1
Teaching Virtue
(Anselm W. Müller, Trier)
When I came to Oxford from Germany in 1965 to do postgraduate work in
philosophy, Philippa Foot gave a lecture on “Virtues and Vices”. At the
time I had virtually no idea of what kind of philosophy I might expect to
be taught at this university. So I was not aware that what she was doing in
those lectures, approaching ethics from an examination of goodness as
attributed to components of plant and animal life, was not at all typical of
Oxford moral philosophy. Nevertheless, when I studied the lecture list, I
myself could not help feeling that the topic of virtue was somehow soft
and marginal if not out-dated. It must have been the wise and kind advice
given by Tony Kenny, the supervisor that had been appointed to me for the
first two terms, that nevertheless made me choose Philippa’s lecture. Later
on I was supervised by Elizabeth Anscombe, and it was through her that I
got to know Philippa well and became a friend of hers. Over the years we
had many philosophical conversations, esp. in 1998-99, when I was at
CCC on sabbatical leave.
One of the things that became clear to me then was that Philippa did not
take herself to be a “virtue ethicist”. And I could see why. As her
wonderful book on Natural Goodness shows, her basic insight is that
morality is part of that practical rationality which is constitutive of man’s
nature. Ethical virtue, too, is natural to us; but it is good reasons for doing
a thing that make it a good thing to do, whereas the need for virtue depends
on the fact that we are often tempted not to do what is good and to do what
is not good by the standards of practical reason.
Human nature as we know it does give rise to temptation. So we do in fact
need ethical virtue in order to live well. And since we do not seem to
develop it without support from outside, we are in need of ethical
upbringing. This is why it may be said that such upbringing is itself part of
the human form of life – part of a pattern that provides us with a standard
by which to judge whether things are going well or badly with actual
human beings.
On the other hand, philosophers have doubted that virtue can be taught.
The Sophists claimed to be teachers of virtue. But Socrates, famously, had
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his doubts, and the question was much discussed: in the Dissoi Logoi (ch.
6) as well as by Antisthenes, Aristippos, Xenophon, Isocrates, Xenocrates,
and others. ((Sources are given in HistWb 10, Basel 1998, Hg. J. Ritter / K.
Gründer, 1535.)) Plato explores it in several of his dialogues (Protagoras,
Euthydemos, Phaidros, Symposion and, in particular, Meno).
We may expect that, if virtue is, as Socrates and the Stoics hold, a question
of knowing what is good for one, it ought to be teachable (Meno 86-89).
But the picture presented by Socrates is more complex and, indeed,
aporetic. Remember that he also holds that real knowledge, even in
mathematics, does not get imparted by a teacher; it is something you find
in yourself when suitably prompted (Meno 80-85). What perhaps can be
imparted is correct opinion; but, unlike knowledge, correct opinion is
unstable and therefore cannot constitute virtue (Meno 97-98). Moreover it
would seem that, if virtue could be taught, there would be people who
could effectively teach it; according to Socrates, however, there aren’t, and
this, he thinks, calls into question even the original assumption that virtue
is knowledge (Meno 97-98).
If, on the other hand, virtue is a qualification of the will, rather than reason,
the idea of teaching it appears to be even less plausible. “Velle non
discitur”, says Schopenhauer. Maybe you can be taught that something is
good; but by coming, in this way, to think it good you have not necessarily
come to go for it.
The following reflexions are to throw some light on the question whether
virtue can be taught, without however taking up the kind of consideration
pursued by either Socrates or Schopenhauer. Instead I am going to
examine and criticize a conception of upbringing that is I think
representative of present day pedagogical theory, and suggest a more
plausible alternative that I hope will go some way towards answering the
Socratic question.
1
Ethical upbringing understood as intentional activity
If we are to develop a certain amount of virtue, we have to start as
children. ((This is why I shall talk about their upbringing rather than, with
Plato, about the acquisition of virtue by young men.)) In general it is,
above all, our parents from whom we learn to behave in ways that conform
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to the ethical virtues. It is their task to give us what is often called a “moral
education”.
In what follows, I am going to use the expression ethical upbringing, or
just upbringing, to talk about the formation of character that children
receive from their parents or other people responsible for such formation.
(The use of ethical rather than moral upbringing is to remind us that the
virtues that go to make up a person’s ethos, or character, are not concerned
with the well-being of others only. And upbringing seems less suggestive
than education of schooling and erudition.)
