Liberal Civic Education, Religious Commitment, and the Spillover Thesis: What Psychology Can Teach Us

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Phillips ◽  
Laura McMillian
Keyword(s):  
Civic Education ◽  
Religious Commitment ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Spillover Effects ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Secular Society

AbstractThis article addresses an idea central to liberal debates on civic education: the spillover thesis. Both egalitarian liberals and their religious opponents in these debates claim that liberal civic education creates spillover effects into the way individuals assess the meaning of their own lives. Some religious citizens fear that their politically reasonable conceptions of the good life are being undermined by education that emphasizes the practice of autonomous reasoning. Egalitarian liberals usually acknowledge this risk or cost, but deny that religious citizens should be given special dispensation from the burdens of autonomous reasoning. Some may even hope that conservative religious beliefs will be eroded by the practice of liberal civic education. This article disputes the spillover thesis. Given the best evidence available from the field of cognitive psychology, we challenge the notion that critical personal reflection about public matters is bound to spillover into critical reflection about private moral matters. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that human beings are usually well equipped to compartmentalize and are capable of reasoning in different ways depending on the context. Thus, reasonable citizens of faith are not necessarily unduly burdened by programs of civic education; nor are liberal programs of civic education necessarily going to lead us to a more secular society of autonomous thinkers. The article also speaks to a broader civic humanist tradition in political philosophy that includes Plato, Tocqueville, Rousseau, and Marcus Aurelius. For these authors, the success of a political enterprise is seen to crucially depend on the inculcation of a robust and comprehensive system of private virtue. For without private virtue, there is no public virtue. If we are correctly interpreting the available psychological research, private virtue need not be as crucially relevant for the success of common political enterprises. The inculcation of private moral virtue does not so clearly translate into making good leaders, voters, and public servants.

Dehumanization and Mentalizing Animals

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.J. Kasperbauer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mental State Attribution ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Phenomenal States

This chapter applies the psychological account from chapter 3 on how we rank human beings above other animals, to the particular case of using mental states to assign animals moral status. Experiments on the psychology of mental state attribution are discussed, focusing on their implications for human moral psychology. The chapter argues that attributions of phenomenal states, like emotions, drive our assignments of moral status. It also describes how this is significantly impacted by the process of dehumanization. Psychological research on anthropocentrism and using animals as food and as companions is discussed in order to illuminate the relationship between dehumanization and mental state attribution.

The Measure of Greatness

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Nature ◽  
Complex Trajectory ◽  
The Many ◽  
Human Excellence ◽  
Ethical Perspectives

Magnanimity is a virtue that has led many lives. Foregrounded early on by Plato as the philosophical virtue par excellence, it became one of the crown jewels in Aristotle’s account of human excellence and was accorded an equally salient place by other ancient thinkers. One of the most distinctive elements of the ancient tradition to filter into the medieval Islamic and Christian worlds, it sparked important intellectual engagements there and went on to carve deep tracks through several later philosophies that inherited from this tradition. Under changing names, under reworked forms, it continued to breathe in the thought of Descartes and Hume, Kant and Nietzsche, and their successors. Its many lives have been joined by important continuities. Yet they have also been fragmented by discontinuities—discontinuities reflecting larger shifts in ethical perspectives and competing answers to questions about the nature of the good life, the moral nature of human beings, and their relationship to the social and natural world they inhabit. They have also been punctuated by moments of controversy in which the greatness of this vision of human greatness has itself been called into doubt. This volume provides a window to the complex trajectory of a virtue whose glitter has at times been as heady as it has been divisive. By exploring the many lives it has lived, we will be in a better position to decide whether and why this is a virtue we might still want to make central to our own ethical lives.

scholarly journals The need of discoursing social theology in Muslim Southeast Asia

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Azhar Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Religious Commitment ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Islamic Theology ◽  
Community Of Faith ◽  
Rapid Social Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Message ◽  
Human Enterprise

