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On the Old Saw That Dialogue Is a Socratic But Not an Aristotelian Method of Moral Education
Author(s) -
Kristjánsson Kristján
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
educational theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1741-5446
pISSN - 0013-2004
DOI - 10.1111/edth.12065
Subject(s) - socratic method , virtue , epistemology , friendship , character (mathematics) , dialectic , dialogical self , enlightenment , phronesis , philosophy of education , sociology , character education , moral character , philosophy , aesthetics , higher education , social science , law , geometry , mathematics , political science
Kristján Kristjánsson's aim in this article is to bury the old saw that dialogue is exclusively a Socratic but not an Aristotelian method of education for moral character. Although the truncated discussion in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics of the character development of the young may indicate that it is merely the result of a mindless process of behavioral conditioning, Nancy Sherman has argued convincingly that such a process would never yield the end result that Aristotle deems all‐important — a precondition for the ascription of virtue — namely, reason‐infused phronesis . Rather than having to rely on impressionistic Aristotelian reconstructions here, Kristjánsson observes, considerable enlightenment can be gleaned by studying Aristotle's account of friendship, especially his account of how character friends reciprocally construct each other's selfhoods through sustained, dialectical engagement. It is clear from this description that ideal character building essentially involves dialogue. If that is correct, however, in the case of character friendship, new light can be shed on other Aristotelian staples of character education, such as role modeling and the use of literature and music, as those will then also, by parity of reasoning, involve sustained use of a dialogical method.