Authors who write about so-called “moral education” do not, in general,
define it. In this they may be acting wisely. German authors, for instance,
who do give definitions of Erziehung invariably get them wrong. Here is
what Wolfgang Brezinka writes: “By bringing up we mean actions by
which people try to effect an enduring improvement in the structure of
other people’s mental dispositions, or to preserve those of its components
that are judged to be valuable, or to prevent the development of
dispositions that are esteemed to be bad.”
It is amazing to what extent the author of this definition, an otherwise
rather conscientious writer of the Popper school, goes wrong here. 1) Any
kind of brainwashing will qualify as upbringing under that definition. 2)
The definition allows any adult person, however mature, to be the object of
upbringing. 3) It does not place any conditions or restrictions (relating to
age, maturity, sanity, assigned responsibility, presence, continuity etc.) on
who may count as an agent, or subject of upbringing. 4) It does not prevent
an isolated action from being upbringing. 5) It commits what might be
called the “fallacy of truth and goodness”, which consists in predicating
universally what holds only in cases of true judgement, statement,
evaluation etc., or good conduct, work, products … and, in our case,
upbringing. – More important, however, for our purposes is another, sixth,
defect of the definition – an erroneous assumption generally unexamined
and taken for granted, in my experience, wherever educational theorists
talk about moral education.
Brezinka’s definition reflects our tendency to expect activity or action
where there is a verb – a predicate that attributes a kind of doing. More
particularly, we tend to think that if children are to learn from their parents
how to act and to live, the parents must somehow teach them how to act
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and to live; and this teaching must, it seems, consist in characteristic
intentional action or activity performed with a further intention to effect an
increase in virtue in the child.
I call this kind of view of ethical upbringing “intentionalism”. And the
definition I quoted goes wrong, above all, in being intentionalist (“try to
effect …”). In order to see that it does go wrong, we must examine what
Wittgenstein would call the grammar of upbringing. And in order to get
ready for this, let us take a closer look at the way we evaluate upbringing.
2
Ethical upbringing understood as
production, admitting of two kinds of evaluation
We have no problem wondering whether the So-and-sos brought up their
children well; or saying that this or that youngster was, or was not, brought
up well.
Admittedly, we find it difficult to say what you have to do in order to bring
a child up well; or to show that this or that defect of character is a result of
bad upbringing. Nevertheless we do take it for granted that a child’s
upbringing has an impact on the development of its character – an impact
not totally dissimilar to the kind of impact which the manipulation of a
piece of wood at the hands of a carpenter has on its shape, or the
manipulation of bow and strings at the hands of a violinist on the sounds of
her instrument. In view of this similarity, upbringing appears to be a kind
of what Aristotle calls poiesis – a kind of production or modification.
Now a poiesis can be evaluated in two ways. Thus if you have your car
serviced, and the brakes do not work well afterwards, the defect in the
result will by itself be proof that the car was not serviced well – in one
sense of “serviced well”. There is, however, another sense of this
expression, in which the car was serviced well, whatever happens
afterwards, as long as the doings and omittings that went into the servicing
were as they ought to have been. So there is one way of evaluating a
poiesis whose standard relates to the quality of the actual outcome; and
another way whose standard is a correct conception of how this kind of
poiesis should proceed in a given kind of case ((in order to produce its
characteristic effect)). This conception is of course provided by a
conception of that way of proceeding which tends, ceteris paribus, to lead
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to a good product, as products characteristic of that poiesis go. And this is
how the second form of evaluation relates to and presupposes the first.
Now, this twofold way of evaluating a poiesis also applies to the
upbringing of children. Thus, on the one hand, we may say of a youngster,
in view of his manifestation of character defects, that he was not brought
up well; while, on the other, we may also wish to say that he turned out
rather a scoundrel in spite of a good upbringing. We need this second point
of view in order to be able to evaluate a case of upbringing, or any kind of
poiesis, independently of the quality of the result, and before the result is
reached. We need it, in particular, in order to decide how, given a certain
end, we ought to proceed in order to attain it. We may speak here of the
antecedent ((as opposed to result-oriented)) evaluation of a procedure.
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Ethical upbringing understood as deployment of suitable means
for providing the child with the intended kind of character
If upbringing is a kind of poiesis we may ask: How is it done well? What is
the kind of procedure that tends to produce a good product, as products of
upbringing go? That is, roughly: Doing what, will you tend to produce a
good and independent character in your child?