This paper highlights and evaluates the significance of an emerging social theologicaldiscourse in contemporary Muslim Southeast Asia. It emerged partlyas a response to the traditional Islamic theology inasmuch as the revivalistdakwah activism that became prominent since the 1970s. This emerging discourseis part of the continuity and extension of the reformist voices whichhave evolved since the late 19th century. As a theology, it puts discourse aboutGod as its premium but extend its focus on the social dimension of faith inGod, of the social message of the religion, and the social responsibility of theman and community of faith in God, and to their fellow human beings. Todaythere are several books and articles written which can be classified as belongingto this genre of social theology. In Indonesia this discursive theologycan be found in rational, humanistic, transformative cultural, and the oppressedtheologies. It opens a wider realm of participation and engagement,where theology is no longer the exclusive affairs of experts, but inclusive of thelay intellectuals who are not necessarily from a strictly religious background.It also enables the Muslim public to comprehend critically and to cope creativelywith rapid social change, and its attendant problems. Theology is, afterall, a human enterprise, albeit it’s strong religious commitment. To harnessthe potentiality of the social theology, calls for its recognition. Herein lies the need to start studying and engaging them discerningly, or to advance its criticaldimensions for the benefits of the larger Muslim public.Paper ini menyoroti dan mengevaluasi pentingnya wacana teologi sosial yangmuncul dalam periode kontemporer Muslim Asia Tenggara. Teologi sosialmuncul sebagian sebagai tanggapan terhadap teologi Islam tradisional karenaaktivisme dakwah revivalis yang semakin menonjol sejak tahun 1970-an. Wacanayang muncul di sini merupakan bagian dari kontinuitas dan perluasan suarareformis yang telah berkembang sejak akhir abad ke-19. Sebagai teologi, teologisocial menempatkan wacana utama tentang Tuhan tetapi memperluas fokusnyapada dimensi sosial iman kepada Allah, pesan sosial agama, dan tanggungjawab sosial dari komunitas iman kepada Allah, dan terhadap sesama manusia.Saat ini ada beberapa buku dan artikel yang ditulis yang dapat diklasifikasikansebagai milik genre teologi sosial. Di Indonesia teologi diskursif ini dapatditemukan dalam teologi-teologi rasional, humanistik, budaya transformatif,dan teologi kaum tertindas. Ini membuka sebuah dunia yang lebih luas bagipartisipasi dan keterlibatan, di mana teologi tidak lagi urusan eksklusif paraahli, tetapi termasuk para intelektual awam yang tidak harus berasal dari latarbelakang agama secara ketat. Hal ini juga memungkinkan masyarakat Muslimuntuk memahami secara kritis dan kreatif dalam mengatasi perubahan sosialyang cepat dan problem yang muncul. Di luar itu semua, teologi sosial adalahurusan manusia, dengan komitmen keagamaan yang kuat. Untuk memanfaatkanpotensi dari teologi sosial, diperlukan panggilan untuk pengakuan. Di sinilahletak kebutuhan untuk mulai mengkaji dan melibatkan teologi sosial, ataumengedepankan dimensi kritis dari teologi sosial agar bermanfaat lebih besarmasyarakat Muslim.

5. Ethics

2018 ◽  
pp. 65-76
Author(s):  
Brad Inwood
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Self Control ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Wise Person ◽  
The Family

Ethics is the part of the Stoics’ legacy that is most prominent and influential today. Their theory of the good life for human beings falls into the family of theories associated with Socrates and his followers. This tradition includes Plato and most Platonists, Xenophon, the Cynics, Aristotle, and later Aristotelians, all of whom share the view that virtue, the excellence of a human being, is the highest value and is its own reward. ‘Ethics’ discusses the Stoics’ views on human nature and rationality; the four basic virtues: justice, courage, wisdom, and moderation or self-control; and the doctrine that the fully rational and wise person will be free of passions.

Introduction

Good Lives ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Samuel Clark
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Father And Son

Reasoning with autobiography is a way to self-knowledge. We can learn about ourselves, as human beings and as individuals, by reading, thinking through, and arguing about this distinctive kind of text. Reasoning with Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son is a way of learning about the nature of the good life and the roles that pleasure and self-expression can play in it. Reasoning with Siegfried Sassoon’s ...

