Journal of Moral Education

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Aristotelian versus virtue ethical character

education

Randall Curren

To cite this article: Randall Curren (2016): Aristotelian versus virtue ethical character
education, Journal of Moral Education, DOI: 10.1080/03057240.2016.1238820

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Journal of Moral Education, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2016.1238820

Aristotelian versus virtue ethical character education

Randall Curren
Department of Philosophy, University of Rochester, Rochester, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article examines some central aspects of Kristjn Kristjnssons Character education;
book, Aristotelian Character Education, beginning with the claim that Aristotle; virtue ethics;
contemporary virtue ethics provides methodological, ontological, phronesis; Kristjn
epistemological, and moral foundations for Aristotelian character Kristjnsson; moral
motivation; moral
education. It considers three different formulations of what defines psychology
virtue ethics, and suggests that virtue ethical moral theory has steered
character educators away from important aspects of Aristotles
views on character education. It goes on to suggest a broadening of
attention to psychology beyond personality and the psychological
status of virtues, and it concludes with an examination of Kristjnssons
understanding of phronesis.

Kristjn Kristjnsson has emerged as a global leader in defining and advancing an ambitious
agenda of research and development in the arena of virtue-focused moral education. His
latest book, Aristotelian Character Education, offers a valuable account of progress made
on a variety of fronts. Kristjnsson writes that his aim is to flesh out a theoretical account
of character educationas a form of moral education focusing on the development of vir-
tuesdesigned along broadly Aristotelian lines (2015, p. 2). This aim is advanced through
chapters that identify and rebut myths about Aristotelian character education (chapter 2),
assess the limited progress made toward developing adequate measures of virtue (chapter 3),
explore the progress made toward understanding the cultivation of phronesis or practical
wisdom as an essential aspect of Aristotelian character education (chapter 4), suggest how
an Aristotelian view might accommodate examples of individuals overcoming bad upbring-
ing to become virtuous (chapter 5), argue that dialogue is no less essential to Aristotelian
character education than it is to Socratic education (chapter 6), defend an Aristotelian view
of the moral dimension of teaching over and against popular alternatives (chapter 7), and
consider the extent to which an Aristotelian approach is compatible with developments in
psychology (chapter 8 and throughout).
Kristjnsson offers compelling answers to questions many of us had not even thought
to pose, and his engagement with diverse philosophical, psychological, and educational
sources makes for a rich and deeply considered exploration of the issues. All told, the book
significantly advances our understanding of virtue-focused moral education, and it must

CONTACT Randall Curren randall.curren@rochester.edu

2016 Journal of Moral Education Ltd
2 R. Curren

surely be counted as essential reading for anyone interested in moral education. It is not yet
an articulation of a unified theory of character education, in part because it has relatively
little to say about instructional methods, but it is a major step toward such a theory.
Kristjnsson writes that I see myself as a helpful copy-editor trying [to] improve
current scripts [that draw on Aristotelian insights about character education] by paying
attention to what Aristotle would have (or should have) said about them (p. 12). This will be
very much my own stance. I will focus on four important elements of the book: its positions
on virtue ethics, methods of instruction, psychology, and phronesis.