If intentionalism is right, a general answer will be, in accordance with what
Aristotle says about deliberation: You form a notion of what your child is
to be like in respect of character; you figure out the means and ways of
achieving this result most easily and reliably; and you implement whatever
you have figured out. If your notion of the end of upbringing is adequate,
your judgement concerning means and ways correct, and your
implementation of these means and ways unimpeded: then you will bring
up your child well by the standards of antecedent evaluation.
This kind of answer may be in need of qualification even for ordinary
cases of poiesis like carpentry or playing a musical instrument. But it
raises special problems where upbringing is the poiesis whose goodness is
in question.
The problems I wish to discuss will become apparent as we compare
upbringing with paradigmatic types of poiesis in respect of temporal
continuity, responsibility, and evaluation.
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4
The role of continuity and the irrelevance of intention
for the occurrence and evaluation of upbringing
Imagine a violinist producing unpleasant sounds on her instrument. If we
charge her with playing rather poorly, she may successfully rebut this
charge by pointing out, truthfully, that she is not actually playing, but
rather tuning her instrument, or testing a new string or bow, or the like. If,
on the other hand, we charge you with bringing up your child rather badly,
you cannot defend what you are doing by saying: I am not actually
bringing up the child right now; I am just trying out, say, ways of making
him cry, or getting to know his repertoire of reactions, or testing the latest
recipe that education theorists have come up with.
There are (at least) two reasons why this kind of reply won’t do.
First, upbringing isn’t the kind of thing that you engage in for a time, so
that you may stop doing it for while, turn to other activities and then return
to it. Time does come into upbringing, but in other ways. For instance, you
may bring up a child from the year 2009 onwards, if the person in charge
beforehand suddenly died. But there is no such thing as an interruption of
upbringing on account of sleep, or distraction and inattention, or
occupation with other matters, or indeed a “test”. You can meaningfully
say to another person: “Would you please look after / talk to / feed Freddy
for a few minutes, while I go shopping” but not: “Would you please bring
him up for a few minutes”, nor, for that matter, “for a few days”. The
continuity of upbringing is that of a responsibility, not of an activity.
That it is the continuity of a responsibility is shown by the fact that, far
from counting as entrusting Freddy’s upbringing to your friend for a few
minutes, you might, under certain conditions, be charged with neglecting
your responsibility for Freddy’s upbringing by entrusting the child to that
other person for that time.
There is, however, a second reason why the person in charge of a child’s
upbringing cannot say: “I am not bringing him up right now, that is not my
intention; I am rather doing something else.” He cannot intelligibly say this
because whether he brings the child up or not does not depend on any such
intention. The violinist’s intention determines whether she is tuning, or
trying out, or playing (though, of course, what she says may not settle what
she intends!). By contrast, your intention is neither here nor there when
upbringing is in question. The quality of the upbringing may of course
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depend on your intending to do this and to omit that. But, as long as you
are responsible for a child’s upbringing and are, or should be, aware of this
responsibility, you will bring him up well or badly, depending on how your
conduct tends to influence his character – whether you intend to bring him
up or not. In this sense, intention is not a necessary component of
upbringing.
5
Evaluation of the agent
Let us now attend to the evaluation of doers rather than their doings. And
let us again consider first our violinist.
This time we shall charge her not just with playing badly but with being a
bad violinist. And let her rebut the charge by claiming not that she is
tuning rather than playing her instrument but, instead, that she intends to
play badly rather than well. “I am indeed playing badly”, she says, “but I
can play well, and shall do so when I intend to. So there is nothing wrong
with me as a violin player.”
This kind of defence is perfectly acceptable in her case (unless of course it
is not true that she can play well). The point is: she does not need to
perform well in order to count as competent. An analogous defence,
however, will not save you from the charge of being a bad parent ((, or,
more precisely if less nicely, a bad upbringer)). On the contrary, you show
yourself to be an especially bad upbringer and a vicious parent, if you say:
“I am indeed bringing up that child pretty badly; but that is what I intend to
do; I can do better if I want to.”
Anyone familiar with the Nicomachean Ethics will recognize in this
comparison a pattern that Aristotle applies in comparing techne (a
productive, or poietic, capacity) with arete (an excellence, esp. a
disposition to act well).
I am going to return to this similarity. Meanwhile we may note that
sections 4 and 5 already show that ethical upbringing, if a poiesis at all, is
untypical, viz. different from paradigmatic cases like carpenting or playing
an instrument, in more than one way. – Let me now draw your attention to
a further peculiarity of the way in which upbringing is productive of its
outcome.