Virtue and the “Good Life” in the Book of Job

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Patricia L. Vesely
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Living Well ◽  
Presence Of God ◽  
Human Happiness ◽  
External Goods

Abstract In this article, I argue that Job 29 provides an eudaimonic depiction of human happiness whereby virtue, combined with a number of “external goods” is held up as the best possible life for human beings. I compare Job’s vision of the “good life” with an Aristotelian conception of εὐδαιμονία and conclude that there are numerous parallels between Job and Aristotle with respect to their understanding of the “good life.” While the intimate presence of God distinguishes Job’s expectation of happiness with that of Aristotle, Job is unique among other eudaimonic texts in the Hebrew Bible in that expectations of living well are expressed in terms of virtue, rather than Torah piety. In the second portion of the article, I assess Job’s conception of human flourishing from the perspective of the divine speeches, which enlarge Job’s vision of the “good life” by bringing Job face-to-face with the “wild inhabitants” of the cosmos.

scholarly journals The Modernity of Aristotle’s Ethics

MANUSYA ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Charles Freeland
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Philosophical Discourse ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
The Many ◽  
Theoretical Science

Aristotle understood ethics to be a practical rather than a theoretical science. It is a pragmatics, if you will, concerned with bringing about a good life . But the problem and the question from which Aristotle’s ethics begins arid to which it constantly returns concerns the relation of the theoretical to the practical: his concern is for the type or mode of discourse one could use in providing an account of the good life (Eudaimonia). Is this a propositional, apophantic discourse, a discourse claiming to represent the truth and what is true and from which one could then go on to prescribe a course of action, or, and this may be closer to Aristotle, is the philosophical discourse on ethics rather a descriptive one which takes humankind for what it is, not what it ought to be? This relation between theory and practice, between description and prescription, between science and action, is a question and a problem for Aristotle. It is my purpose to take up this question in connection with Aristotle’s texts on Eudaimonia. Another question shall be raised here: What is the relevance of Aristotle’s treatment of Eudaimonia to our contemporary, “modern” concern for ethics and the good life? I would assume, naively perhaps, that even today we are not indifferent to this question of what is a good life, and that we are not indifferent to the many ways in which the “good life” has been described. It would seem, then, that Aristotle’s texts have a particularly striking importance for us today insofar as we prolong the philosophical questioning of the possibilities for ethical and political discourse today and continue to ask who and what we are as human beings.

Pedagogika wobec problematyczności bytu ludzkiego. O konfliktach w życiu człowieka

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (2 (252)) ◽  
pp. 70-85
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Rumianowska
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Existential Philosophy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The World ◽  
Complex Mechanisms

The purpose of the article is to outline the problem of widely understood conflicts in human life from the perspective of existential philosophy. Without questioning the importance of psychological research on complex mechanisms underlying conflicts, the author points to the issue of the problematic nature of human existence, the category of freedom, the problem of the authenticity of being and the sense of meaning. In the second part of the paper, the essence of educational process in the context of experiencing difficulties and conflicting situations by human beings has been introduced. The necessity of taking into account the problem of being oneself and constituting a human being in relation to himself, the world and others has been presented.

scholarly journals The Possibility of Virtue

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 377-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Alzola
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Character Traits ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Observational Equivalence ◽  
Business Context ◽  
Overt Behavior

ABSTRACT:To have a virtue is to possess a certain kind of trait of character that is appropriate in pursuing the moral good at which the virtue aims. Human beings are assumed to be capable of attaining those traits. Yet, a number of scholars are skeptical about the very existence of such character traits. They claim a sizable amount of empirical evidence in their support. This article is concerned with the existence and explanatory power of character as a way to assess the possibility of achieving moral virtue, with particular attention paid to business context. I aim to unsettle the so-called situationist challenge to virtue ethics. In the course of this article, I shall defend four claims, namely, that virtues are more than just behavioral dispositions, that at least some virtues may not be unitary traits, that psychologists cannot infer virtues from overt behavior, and that the situationist data do not account for the observational equivalence of traits. Since it rests on a misconception of what virtue is, the situationist objection remains unconvincing.

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