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Ethics Education: More than a Good Idea? 

 

BERNARD G. PRUSAK 

King’s College 

 

 

Reporter: What do you think of Western civilization? 

Mahatma Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
1
 

The question more than likely predates the ancient Greeks, but it finds its classic expression in 

Plato’s dialogue Meno: “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is something teachable?”
2
 

Socrates, as was his wont, does not answer directly, but asks in turn just what virtue is, claiming 

not to know himself. Plato’s student Aristotle was more forthcoming. He famously tells us, in the 

Nicomachean Ethics, that virtue (take courage) lies in the mean between the extremes of excess 

(rashness) and deficiency (cowardice), and that what is virtuous is relative to the capacities of the 

person in question (so, in a given set of circumstances, what would be courageous for Achilles to 

do might well be different from what it would be courageous for, say, a hobbit to do). We also 

learn that virtue is a state of character disposing one to choose the mean relative to oneself, and 

that virtue develops, not simply naturally, but secundum naturam, in accordance with nature 

through the cultivation of natural powers, much as a child learns to speak not simply naturally, 

without any cultivation whatsoever, but through being raised within a linguistic community. As a 

language then becomes “second nature” to a child—for example, he or she cannot but hear a 

well-formed utterance in that language as expressive of meaning—so too, if all goes well, may 

acting virtuously (courageously, temperately, generously, magnanimously, etc.). And we can 

push the comparison further: not only do language and virtue not develop simply naturally; they 

are also not picked up first and foremost through formal instruction, which is to say in the 

classroom. Instead, they develop through what we, in English, somewhat infelicitously call 

habit—repeated doings, in give-and-take with others of our kind, that call on and give shape to 

our natural powers and interests.
3
 Strange though it sounds, a child develops the habit of 

understanding and speaking a language. This habit (from the Latin habitus and Greek hexis) 

carries the child into the world and enables the child actively to carry him or herself in it.
4
 The 

moral virtues do likewise, with this important specification: they both make a human being a 

good human being and enable him or her to do good deeds. 

In brief, then, Aristotle teaches us a lot about virtue—but in the end we might well want to ask 

again Meno’s question of whether virtue is something teachable. On first consideration, 

Aristotle’s answer to this question appears to be both yes and no: yes, by example; no, by formal 

instruction. But the Nicomachean Ethics itself must then puzzle us. For Aristotle says explicitly 

that its aim is not theoretical but practical: “we are investigating not in order that we might know 

what virtue is, but in order that we might become good.”
5
 The problem here is, if virtue does not 



17  Prusak 

 

develop through formal instruction, how are lectures supposed to help us become good? Crudely 

put, what good are lectures, and what good is Aristotle’s book as it has come down to us? 

From one question we have moved then to two: Is virtue something teachable? And, what is 

the purpose of formal instruction in ethics of the kind that Aristotle—and, in the typical college 

classroom of today, Plato and Hobbes and Hume and Kant and Mill and MacIntyre and 

Nussbaum and Parfit and a host of others—have to offer? Neither question is merely academic in 

the pejorative sense of mattering little to “real world” decision-making. Instead, how we think 

about these questions bears concretely on the business of colleges and universities in our world 

today: more precisely, on what ethics courses at these levels should look like and aim for; on 

whether they have any place at all in college or core curricula; and on whether it is legitimate or 

even sensible for colleges to include character formation or, more modestly, increased facility in 

“moral reasoning” among the aims of liberal education. We might also wonder about the aims 

and status of the growing number and variety of more focused, pre-professional courses in 

business ethics, computing ethics, engineering ethics, and medical and nursing ethics, among 

others. 

The aim of this forum is to pick out and pursue the question of what the aims of ethics courses 

at the college and university levels should be. The literature on this question is remarkably small 

given the great stakes and the great number of ethics courses nowadays at our many, many 

institutions of higher education. It is also remarkably small given the push toward assessment in 

these institutions. How can courses in ethics be assessed if it is not clear what aims these courses 

ought to have and can realistically achieve?—apart from the further question of whether it is 

possible to measure the achievement of these aims. 

One, somewhat notorious position in the literature is that “providing moral guidance is no 

longer in [the] job description” of at least “elite universities.”
6
 So claims John Mearsheimer of 

the University of Chicago in a reflection (though disputed) on his own institution.
7
 According to 

Mearsheimer, “Universities do not have a moral agenda and do not give students moral guidance, 

because that would involve preaching about values, and that is an enterprise that holds hardly 

any attraction for modern universities,” which he presents instead as devoted entirely to the 

mission of “teaching critical thinking” so that students might “figure out the truth for 

themselves.”
8
 Of course, if there is truth to be known, it seems strange not to teach it to students, 

so it is not surprising to find Mearsheimer state as well that, “[o]ver the course of the twentieth 

century, the effort to develop a scientific morality failed almost completely”—about which there 

is surely more to say.
9
 Mearsheimer is surely right, however, to warn us of indoctrination, where 

this is understood as “clos[ing] off rather than facilitat[ing] open conversation among 

autonomous moral agents concerning appropriate value choices and moral decisions.”
10

