Published: 2016-11-16

Judgement development or reasoning development? The question of the foundations of ethical and moral skills

Jarosław Horowski
Pedagogical Forum
Section: Articles and essays
https://doi.org/10.21697/10.21697/fp.2016.2.09

Abstract

The ‘skills’ category used to form the teleology of moral education has been used for a relatively short time, only since the end of the twentieth century. Although popular, this concept is still vague - it changes its meaning with the type of philosophical theory which it is defined by. In this article I try to place ethical and moral skills in the context of neo-Thomistic moral philosophy. The analyses are performed in three stages. In the first stage I outline more precisely the place of the skills category in the moral development considerations and moral development support in education. This skills category is compared with the Thomistic category of moral virtue - more specifically with its fundamental virtue of reason – prudence. The analysis results in the proposal to distinguish between ethical and moral skills. The second stage refers to the article’s title and concerns the essence of ethical and moral skills.  Firstly, the importance of judgement and reasoning for ethical knowledge and morality acquisition is indicated. The last stage presents the possible deformations in skills development.  It focuses on the consequences of separating reasoning from judgement. This is the domain of the Western rationalist culture which particularly values reasoning.

Keywords:

ethical and moral skills, prudence, moral judgement, moral reasoning, criticism of rationalism

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Citation rules

Horowski, J. (2016). Judgement development or reasoning development? The question of the foundations of ethical and moral skills. Pedagogical Forum, 6(2/1), 139–153. https://doi.org/10.21697/10.21697/fp.2016.2.09

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