ED 397 Discussion Notes

2/3/09

Steve’s Part

Activity 1: 3 things that might happen during my unhelpful day (then go get 3 more from more people):

- Nobody will talk to me

- No cooperation
- No work done
- Forgot my lunch
- Late to work
- Forgot my lesson plans
- People are passive aggressive
- People who are Overly bubbly/fake

Activity 2: Put these words into a sentence (I didn’t get this activity): paint, soap, needle, thread, sheet

Activity 3: “If you give a moose a muffin” – read the book together as a group; tell us what happened;
what is the story about? (go through all the steps); then draw (torso, body) telling us what you think
each person would say (helper/non-helper); share your drawings (gallery walk) with the rest of the
classroom

Les: What is virtue ethics?

What is a good education? That what makes sb good… what is the good… virtues all go back to the
“good” -- as long as they portray the good (Plato)

“arête” – excellence within a cmty(ppl within a community who determines the goodness of a person/or
their behavior); or operationalized by “wisdom”

Steve: Virtue ethics

What makes something right/wrong? (moral action)

Who are you who is doing it?

What person ought I to be?

Hard choices (generally don’t know what to do); easy choices (require habit)s

David Hume: virtue ethics, relied on sentiment or feeling; b/c there is no such thing as moral knowledge

- Other “noise” in ethics (problems) – it is all constructed, language games, political, relative, it’s
all constructed, it’s all unknowable.
- Despite the noise, there is a massive resurgence in Aristotle… why?
 - For Aristotle – the point of virtue was “happiness” – which was a state of character… it’s not an
emotion or passion.
- Although Hume develops a virtue ethics that is developed around Passion…
- Moral empathy – important – your ability to develop empathy – is necessary in order to develop
“morality” – or amoral children who didn’t develop empathy will not develop a “conscience” or
moral emotions (think at-risk youth, early offenders)
- System of virtues (schema): what are the core values
- Virtues as a gold mean: excess as a vice/defect as a vice
- Virtues – what are the good virtues to you? – truth, honesty
- Virtues entire: justice and wisdom
- Virtues show up from repetition; practiced in communities; they are formed, natural inclination
to virtues (we become like those whom we associate; w/ whom do you associate? The
environment makes us?)
- Virtues ethicist: Correction of Thomas Aquinas; reconcile reason and faith;
- Justice, fortitude; temperance; prudence
- Aquinas never thought man was essentially evil (Aquinas thought man was basically good; he
tries to acct for the existence of evil; how do ppl who are fundamentally good do bad things?)
o Grace builds on nature
o Reason allows us to go forward
o Justice, fortitude , temperance, prudence (Cardinal virtues or cornerstones of Aquinas)

Alasdair macintyre: wrote the most read book on virtue ethics: looks at the problem of “emotivism”

- MacIntyre starts out as a Marxist, but ends up a … a Christian ethicist

- We teach morality in the tradition of our stories; frame ethics in our ends

Stanley Hauerwas (promotes the idea of the Narrative): what is character? “who I am….”