This paper analyzes Aquinas’ understanding of persuasion and its impact for apologetics. It consists of three parts. The first explains the meaning of persuasion in his writings and the philosophical ...framework. The second explore the manner of convincing others towards truth. Finally, attention is drawn to Aquinas’ argumentative strategies and his recommendations on how to deal with
. This permits to understand the theological value of gift of counsel as God’s persuasive manner to bring human being to the ultimate end. It demonstrates the dignity and freedom of rational creature that reach God in this way and imitate God whose will is not arbitrary force, but proceeds by reasons.
This article aims to provide a response to the problem of suffering through an explication of a new theodicy termed the Exemplarist Theodicy. This specific theodicy will be formulated in light of the ...moral theory provided by Linda Zagzebski, termed the Exemplarist Moral Theory, the notion of transformative experience, as explicated by L.A. Paul, Havi Carel and Ian James Kidd, and the virtue-theoretic approach to suffering proposed by Michael Brady, which, in combination with some further precisifying philosophical concepts—namely, compensation, total empathy, and infinitely valuable connections—will provide us with a possible, morally sufficient reason for why God allows individuals to experience suffering.
The Pedagogy of “As If” Dahlbeck, Johan
Educational theory,
April 2024, Letnik:
74, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
In this paper Johan Dahlbeck sets out to propose a pedagogy of “as if,” seeking to address the educational paradox of how students can be influenced to approximate a life guided by reason without ...assuming that they are already sufficiently rational to adhere to dictates of practical reason. He does so by outlining a fictionalist account, drawing primarily on Hans Vaihinger's systematic treatment of heuristic fictions and on Spinoza's ideas about how passive affects can be made to strengthen reason. Dahlbeck suggests that such an account can help us overcome the problem of assuming that reason needs to be enlisted as an instrument in the educational endeavor to live according to the guidance of reason. The reason this is so is that fictions can use passive affects that are prosocial and that thereby strengthen the sense of community necessary for laying a cooperative foundation for successful joint striving. Dahlbeck suggests further that exemplary teachers are crucial to this endeavor insofar as they can offer educational fictions as imaginative and temporary placeholders for the truth, allowing students to act “as if” they were already guided by reason.
Teaching Virtues in the Military Snow, Nancy E.
Journal of military ethics,
10/02/2023, Letnik:
22, Številka:
3-4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In parts I and II, this article briefly sketches two approaches to virtue ethics - those taken by Aristotle and the contemporary exemplarist moral theory of Linda Zagzebski - with an eye to providing ...resources for miliary educators. Each section concludes with remarks about the pros and cons of the author's experiences of teaching these theories to undergraduates. Part III deals with the social articulation of morality and its implications for war crimes. The social articulation of morality is the idea that moral principles cannot be applied in the abstract, but must be interpreted in terms of social backgrounds and norms. This draws on War Crimes: Causes, Excuses, and Blame (2019) by Talbert and Wolfendale, who consider how social articulations of morality led the military in various countries to commit war crimes in the mistaken belief that they were acting in accordance with moral principles. Democratic countries have commitments to free speech that enable us to resist such abuses. The implications for military education are that virtues such as intellectual discernment should be joined with discussions of ethical issues to ensure that future military leaders do not fall prey to false moral narratives.
When we face a choice between two incompatible actions, is there a universal priority? The early Confucians used the notion of quan 權 to navigate conflicts. On the one hand, quan can be a mean of ...weighing or assessing. Through quan, agents should be able to recognize the most valuable action and arrive at a universal priority. Thus, quan entails impersonal reasoning. On the other hand, quan means balancing, and its aim is to seek the most appropriate response. What is appropriate depends on each individual's personal factors. Thus, quan implies personal reasoning. I argue that quan represents a holistic thinking process that includes both impersonal and personal reasoning. But agents cannot engage in these two types of reasoning simultaneously. By reverse engineering how exemplars would implement quan, I show that these two types of reasoning are primarily used in different kinds of value conflicts.
