Behavior :: essays research papers

EDUCATING ETHICAL BEHAVIORARISTOTLES VIEWS ON AKRASIACan the teaching of ethics really help cleanse the short letter world of shady dealings? Asked by Newsweek magazine during the height of the new-fangled Wall-Street s cannisterdals,1 this query resonates with perennial concerns about whether or not virtue can be taught and how such instruction might best be effected. The problem, Newsweek declargons, is not that students lack ethical standards or be incapable of distinguishing wrong from right. The dispute for educators rather lies in helping students act on the virtues they espouse. Even in todays complex world, knowing whats right is comparatively easy, Newsweek concludes. Its doing whats right thats hard. Why do quite a little act wrongly, when they know full well what right conduct demands? This phenomenon, cognize to philosophers as incontinence or akrasia, receives extensive treatment in arrest Seven of Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics.2 Like Newsweek, Aristotle holds th at akrasia presents a special challenge for example education. How does Aristotle conceive this challenge, and what might contemporary educators learn from Aristotles analysis? To instruct Aristotles insights into akrasia and moral instruction, it is helpful to begin by looking at popular views of the akratics dilemma. Popular beliefs about incontinence are wide-ranging and often contradictory, Aristotle contends.3 Two, however, bear scrutiny. Aristotle summarizes them as follows (1) The continent person seems to be the same as one who abides by his rational calculation and the incontinent person seems to be the same as one who abandons it. (2) The incontinent person knows that his actions are base, but does them because of his tinges, while the continent person knows that his appetites are base, but because of flat coat does not follow them.4 In short, popular opinion concludes that with respect to akrasia, tanging overpowers reason the individual, as a consequence, is seduc ed into acting irrationally. This conclusion, in turn, is marked by two deeper suppositions a) feeling (or appetite) is distinct from reason b) reason can be disciplined, but feelings cannot. Although voiced in ancient Greece, these common beliefs about akrasia are held no less widely today. Like Aristotles compatriots, we tend to carve up reason from desires and appetites. The latter we regard as urges we cannot help but feel reason, by contrast, bespeaks a capacity for considered control. When we act against our better judgment, it is because we cannot hold our feelings at bay. We lose control and behave irrationally.