Virtue ethics
Kristjnsson argues in his final chapter that four considerations must be satisfied in order
for a model of moral education to be widely acknowledged and implemented to good
effect (p. 147). It must: (1) align with public perceptions; (2) enjoy broad political consen-
sus; (3) be underpinned by a respectable philosophical theory, providing it with a stable
methodological, ontological, epistemological, and moral basis; and (4) be supported by a
dominant psychological theory (pp. 147148). Kristjnssons view is that conditions 13
are all presently satisfied, at least in the UK, but that condition 4 is not. I agree with this
assessment, with some provisos regarding conditions 3 and 4.
Regarding condition 3, Kristjnsson writes in the books introduction that:
There is reason to believe that contemporary character education can be better grounded
academically than some of its predecessors, with firm support both from the currently promi-
nent virtue ethics in moral philosophy and recent trends in empirically grounded social science
that have begun reviving the concepts of character and virtue. (pp. 2021)
I share Kristjnssons Aristotelian perspective, but he does not make a strong case in this
book for contemporary virtue ethics playing the foundational role in character education
that he assigns it. There may be respects in which the recent focus on virtue in philosophical
ethics has revitalized and emboldened character educatione.g., by licensing a focus on
virtue and deepening our understanding of the virtuesbut it is not clear that this is what
Kristjnsson has in mind when referring to a methodological, ontological, epistemolog-
ical, and moral basis (p. 147). It is not clear that virtue ethics as he defines it can provide
such a basis. Beyond this, I have some concern that the defining features of virtue ethical
moral theory have steered moral educators away from some important Aristotelian ideas
about moral educationideas about immersion in just, rule-governed communities, and
mutual goodwill.
Kristjnsson initially defines virtue ethics in a way that reflects its emergence as an alter-
native to deontological and consequentialist theories of morality: According to virtue ethics,
an action is right because it enhances virtue and contributes to a flourishing lifethe
virtue and flourishing of the actor, evidently (p. 18). He writes again a few pages later that
eudaimonia, a flourishing life, is the ultimate good for which human beings act, according
to Aristotle, and an action or a reaction is morally right if and only if it enables human
flourishing (p. 25). This conjunction of claims seems, again, to imply that what is right is
acting so as to promote ones own flourishing. Taken at face value, this imputes to Aristotle a
view of rectitude that he nowhere asserts or implies, as far as I can tell. I say this quite ready
to concede that Aristotle has indeed been readparadoxicallyas both a virtue ethicist
who rejects any notion of moral duty and as holding the fundamentally egoistic doctrine
 Journal of Moral Education 3

that human beings are not just universally motivated to pursue their own flourishing as their
ultimate end, but are right or categorically required to do so. Whether this is Kristjnssons
view of Aristotle is not entirely clear. The formulation, enables human flourishing, could
mean a variety of things, obviously. It could mean something like facilitates the flourishing
of all concerned, for instance. This is not what the context suggests, however.
In any case, this virtue ethical interpretation of Aristotle is at odds with aspects of
Aristotles ethics that I think Kristjnsson recognizes, and it is at odds with defining aspects
of the progressive movement in Greek moral thought to which Aristotle belonged (Curren,
2000, 2010, 2015a, 2015b). The entire tradition running from Hesiod and Solon, through
Socrates and Plato, to Aristotle and the Stoics, was predicated on a social ethic of equal
moral respect for persons, and a focus of this tradition was on demonstrating that there
was personal advantage in respecting norms of natural justice in dealing with others. In this
respect, the key Socratic innovation, further developed by the philosophers who followed,
was the eudaimonic assertion that there is an inner psychic dependency of happiness on
the possession of virtue. Classical Greek eudaimonism was unequivocally deployed in the
service of public norms of moral respect that were understood to be expressible in law.
Kristjnsson goes on to acknowledge that there are moral objections to virtue ethics
as he first defines it, and he suggests an alternative definition. There is another and more
inclusive understanding of the term virtue ethics where it refers simply to the thesis
that a person cannot live a well-rounded and overall satisfactory life without practicing
moral virtue (pp. 5455). It is safe to assume that he has in mind the Socratic eudaimonic
thesis, that moral virtue is an internal or psychic prerequisite for a satisfactory life, and
not, for example, the Hesiodic assertion of an external, divinely mediated relationship.
So understood, this eudaimonic thesis is indeed authentically Aristotelian and helpful
to justifying moral education, if its truth can be demonstrated. Whether it is a purely
philosophical thesis or provides the methodological, ontological, epistemological, and moral
basis for character education that Kristjnsson claims for virtue ethics is doubtful, however
(pp. 147148). How could virtue ethics do this if it is simply a thesis? At best it might provide
a component of the moral basis for character education.
Perhaps the methodological, ontological, epistemological, and moral basis Kristjnsson
has in mind is the set of assumptions he associates with Aristotelian-inspired virtue ethics
in the books introduction: an objectivist view of flourishing, a moral naturalist view of
moral facts, a realist view of character and the self, evidential naturalism (which makes
moral theorizing answerable to social scientific research), and the view that some states
of character have intrinsic value. These assumptions might form the comprehensive phil-
osophical basis for character education that Kristjnsson has in mind, and they have the
merit of being both philosophically plausible and genuinely Aristotelian. Yet, on this ver-
sion of what defines virtue ethics, the foundational philosophical theory we can deploy in
defense of character education is nothing over and above our best efforts to fashion a viable
contemporary version of Aristotles ethics. Kristjnsson might or might not agree with this
and be willing to clarify his position by equating virtue ethics with these best efforts. This
might save the idea that contemporary virtue ethics provides character education with a
respectable philosophical theory, but problems would remain regarding the methods of
moral education inspired by virtue ethics.
Work in contemporary virtue ethics may provide useful guidance in developing a via-
ble neo-Aristotelian theory, of course, but it has apparently also blinded many character
4 R. Curren

