| 英文摘要 |
A doubt often cast on the common practice of defining character education in terms of the inculcation of virtues is that it is simply a duplication of the “bag of virtues” approach, as derogatorily dubbed by L. Kohlberg. To dispel this misgiving, it is imperative to expound the relationship between the virtues, which was addressed in the controversial doctrine of the unity of the virtues in the past. After the author argue for a more plausible interpretation of it, some implications for character education are drawn in this study. Firstly, since the integration of the virtues is integral to the inculcation of virtues, it is problematic to teach the virtues in a compartmentalized way. Instead, it is necessary to learn how to confront a complex moral situation where more than one moral requirement is (are) demanded of the moral agent. Secondly, it is made explicit that the cultivation of moral dispositions and the learning of (evaluative) knowledge requisite for the various virtues are the two major tasks of the inculcation of virtues. Lastly, the unity thesis backs up the idea of the “varieties of moral personality,” i.e. virtuous people are actually of different sorts, and hence the important topic of the individualization of moral character is brought to the fore. |