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6
Educational measures?
As the definition quoted from Brezinka (section 1) shows, it is tempting to
believe that a child is brought up by “educational measures” taken by (e.g.)
parents.
Since, however, as we have seen (section 4), you may, in suitable
circumstances, be said to bring up a child whether or not you intend to do
so, this cannot be right.
For suppose there were indeed kinds of action that you must perform in
order to bring the child up well. What then if you fail to perform them?
You will just bring him up badly. So you will still be bringing him up –
and not by applying educational measures! ((You will be bringing him up
even if your failure to perform the required actions were to prove that you
had no intention, or were not even aware, of influencing his character.))
In this way upbringing again differs from ordinary types of poiesis. For
there are indeed kinds of action that, e.g., it takes to perform a particular
piece of music well; and if the violinist does not perform them, she will not
be playing badly – she will not be playing that piece at all. Likewise the
carpenter who fails to fasten legs to the top of a table plate is not producing
a table at all – he is not just bad at the job.
Let us, however, consider the pleasing case in which you do bring up your
child well. Even here there is no implication that you perform any acts of
upbringing, let alone that upbringing consists in such acts.
1) In the first place, bringing a child up well is to a large extent a matter of
not doing a lot of things, of waiting for changes, of doing things now
rather than later or in particular ways, etc. And if it is also a question of
performing suitable kinds of action – as it surely is, at least as a matter of
fact – this does not justify us in allotting a special role to this component of
a good upbringing.
2) Secondly, a specific situation of a particular child may make a specific
kind of action desirable or even necessary for a good development of its
character. Call such actions “educational measures” if you must (((or wait
until I have made my fifth point, or, preferably, until section 8 (3)!))). Yet
there seem to be no “educational measures” in the sense of kinds of action
such that, wherever there is to be good upbringing, these kinds of action
must be performed
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3) Third, one very important component of upbringing is of course the
upbringer’s (ethical) example. Obviously, it plays that role quite
independently of any intention to influence the child. Moreover, since the
upbringer’s virtue and vice may show in unintended as well as intended
behaviour, upbringing, too, is a matter, in part, of unintended behaviour.
4) But let us, fourthly, concentrate on the remaining part of upbringing,
viz. intended behaviour. There will no doubt be plenty of this and, in
particular, of actions by which the upbringer sets a good, or bad, example
for the child. But these intentional actions need not, of course, be
intentional components of upbringing in the sense required by
intentionalism ((, e.g., by Brezinka’s definition)): they need not be actions
performed with the further intention of influencing the character of the
child.
5) This brings us to a fifth objection to the idea that in order to bring up a
child, or at least to bring it up well, you must engage in acts of upbringing.
This idea presupposes that you have a conception of your task, i.e. a
conception of what the child’s character is to develop into, and that this
conception provides you with the purpose you pursue by means of those
alleged instrumental “acts of upbringing”. Now such a conception may
well be helpful. But upbringing certainly can and frequently does take
place without one. And I doubt that even a good upbringing depends on the
presence and influence of a conception of what kind of character the child
is to develop.
6) Even where parents are guided, in bringing up their child, by such a
conception, we can raise the question how it influences their dealings with
the child. Here I wish to draw your attention only to one aspect of the
problem. Remember that the parents’ good or bad example is an important
component of any upbringing, and that it is, in part, a matter of intentional
actions and omissions. Now if intentionalism is right even with regard to
good upbringing only, these actions and omissions, to be constitutive of
good upbringing, have to implement the further intention of realizing that
guiding conception. But how can this be if, for something to be an act of
justice, kindness, solidarity, or any other virtue, it has to be performed
from a kind of motive that is characteristic of that virtue? When our
violinist plays notes with the intention of performing Bach’s Chaconne,
this intention does not exclude the further intention of showing a student of
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hers how to do that. When, on the other hand, you help a neighbour
because you promised to do so, or from kindness, the virtuous motivation
does exclude any “further” intention. In the case of praxis, and therefore of
upbringing, the good example is not compatible with the intention of
setting an example – as it is in the case of any typical poiesis. And, at least
in this area, a conception of what sort of person their child is to become
cannot guide its parents by way of providing them with a purpose to be
intended and achieved via educational measures.
So much then in criticism of the idea that upbringing consists in acts of
upbringing. But if all this is right, what does upbringing consist in? Surely
you have to do something in order rightly to be said to bring up a child?