 But, to 

quote a critic of Mearsheimer’s, “Intellectual freedom is not synonymous with being value 

free,”
11

 and it is doubtful, in the words of a professor down the street from Mearsheimer at 

DePaul, whether a value-free study of ethics is “either possible or desirable.”
12

 

Another position in the literature is that ethics education at the college level should aim, not at 

shaping character, inculcating principles, or communicating a vision of the good life—all 



Ethics Education: More Than a Good Idea?  18 

 

  

controversial propositions, the effectiveness of which can also be questioned—but at fostering 

students’ moral development toward more adequate forms of reasoning. This position is 

associated with the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg and his students, including Carol Gilligan. 

Gilligan famously dissented from Kohlberg’s account of the terminus of moral development on 

the grounds that it reflected predominantly male modes of thought, but she subscribed with him 

to the thesis that, for women and men alike, moral development occurs over three basic levels, 

“from an egocentric through a societal to a universal perspective,” differentiated into five or six 

stages.
13

 For Kohlberg and his students, “morality...is neither ‘taught’ nor ‘caught’ but is 

inexorably developed out of each individual’s personal struggle to make sense of the world”
14

—

more technically, the personal struggle to come to terms with “problematic situations of conflict” 

in which one or other previously settled mode of structuring our relationships with others is 

found no longer to fit with, or quite literally to “do justice to,” new elements of our experience 

that we find ourselves deeply interested in maintaining.
15

 In light of this conception of morality 

as developing out of our “structuring tendencies,” the aim of moral education, Kohlberg claims, 

“should be to stimulate people’s thinking ability over time in ways which will enable them to use 

more adequate and complex reasoning patterns to solve moral problems”
16

: reduced to a 

catchphrase, “stimulation of movement to the next stage of moral reasoning.”
17

 

Kohlberg presents some evidence that students at higher stages of moral judgment cheat much 

less than do students at lower stages,
18

 but it is important to understand that, for him, 

“[s]tructures of moral judgment must be distinguished from the content of moral judgment,” 

which is to say both that how persons formulate a judgment does not issue in an invariant 

judgment about what ought to be done (or all the more that they will do it) and that, again in 

Kohlberg’s words, “the mere fact that a stage is later does not make it morally better.”
19

 Another 

way to put this point is to say that, even as a person grows able “to use more adequate and 

complex reasoning patterns to solve moral problems,” whether he or she will in fact come to the 

correct solution of a problem is a further question. Here psychology must pass over into 

philosophy, as Kohlberg himself acknowledges.
20

 The upshot is that whether the aim of moral 

education in fact should be “stimulation of movement to the next stage of moral reasoning” 

depends on whether there is reason to hold that the later stages correspond to progressively more 

defensible philosophical theories of what we owe to each other—for Kohlberg, the core of 

morality.
21

 Kohlberg was at one point willing to make this claim: in a paper dating from 1975, he 

sought to justify the claim that “the latest or principled stages of moral reasoning are morally 

better stages” by appeal to “the liberal or rational tradition, in particular the ‘formalistic’ or 

‘deontological’ tradition running from Immanuel Kant to John Rawls.”
22

 It is interesting that 

Kohlberg never considered, at least in print, whether the natural law tradition represented by a 

thinker like Aquinas might better support what a fellow psychologist called his “faith in nature” 

that, under “properly nurturant [...] conditions, not only the form of moral reasoning but its 

content and ensuing behavior will develop” in ways that moral theorists could hope for.
23

 

There is one last important question to note by way of introduction. This is whether, as 

Kenneth Goodpaster nicely asked some years ago, the activity of teaching ethics “leans more 



19  Prusak 

 

toward poiesis”—that is, a making the good of which is a product external to the activity—”or 

more toward praxis”—that is, a practice at least some goods of which lie internal to the practice 

itself.
24

 To use Goodpaster’s examples, “Making a musical instrument, like a flute, would be 

poiesis. [...] Playing the flute would be praxis.”
25

 To the point for present purposes, when we 

teach ethics at the college level, do we aim to make students more ethical—or, in any event, 

more skilled at moral reasoning—or to involve and interest students in a practice of inquiry and 

reflection that has an integrity and purpose of its own, which we do not properly appreciate when 

we focus only on how it leaves students after the course is done? Another possibility is that the 

contrast here is overdrawn. 

