Moral Philosophy and Moral Education considers the interconnections of ethics, education, and the philosophy of culture as related to the human concern with self-knowledge.
The individual self finds its inner life writ large in the forms of culture such as religion, art, and history.
Such forms of cultural life represent and embody normative ideals that can provide the necessary content to shape the character and the conduct of civic life.
Thora Ilin Bayer draws upon the ancient Greek view of education as paideia and the conception of Bildung of the German idealist philosophers.
These two ideas of education aim at the development of the whole person as distinct from training in a particular skill, subject matter, technique, or occupation.
The education of the whole person aims at the production in the individual of a broad mental outlook harmoniously joined with a knowledge of the great perspectives and principles of human culture as it takes its various shapes within the history of humanity.
Moral philosophy requires both culture and the individual as its terms of inquiry, and moral education requires a vision of how to have these two terms interact to form a whole.
Professor Bayer's book is philosophical thought at its best.
It is clearly and elegantly written, consistently rendering complex ideas comprehensible without compromising their meaning.
Her study brings together culture, education, and moral theory in terms of the perennial philosophical ideal of self-knowledge.
It does so by taking the reader through the treasure-house of the great traditions of Italian Humanism and German Idealism.
This is a unique and rewarding work in every sense.
--Donald Phillip Verene, Emory University This beautifully written book provides a timely reminder of the value of humanistic education in a world fragmented by reductive theories and politicized thinking.
Its tone is uplifting and redemptive of human experience, linking the classical concepts of education, self-know.