7
Bringing up compared with acting
At this point I wish to remind you of the analogy which (at the end of
section 5) I claimed exists between the requirements of bringing up a child
well and acting well. I shall try to show that bringing up is not only similar
in grammar to acting but also consists in acting in the sense ((, or rather:
one sense,)) of Aristotle’s prattein. – What is this sense?
If it is tempting to view upbringing as a matter of educational measures, it
is at least as tempting to view acting as a matter of performing actions or
engaging in activities. And yet, there is a very common use of the word
acting that does not fit this idea.
Aristotle explains this sense of acting by saying that the inherent telos of
prattein is its own goodness rather than anything produced by and
separable from it. It is an immanent telos: it is nothing beyond acting in a
certain way – namely: well (eu prattein) – or, roughly speaking, the
practice of the ethical virtues and practical wisdom.
When speakers of English speak of acting well and acting badly, they are
using the word acting in pretty much this sense. The function of this word
in this sense is to signify a standard by which a human agent’s life is being
judged, viz. the standard from which it is being judged qua rational life, or:
the standard of ethics.
To see this, we may compare acting well / badly with expressions like
behaving (well / badly), getting on (well / badly), working (well / badly) or
dressing (well / badly) – expressions that bring to bear other standards on
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a person’s life but exhibit the same kind of grammar. Just as you need to
put on clothes in order to be a person who dresses well, or badly, you
likewise need to perform actions in order to act well, or badly; but also:
just as dressing well does not consist in the good performance of acts of
dressing or any other acts or activities, so acting well does not consist in
the good performance of actions, or even in good acts.
The verbs that occur in those evaluative expressions – working, dressing,
etc., and also acting – these verbs may be compared to determinables such
as colour, or sound. In each case, the words serve to indicate a dimension
of predication; they cannot themselves be informatively predicated on their
own. Or, to put the point somewhat differently: It is part of the grammar of
those verbs that a human being, if in possession of his rational powers,
cannot help getting on, working, dressing, and acting somehow or other.
Are we, then, “acting” all the time, even while asleep for instance? – The
answer is: Yes. But since this answer expresses a grammatical observation,
it need not make you concerned about the regenerative value of your
slumber. Acting, in the relevant sense, does not exhibit the same kind of
temporality as performing an action.
Acting well, or badly, is indeed at times a matter of performing a certain
act; but at least as frequently it is a matter of refraining from action, of
failing to do something, or simply of not doing things. Also, you may act
well, or badly, by being, or not being, asleep at a given time; by doing
something frequently, or rarely; by treating A and B alike, or differentially;
you may act badly by doing the wrong thing from a good motive, or the
right thing for the wrong reasons. In none of these cases can we point to an
action whose performance would by itself constitute your acting well, or
badly.
What I am driving at is, of course, that bringing up exhibits the same
grammatical peculiarity as the sort of acting I have been talking about. Just
as you may, at least for a time, act well or badly without performing any
action, you may also, at least for a time, bring a child up well or badly
without employing any “educational measures”. And just as you cannot,
while in possession of the usual mental powers, fail to act, so you cannot,
while responsible for the ethical development of a child, fail to bring him
up.
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8
Bringing up well / badly by acting well / badly
So much for the grammatical analogy between “acting” and “bringing up”.
What then of my further claim that not only does the grammar of bringing
up resemble that of acting but bringing up actually consists in acting?
It comes to this: Suppose the experience of your presence is part of the life
of a child for whose ethical development you are responsible, i.e.: you are
his upbringer. Then, by the second, antecedent, form of evaluation
explained in section 2, you will bring him up well to the extent that you act
well, and badly to the extent that you act badly. If this is correct,
upbringing does not consist in anything apart from the practice of virtue
and vice.
What the concept of upbringing adds to that of acting seems to be a
combination of three components: a) an adult’s more or less continuous
presence in a child’s experience, b) that adult’s special task, or
responsibility for the development of the child’s character, and c) the
peculiar ethical requirements resulting from such responsibility. In the
remaining part of my paper I wish to say a little more about this last
component of ethical upbringing.
If acting well is to be the essence of good upbringing, there has to be an
answer to the question how your virtues make sure you bring your child up
well? – I believe that there are two ways in which they do this: first, by
shaping the example that you inevitably set for the child; and second, by
ethically qualifying your interaction with the child. Let me say a little on
each of these as well as on the place of practical wisdom (Aristotle’s
phronêsis) in the context of upbringing.
