Why are there no expert teachers of virtue?

Educational Theory

Volumn 53, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 389-400

  Rajczi, Alexander ^a  

^a NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 57649132026     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2003.00389.x     Document Type: Article

References (11)

1. Plato, Protagoras, 319a-320b.
2. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 19841, chapter 14. This is a highly abbreviated description of MacIntyre's views. In particular, I am leaving out all reference to his views on the good for a human life and a human community.
3. Gilbert Ryle, "Can Virtue Be Taught?" in Education and the Development of Reason, eds. Robert F. Dearden, Paul H. Hirst, andRichard S. Peters {Boston: Routledgeand KeganPaul, 1972), 441. This essay will be cited as CV in the text for all subsequent references. In some places Ryle suggested that virtue also consists in a propensity toward certain feelings. For example, when considering the question of whether virtue can be taught, Ryle asked, "But can a person have been instructed or trained that he now feels things he would not otherwise have felt? Can there be lessons in feelings"(CV, 441). I am setting aside feelings for two reasons. First, they are treatedonlybriefly inRyle's workonvirtue. Second, in The Concept of Mind Ryle expressed the view that feelings are occurrences and that to specify that they are feelings of [say]m oral indignation is to indicate that they are theresults of a frustratedmoraldesire. See Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), chapter 4. In that way, moral feelings are derivative of moral desires.
4. Compare this quotation to the following: "to have acquired a virtue, for example, to have learned to be fairly honourable or self-controlled or industrious or considerate, is not a matter of having become wellinformed about anything; and it is not a matter of having come to know how to do anything. Indeed, conscientiousness does not very comfortably wear the label of 'knowledge' at all, since it is to be honourable, and not only or primarily to be knowledgeable about or efficient at anything.. . .Where Socrates was at fault was, I think, that he assumed that if virtue can be learned, then here, as elsewhere, the learning terminates in knowing" (CV, 444-445).
5. Gilbert Ryle, "On Forgetting the Difference Between Right and Wrong," in Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. Abraham I. Melden [Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1958), 147-159. Though written fourteen years earlier, t h s paper is in complete harmony with Ryle's later work, which is my principal focus. In fact, "On Forgetting" contains a protodiscussion of moral instruction - the subject that fully occupies Ryle in "Can Virtue Be Taught?"
6. Ryle sometimes spoke generally of "virtue" and at other times of more specific virtues, such as compassion and scrupulousness, as he does in this quote. My guess is that Ryle used the general term merely as a shorthand; his principal goal was to examine particular moral traits and not to offer an account of the essence of virtue. In this paper I follow his convention. In particular, when I offer my own account of "virtue," I will enumerate certain facts and skills that I believe are generally necessary for individual virtues. I will say very little about what combination of individual traits makes for "virtue."
7. Another reply to this objection would be that Ryle did not think that experts could teach the relevant knowledge and skills because he believed that there was no way to teach these things apart from teaching the desires themselves. There is some evidence that Ryle believed this. See, for example, his passage about senses of humor [ CV, 443444), or his claim that "[a person] couldnot be a spokesman for [moral] standards if he did not have them" (CV, 445). I will not pursue this interpretation, however, because I find it implausible that, for example, a person could not know that stealing was wrong if he did not likewise feel some desire not to steal.
8. Two points to keep in mind here: First, while I call human sensitivity a "skill" or "ability," it is worth noting that these labels are not quite right. Sometimes we are sensitive to others without consciously trying to be, and in such cases it seems more natural to talk of the disposition to be sensitive. Nonetheless, for simplicity's sake, I will continue to refer to human sensitivity as a skill. (Similar remarks apply to moral reasoning skills, which are discussed subsequently in the main text.] Second, I speak of the generic skill of human sensitivity, but someone might wonder whether there is such a generic skill. I share those doubts. In fact I think it is clear that people can be sensitive to some considerations and not others, demonstrating that there is no single generic skill of human sensitivity. However, I will continue to speak of the skill generically in order to discuss virtue as a whole, rather than to focus on specific virtues [see also note 6).
9. Ryle, The Concept of Mind, 30. Ryle's statements are ambiguous.They might mean that there are norules of aesthetics at all, that there are mles but individuals do not (in any sense) know them, or that indwiduals know the general rules but cannot articulate them.
10. For a meta-analysis of the many studies on this subject, see James Rest, Moral Deve1opment:Advances in Theory and Research (New York: Praeger, 19861, chapter 3.
11. One answer is that the question contains amistake: there might be at least a few teachers of virtue. Still, Socrates' question may be taken as a puzzle about the scarcity of such teachers - what explains that?