This paper scrutinizes the nature and scope of deleterious consequences arising from the pursuit of unattainable pedagogical exemplars on social media. We cash out this phenomenon using exemplarist ...theory to emphasize the fact that social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) are platforms in which the vast majority of users present idealized and curated versions of themselves. We focus specifically on educational practitioners and show that attempting to emulate unattainable pedagogical exemplars has negative impacts on agents' emotional well-being: It can cause burnout and self-conflict, decrease motivation, and also inflict detrimental outcomes on agents' self-esteem. We conclude that attainable, relevant, relatable, and authentic exemplars are key to a successful exemplarist approach and that safeguarding against unattainable pedagogical exemplars is of paramount importance for the wellbeing of pedagogues, and by extension, the success of educational systems.
This paper proposes a novel educational approach to epistemic vice rehabilitation. Its authors Gerry Dunne and Alkis Kotsonis note that, like Quassim Cassam, they remain optimistic about the ...possibility of improvement with regard to epistemic vice. However, unlike Cassam, who places the burden of minimizing or overcoming epistemic vices and their consequences on the individual, Dunne and Kotsonis argue that vice rehabilitation is best tackled via the exemplarist animated community of inquiry zetetic principles and defeasible‐reasons‐regulated deliberative processes. The vice‐reduction method they propose is made up of four distinct yet complementary components: (1) positive exemplarism of epistemic virtue (saints), (2) negative exemplarism of epistemic vice (sinners), (3) direct teaching/instruction, and (4) cognitive apprenticeship. Dunne and Kotsonis argue that this pedagogical intervention appropriately considers learnings deriving from forensic scrutiny of both ideal and non‐ideal interpersonally calibrated zetetic features integral to knowledge acquisition as well as wider societal influences impacting the development of agents' epistemic character. It bridges research on vice epistemology (Cassam's obstructivist theory), social epistemology (corrupted social processes mitigating against vice rehabilitation), virtue epistemology, and moral exemplarism.
I offer an overview of Alessandra Tanesini's discussion of how best to educate for intellectual virtue in the final chapter of her book The Mismeasure of the Self. I identify the unifying theme ...behind most of her objections to existing approaches, namely that they fail to instil the proper motivations for intellectual virtue, and I raise an issue about whether Tanesini's preferred approach, self-affirmation, avoids this worry. I argue that it is not clear that it does; in particular, it's left unclear how self-affirmative interventions are meant to encourage a person's evaluations of their own intellectual achievements and capacities to be motivated by accuracy or knowledge, as Tanesini requires them to be if they are to be intellectually virtuous rather than vicious.
In late October of 2019, we brought together scholars from very different traditions in order to explore the notion of exemplarity and the role of exemplars in education. Bringing together scholars ...working on ethics and moral exemplarism, Spinoza scholars and Arendt scholars, we attempted to bring these different perspectives to bear on the role of exemplarity in education. Not in order to create a synthesis of ideas or to find solutions for practical issues, but in order to explore collegially the important issue of exemplarity in education. On the one hand, it was an attempt to put something on the table, and on the other, it was an attempt to bring people together in order to share a couple of days away from everyday academic life so as to engage the object of study without distractions. Part of what it occasioned can be read in this special issue.
This article examines the use of biographical narratives in contemporary moral education, with particular reference to the exemplarist moral theory (EMT) of Linda Zagzebski. It distinguishes between ...classical and modern versions of exemplarist moral education, highlighting the seminal contribution of Augustine's Confessions. Itself an autobiography, Confessions presents a new way to read a life, highlighting a transition from the conformist pattern of replication inherent in classical education to a central concern with self-identity and the inner life. We argue the educational benefits of a modern Augustinian approach, presenting and responding to four important concerns: (1) the selectivity of authors and educators in choosing which exemplars and life events to present; (2) the rhetorical power of narratives, which can be used as a means of indoctrination; (3) the need for students to be appropriately receptive in order for exemplar narratives to increase moral motivation; (4) the importance of relevance and realism in the exemplar narratives that are used. Along the way, we highlight a significant tension in EMT, relating to the instability of its grounding on the identification of human exemplars and the possibility of selecting individuals who may later come to light as far from exemplary persons.
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