1) The relevance of the upbringer’s example seems obvious. If we blame
you because your child has not learnt to treat other people with
consideration and respect, you may try to defend yourself by saying: “I did
bring the child up to be considerate and respectful: I often told him how to
treat other people; I even punished him for inconsiderate behaviour”. This,
however, is no rebuttal of the charge if, in the child’s experience, your own
conduct was lacking in consideration and respect. It seems to follow that
influence by example is an integral part of upbringing, since lack of virtue
in the upbringer is likely to issue in lack of virtue in the child, and that, for
these reasons, the practice of virtue is as such constitutive of good
upbringing.
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2) Some ethical virtues (and vices) are “relational” in the sense that they
give ethical quality to the way in which you relate to, and interact with,
determinate individual people, or groups of people, or institutions to which
you are related in a special way, and not to others. In this sense, loyalty is
an instance of a relational virtue in that you owe it, e.g., to friends, and
there is an answer to the question who they are. Patriotism, too, is
relational in that you owe it to the country you belong to, and the question
which country that is has an answer. Marital fidelity would be another
example. Justice, on the other hand, is not a relational virtue. You do, of
course, owe it to other people. But no special relationship is presupposed
here that would entail that you owe it to these people but not to those.
The relationship that connects you with a child for whose ethical
development you are responsible creates a demand for relational virtues.
These will include, in particular, love for this child, trust in his capacity for
a desirable development, and a sense of responsibility for him. As soon as
you are in charge of the child, you cannot act well unless you practise the
relevant relational virtues. In this way, for parents to bring their children
up well, or badly, is nothing beyond their acting well or badly – precisely
in the sense in which, for a husband, being a good husband is nothing
beyond his acting well or badly
In other words: The relational virtues that are required specifically for the
task of bringing up a child, are ethically required of you if ((or to the extent
that)) you are responsible for Freddy’s moral development. The function of
these virtues is, of course, not primarily that of the good example. Rather,
they will make you come to the right decision as to whether the child
should be allowed to play with little So-and-so, or whether to send him to a
boarding-school; they will make you ready to give high priority to his
needs, to foster his self-confidence, to be attentive, spontaneously
affectionate, encouraging, critical, and whatever else the child’s ethical
situation and potential may require you to be.
3) One might insist that decisions of the kind just mentioned are
educational measures, and that these require not just virtue but
“educational” competence, a kind of techne or poietic capacity.
Now, first, a certain amount of competence is required for the practice of
the virtues quite generally, and it is practical wisdom that tells you,
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depending on your station in life, what kind and what amount of
competence you are ethically required to bring to the scene.
But, second, don’t forget that we are talking about bad as well as good
upbringing. Lack of competence, whether blameworthy or not, may be a
source of your failure to bring the child up well. But for just this reason, it
is not true that upbringing as such – good or bad – cannot take place
without competence on the part of the upbringer.
With regard to this last point, too, upbringing is different from ordinary
poiesis. You need a certain amount of characteristic competence – e.g.
violinistic, or cabinet-making competence – in order to play the violin well
or badly, to be good or bad at producing furniture, etc. But no special
educational competence is generally needed for people to bring up their
children well or badly.
This, I hope, is all that needs to be said in order to explain a plausible sense
in which, for people in charge of children, to bring them up well is for
them to act well.
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Can virtue be taught?
Is any of this going to bring us anywhere near an answer to the question
whether virtue can be taught? If we agree that parents bring up their
children well by acting well, we thereby deny that ethical upbringing is as
such a matter of competence, of poietic skill. Do we not thereby also deny
that it is a matter of teaching? For, it would seem, you cannot be said to
teach, well or badly, unless you intend that the pupil learn what you teach;
and to achieve the intended result, you have to practise a suitable skill.
I do not know whether this is right. If it is, we shall have to say: In being
brought up well, a child is learning to act virtuously from another person’s
praxis even if this person cannot be said to teach the child virtue.
No doubt philosophy has more to say about the ways in which virtue is
learnt, and about the Socratic question. But in order to have a chance of
coming up with helpful answers it has to avoid the error of intentionalism,
that persuasive misunderstanding of the grammar of upbringing. I believe
that this misunderstanding is rife among contemporary theorists of “moral
education”, and a rich source of their ideas of pedagogical “competence”
and “professionality”. We are not going to overcome it as long as we try to
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understand the task of ethical upbringing primarily on the model of poiesis
rather than praxis.