Book reviews253 Durkheim, E. (1925/1973) Moral education: a study in the theory and application of the sociology of education (New York, Free Press).
Kohn, A. (1992) No contest: the ca against competition (Boston, Houghton Mifflin).
Nicholls, J. G. (1989)The competi ti ve ethos and democrati c educati on(Cambridge, MA, H arvard University Press).cdce
Piaget, J. (1932/1965) The moral judgment of the child (New York, Free Press).
F. Clark Power, Professor, Program of Liberal Studies, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame IN 46556, USA. Email: power.1@nd.edu实现愿望 英文
© 2010, F. Clark Power
DOI: 10.1080/03057241002755176
Introduction to moral philosophy and moral education
Robin Barrow, 2007
London and New York, Routledge
£20.99 (pbk), 216 pp.
ISBN 978-0-415-42103-4流氓的英文
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What does one want from an introductory book to a complex subject? For my money, the answer is simple: I want a book I can offer without rervation to a student, knowing that his or her time will be well spent. In this respect I must express some rervations about Barrow’s book, though many would doubtless disagree. Many philosophers are more sympathetic in principle to Barrow’s outlook than I am, and this curious situation—the interweaving of the personal, the ethical and the intellectual—is in a way what Barrow’s book is about.
The book is in many respects engaging. It is straightforwardly written and theoret-ical without being turgid or technical. By ‘theoretical’ I mean that it offers a theory of morality, and it does this in a spirit of being helpful to the reader, who could (given the title) be an educational practitioner in need of help in the classroom. Such a reader does not need a lengthy treati on moral philosophy, and it is to the book’s credit that it acknowledges this fact by eschewing the history of the discipline, except in the commentaries that follow each chapter and which invite further reading.
The book is also, on occasion, inspiring. Responding to the sceptic’s question ‘why should I be moral?’, Barrow writes:
接电话英语…the answer is partly becau you will usually pay the price, but it is also partly becau
you will lo out on the inspiration of this idea; you will miss the beauty, the quality, the
牛津英汉词典magnificence in this aspiration of humans to live morally, just as tho who turn their
backs on love and friendship miss part of the potential joy and wonder of life. (p.28)
Here Barrow eloquently exemplifies the kind of respon that is demanded by ethical scepticism. H e does not shirk from evaluative terms like ‘magnificence’, despite
254Book reviews
(arguably) laying himlf open to a charge of circularity—justifying a value (morality) by reference to particular moral values (e.g. magnificence). I think he is right to talk this way, which makes it all the more surprising that Barrow’s aims in the book are classically justificatory. I mean by this that his main preoccupation is with sceptical threats to the concept of ethical truth, and his respon is rationalistic, and even quasi-scientific.
In order to substantiate the comments, I need to introduce Barrow’s aims, and (as space allows) summari his main arguments. On p. 2, he writes that he will argue for a ‘coherent gathering together of all that can be said with pretty much certainty about morality’. Some things are ‘true about morality’, or should at any rate be ‘provisionally accepted as the truth about morality’. A claim can be true, suggests Barrow, even if we are unable to prove it.
What does Barrow believe is ‘true about morality’? He argues that there exists a ‘moral ideal or quintesnce of morality’, i.e. a ‘t of principles that cannot be endlessly negotiable or varying’ (p. 8). The principles constitute a ‘grounding’ or ‘foundation’ for morality, by reference to which particular claims may be justified. Such justification does not (Barrow rightly insists) mean that there is always an ascer-tainable ‘right thing to do’. ‘Many moral problems are difficult, and some indeed are insoluble’, he writes on p. 22 (invoking the scientific metaphor of solubility that, like the concept of provisional truth, permeates the book). A moral theory is ‘not a survival kit’ or even ‘a guide to moral decision-making’ (p. 7). It is an articulation of the fundamental principles that give the lie to the sceptical idea that morality is mere opinion. It is also a (logical) ‘map of the moral terrain’ (p. 112).
The foundational principles of morality, according to Barrow, include the principles of fairness, respect for persons as ends in themlves, freedom, truth and well-being. They are foundational bec
au philosophers as diver as Plato, Kant, H ume, Mill, Moore, Ewing and Blackburn (not to mention you, the reader)‘would… agree that the five characteristics reprent fundamental moral principles’(p. 73). They are, in other words, defining characteristics of morality, which all philos-ophers either accept(ed) as such explicitly, or ‘would have if presd to consider the issue’ (p. 76).
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Take fairness. Barrow writes:
What nobody could coherently say and, as far as I know, nobody has ever tried to say, is
‘I care greatly about being moral, but I e no reason to try and be fair’ (p. 74).
This double claim is worth examining, for it takes us to the heart of Barrow’s concep-tion of morality. The part about coherence (rationality) is too large a subject to consider in this short review, but I shall make a few remarks about the empirical claim that (as far as Barrow knows) no-one has ever denied that fairness is a defining characteristic of morality.
The preoccupation with fairness, in the n of equality, is in fact historically fairly recent. (That Barrow is thinking of fairness as a kind of equality is not in doubt. On p. 74, he discuss the ambiguity between fairness as ‘treating people in the same way’ and ‘treating them with equal respect and concern’.) Both Plato and Aristotle
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Book reviews255 were at ea with profound human inequalities, and it is characteristic of traditional societies (the vast majority of societies historically and globally) that differences of status and fortune are accepted as just. To anyone who believes, with Barrow, that fairness/egalitarianism is a defining characteristic of morality, I would recommend (for a page-turner on the subject) Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The remai ns of the day, which explores a moral univer the possibility of which does not em to appear on Barrow’s horizon. Whatever one thinks of this univer, it expos the limitations of the idea that ‘no-one has ever’ tried to drive a wedge between morality and fairness. Fal or questionable assumptions about what ‘people’ say or believe are abundant in this book. Abnt is the important idea, much discusd by philosophers, that agreement in ethics may be purchad by ‘thinning down’ our concepts until they are virtually meaningless. The book neglects rious philosophical issues, to which others have drawn attention, about the quality of our ethical language. I do not have space to go into this here, but would argue that moral philosophers need literature, rather as mathematical philosophers need maths. Literature (if it is significant) prompts us to explore our assumptions, riously, persistently and imaginatively. But the, of cour, are statements of value.
Ruth Cigman, Senior Rearch Fellow in Philosophy of Education, Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK. Email: r.cigman@ioe.ac.uk
© 2010, Ruth Cigman
DOI: 10.1080/03057241003790553
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