The contributors to this forum represent a variety of theoretical perspectives and bring diverse 

teaching experience. Gregory Bassham is Professor of Philosophy at King’s College with 

interests in the philosophy of law, virtue theory, and virtue education. Ronald Duska is a widely-

published business ethicist who, after fifteen years as the Charles Lamont Post Chair of Ethics 

and the Professions at the American College, now runs the firm Business Ethics Zone 

Consulting. In 1975, he published, with Mariellen Whelan, the book Moral Development: A 

Guide to Piaget and Kohlberg. Abigail Gosselin is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Karen 

Adkins Associate Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean for Advising and the First Year 

Experience, both at Regis University. They share interests in social and political philosophy and 

feminist theory. Daniel Issing, C.S.C, is Assistant Professor of Theology at King’s College; he 

teaches moral theology and social ethics. Kay Johnston is Professor of Educational Studies and 

Women’s Studies at Colgate University, specializing in adolescent development, women’s 

development, and moral development. She studied under and has collaborated with Carol 

Gilligan. Finally, Toby Schonfeld is Associate Professor of Medicine in the School of Medicine, 

Director of the Master of Arts in Bioethics in the Ethics Center, and Co-Director of the Program 

for Scholarly Integrity in the Laney Graduate School, all at Emory University. Her current 

research projects include assessment of online and traditional ethics education. 

 

 

Notes  

1. This quotation, oft repeated and attributed to Gandhi, appears to be apocryphal. 

2. Plato 2004, 91 (70a). For the prehistory of ancient Greece, see Burkert 2004. 

3. Compare book 1, chapter 14 of Augustine’s Confessions on how he learned his native Latin 

from nurses and through childish games, as opposed to Greek in school. 

4. See Joe Sachs’s introduction to Aristotle 2002, xi–xvii. 

5. Aristotle 2002, 23 (1103b). 

6. Mearsheimer 1998b, 194. 

7. See Booth 1998. 



Ethics Education: More Than a Good Idea?  20 

 

  

8. Mearsheimer 1998b, 195. See also Mearsheimer 1998a, 151: “collectively we are silent on 

the issue of morality, and instead we concentrate on teaching you to think critically.” 

9. Mearsheimer 1998a, 149. 

10. Camenisch 1986, 503. 

11. Hayes 2007. 

12. Camenisch 1986, 503. 

13. See Gilligan 1977, 483; see also 515. Toward the end of his life, Kohlberg qualified “our 

sixth stage [as] a theoretical hypothesis” which he was not ready to consider “empirically 

confirmed.” See Kohlberg 1982, 523. 

14. Bereiter 1978, 20. 

15. See Kohlberg and Boyd 1973, 371. 

16. Kohlberg and Hersch 1977, 56. 

17. Kohlberg 1975, 673. 

18. Ibid., 672. 

19. Ibid., 671. Compare Kohlberg 1982, 525. 

20. Ibid., 672. 

21. Ibid., 673: “moral principles are ultimately principles of justice.” See further 674: “it is not 

clear that the whole realm of personal, political, and religious values is a realm which is 

nonrelative, i.e., in which there are universals and a direction of development.” 

22. Ibid., 672, but see again Kohlberg 1982, 525. 

23. Bereiter 1978, 21. 

24. Goodpaster 1982, 37. 

25. Ibid. 

 

Works cited 

Aristotle. 2002. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Joe Sachs. Newburyport, Mass.: Focus Publishing. 

Bereiter, Carl. 1978. “The Morality of Moral Education.” Hastings Center Report 8.2, 20–25. 

Booth, Wayne C. “Introducing Professor Mearsheimer to His Own University.” Philosophy and 

Literature 22, 174–178. 



21  Prusak 

 

Burkert, Walter. Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture. Cambridge, 

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. 

Camenisch, Paul F. 1986. “Goals of Applied Ethics Courses.” Journal of Higher Education 57, 493–

509. 

Gilligan, Carol. 1977. “In a Different Voice: Women’s Conceptions of Self and Morality.” Harvard 

Educational Review 47, 481–517. 

Goodpaster, Kenneth E. 1982. “Is Teaching Ethics ‘Making’ or ‘Doing’?” Hastings Center Report 

12.1, 37–39. 

Hayes, Alice B. 2007. “Trends in Catholic Higher Education.” Unpublished address at Jesuit 

Advancement Officers Meeting. <http://www.slu.edu/jaa/conference_2007/presentations_2007/ 

Trends_in_Catholic_Higher_Education_Hayes.doc (accessed November 21, 2012).> 

Kohlberg, Lawrence. 1975. “The Cognitive-Developmental Approach to Moral Education.” Phi Delta 

Kappan 56, 670–677. 

Kohlberg, Lawrence. 1982. “A Reply to Owen Flanagan and Some Comments on the Puka-

Goodpaster Exchange.” Ethics 92, 513–528. 

Kohlberg, Lawrence, and Dwight Boyd. 1973. “The Is-Ought Problem: A Developmental 

Perspective.” Zygon 8, 358–372. 

Kohlberg, Lawrence, and Richard H. Hersch. 1977. “Moral Development: A Review of the Theory,” 

Theory into Practice 16, 53–59. 

Mearsheimer, John J. 1998a. “The Aims of Education.” Philosophy and Literature 22, 137–155. 

___. 1998b. “Teaching Morality at the Margins.” Philosophy and Literature 22, 193–198. 

Plato, 2004. Meno. In “Protagoras” and “Meno.” Trans. Robert C. Bartlett. Ithaca, NY: Cornell 

University Press.  


