Debating Moral Education

After decades of marginalization in the secularized twentieth-century academy, moral education has enjoyed a recent resurgence in American higher education, with the establishment of more than 100 ethics centers and programs on campuses across the country. Yet the idea that the university has a civic responsibility to teach its undergraduate students ethics and morality has been met with skepticism, suspicion, and even outright rejection from both inside and outside the academy. In this collection, renowned scholars of philosophy, politics, and religion debate the role of ethics in the university, investigating whether universities should proactively cultivate morality and ethics, what teaching ethics entails, and what moral education should accomplish. The essays quickly open up to broader questions regarding the very purpose of a university education in modern society. Editors Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben survey the history of ethics in higher education, then engage with provocative recent writings by Stanley Fish in which he argues that universities should not be involved in moral education. Stanley Hauerwas responds, offering a theological perspective on the university’s purpose. Contributors look at the place of politics in moral education; suggest that increasingly diverse, multicultural student bodies are resources for the teaching of ethics; and show how the debate over civic education in public grade-schools provides valuable lessons for higher education. Others reflect on the virtues and character traits that a moral education should foster in students—such as honesty, tolerance, and integrity—and the ways that ethical training formally and informally happens on campuses today, from the classroom to the basketball court. Debating Moral Education is a critical contribution to the ongoing discussion of the role and evolution of ethics education in the modern liberal arts university.Contributors. Lawrence Blum, Romand Coles, J. Peter Euben, Stanley Fish, Michael Allen Gillespie, Ruth W. Grant, Stanley Hauerwas, David A. Hoekema, Elizabeth Kiss, Patchen Markell, Susan Jane McWilliams, Wilson Carey McWilliams, J. Donald Moon, James Bernard Murphy, Noah Pickus, Julie A. Reuben, George Shulman, Elizabeth V. Spelman

“Recently colleges and universities that had for many years distanced themselves from their students’ growth as moral agents have begun taking this aspect of higher education very seriously. In this book they will find the issues laid out with admirable clarity and the fresh ideas and approaches they need to do the work well.”—W. Robert Connor, Professor of Classics, Emeritus, Princeton University, “Some of the best scholars in the field engage in the contemporary debate over the nature and scope of moral education, especially in American universities. Anyone wishing to trace this complex but fascinating debate would do well to read Debating Moral Education.” —Terence Ball, author of Reappraising Political Theory, “This excellent collection of essays provides a timely and thoughtful account of the perils and prospects of moral education in our time. The contributors are prominent moral philosophers, political theorists, and civic educators whose different perspectives—some enthusiastic, others wary—make for a lively and reflective volume. The issues raised in this important book will interest and challenge students and educators in a context defined by related debates over academic freedom, intelligent design, and the ever-present culture wars.”—James Farr, University of Minnesota, “Debating Moral Education makes an indispensable contribution to moral education’s expanding bibliography.”, “[An] engaging collection of essays by prominent scholars from religious, philosophical, and political backgrounds who debate the role of morality and ethics in the university. . . . Readers who begin this book can easily imagine themselves caught up in the unfolding, urgent, but friendly controversy of scholarly opinions regarding moral education.”

Elizabeth Kiss is President of Agnes Scott College.J. Peter Euben is Professor of Political Science, Research Professor of Classical Studies, and Kenan Distinguished Faculty Fellow in Ethics at Duke University. He is the author of Platonic Noise, Corrupting Youth, and The Tragedy of Political Theory, and an editor of Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstruction of American Democracy.