle and recurring like some recessive gene in recent virtue theorists, that holds that the emotions, like acts, must be 'trained'. Consider the following:

[In Beckett's portrayal,] "Emotions are not feelings that well up in some natural and untutored way from our natural selves, that they are, in fact, not personal or natural at all, that they are, instead, contrivances, social constructs. We learn how to feel, and we learn our emotional repertoire. We learn emotions in the same way that we learn our beliefs — from our society." (Nussbaum 1990, p287)

"Emotions, in Aristotle's view, are not always correct, any more than beliefs or actions are always correct. They need to be educated and brought into harmony with a correct view of the good human life ... with regard to both passions and actions". (Nussbaum 1994, p96)

"Developing moral character ... requires training and developing passions and patterns of desire, choice, and emotion." (Stocker, 1980)

According to Stuart Hampshire's 'second theory' in Two Theories of Morality (Oxford, 1977), Aristotle's proponent asserts that "one's childhood morality needs civilizing adjustment". (quoted by Stevens, p.6)

"If [moral] education does not revolve around issues such as what to fear, what to be angry about, ... I do not know what it is. ... As Aristotle perceived, we are concerned with ... the education of the emotions." (Williams 1973, p225)

Rorty (1980b), following Aristotle, also holds that emotions are learned.

Now, it is clear that people can be trained to exhibit 'appropriate' emotions at the 'appropriate' time and to the 'appropriate' degree, or they learn to do so in...

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...d. Explaining Emotions. Berkeley, 1980.

(Rorty 1980b) Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg. "Introduction". Pages 1-7 in Rorty (1980a).

(Stevens 1981) Stevens, Rex P. Kant on Moral Practice. Mercer University Press, Macon, Ga., 1981.

(Stocker 1980) Stocker, Michael. "Intellectual Desire, Emotion, and Action". Pages 323-338 in Rorty (1980a).

(Williams 1973) Williams, Bernard. "Morality and the Emotions". Pages 207-229 in Problems of the Self (Cambridge, 1973).

(Williams 1981) Williams, Bernard. "Moral Luck", pages 20-39 in Moral Luck. Cambridge University Press, 1981.

(Williams 1993) Williams, Bernard. "Moral Luck: A Postscript", in Statman, Daniel, ed. Moral Luck. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993; reprinted in Williams (1995), pages 241-247.

(Williams 1995) Williams, Bernard. Making Sense of Humanity. Cambridge University Press, 1995.