Moral Education, Emotions, and Social Practices

Paul Hirst’s idea of moral education is distinctive in the central role it attributes to social practices. For him, ethical principles and virtues should not be seen as abstract entities theoretically derived and then applied in education so that students learn to reason from those principles or live by those virtues. Instead, Hirst’s moral education incorporates an initiation into social practices and comes back to them by means of situated critical reflection from within those practices themselves. Embracing Hirst’s proposed central role of social practices, this paper spells out the key role that emotions play in moral education so understood and their relations with social practices. As emotions materialize our deeply held values, incorporated into lived experience, their cultivation will not simply be a matter of deliberation, but instead of the practical exploration of social practices that can nurture and sustain them.