Moral Philosophy and Moral Education

Moral Philosophy and Moral Education considers the interconnections of ethics, education, and the philosophy of culture as related to the human concern with self-knowledge. The individual self finds its inner life writ large in the forms of culture such as religion, art, and history. Such forms of cultural life represent and embody normative ideals that can provide the necessary content to shape the character and the conduct of civic life. Thora Ilin Bayer draws upon the ancient Greek view of education as paideia and the conception of Bildung of the German idealist philosophers. These two ideas of education aim at the development of the whole person as distinct from training in a particular skill, subject matter, technique, or occupation. The education of the whole person aims at the production in the individual of a broad mental outlook harmoniously joined with a knowledge of the great perspectives and principles of human culture as it takes its various shapes within the history of humanity. Moral philosophy requires both culture and the individual as its terms of inquiry, and moral education requires a vision of how to have these two terms interact to form a whole. ""Professor Bayer's book is philosophical thought at its best. It is clearly and elegantly written, consistently rendering complex ideas comprehensible without compromising their meaning. Her study brings together culture, education, and moral theory in terms of the perennial philosophical ideal of self-knowledge. It does so by taking the reader through the treasure-house of the great traditions of Italian Humanism and German Idealism. This is a unique and rewarding work in every sense."" --Donald Phillip Verene, Emory University ""This beautifully written book provides a timely reminder of the value of humanistic education in a world fragmented by reductive theories and politicized thinking.Its tone is uplifting and redemptive of human experience, linking the classical concepts of education, self-knowledge, and moral goodness in the writings of Vico, Hegel, Dewey, and especially Cassirer, and finding in the philosophy of culture the key to human freedom.The narrative moves effortlessly throughthese difficult texts, not to preach but to place the ideas they contain in conversation with the reader."" --Jack Zupko, University of Alberta ""I recommend Thora Bayer's Moral Philosophy and Moral Education for publication. It can be viewed as a companion piece to D. P. Verene's Moral Philosophy and the Modern World and Metaphysics and the Modern World, both published by Cascade Books. Bayer's book is based on Giambattista Vico's premise that the true is the made and that human making first began in the literatures of the ancients. Vico's ideal of education entails a grasp of the totality of this making. Ernst Cassirer echoes this view with the aide of Kant and Hegel (and the entire history of philosophy) to see culture as the work of spirit-making symbols from objects that reveal the labor of the self, which begins in myths. Thus, education requires a grasp of the totality of this making where symbols attempt harmony in difference for the good of the individuals and of the whole community. Morality, education, and culture, historically grasped, combine in universals expressing the individuals that maintain them and that keep the barbarians of reason bereft of imagination at the gate."" --David Lovekin, Hastings College Thora Ilin Bayer is Professor of Philosophy and RosaMary Foundation Professor of Liberal Arts at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans. She is the author of Cassirer's Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms: A Philosophical Commentary (2001) and coeditor (with Donald Phillip Verene) of Giambattista Vico: Keys to the New Science (2009).