education theorists to aspects of Aristotles account of character education that do not fit
with the construction of virtue ethics as a distinctive alternative to deontological and con-
sequentialist theories. In the next section, I will urge some caution regarding how far the
virtue ethics movement should inform the methods of Aristotelian character education.

Methods of instruction
Apart from a discussion of dialogue in chapter 6 and suggestions concerning education for
phronesis in chapter 4, the methods of character education receive only three pages of atten-
tion in the concluding chapter. This in itself is no cause for complaint. After all, Kristjnsson
has framed the task of this book as theoretical and he notes that he and his colleagues at
the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues have a separate book on character educational
practices in the works. Yet, there may be respects in which a theoretical understanding of
Aristotelian character education could benefit from fuller consideration of the methods of
instruction through which ideas about moral learning would be put into practice.
Kristjnsson notes the following much-discussed aspects of character education: service
learning, emulation (role-modeling), great literature, and school ethos. He acknowledges
that school ethos may be more important to character education than the efforts of indi-
vidual teachers and individual classes, and he recognizes that core ethical virtues must be
demonstrated and reinforced everywhere (p. 161). He describes character education as
about belonging and living constructively within a community, such as the school (p. 162).
We are given to understand that the kind of school community that is essential is one in
which virtues are consistently exemplified and there are many good models to emulate. I
have no fundamental objection to any of this, but it strikes me as a list that is incomplete in
exactly the way one would expect of a moral education movement inspired not by Aristotle
but by virtue ethical moral theory.
A model more fully engaged with Aristotles own views could begin by insisting that
attempts to cultivate virtue would not only fail, but fail to be just, if schools are not just com-
munities. The idea of a school ethos favorable to good character development captures some,
but not all, aspects of the idea of a just school community. Kristjnsson does recognize a role
for justice in the design of schools, when he answers the criticism that common approaches
to character education are focused too narrowly on fixing the kids and not enough on cor-
recting the failures of schools and societies to provide the basic necessities that [citizens and
students] need to function well (p. 31). However, he does not go on to consider the ways
in which the accessibility of such necessities for living well may be foundational to moral
learning and a basic aspect of the terms of life in schools being fair to children (see Curren,
2013a, 2014b, 2015b). What he says, instead, is that the ideal breeding ground for character
is a community in which a vision of the good life is at least broadly sharedas if agreement
among adults were all that mattered, and alignment with childrens needs played no role at
all in determining which values they fully internalize (p. 31). This is a view more consistent
with communitarian virtue ethicsthe Aristotle of Alasdair MacIntyre, perhapsthan with
Aristotle. The ideal aristocracy described in Books VII and VIII of Aristotles Politics would
be a true community or partnership in living what he takes to be the one best kind of life
for human beingsa life devoted to theoretical inquiry, above allbut none of his moral
educational proposals presuppose the existence of such a community.
 Journal of Moral Education 5

Aristotle, like Plato in the Laws, is quite insistent about the role of good laws or rules of
conduct in communicating moral truths and limiting human practices to those conducive
to virtue, regardless of whether the society that promulgates them is a true communitya
community being a partnership in pursuing a shared conception of the good life. He insists
that such communities are exceedingly rare, while also identifying public education in
virtue as uniquely valuable in making imperfect societies more just (Curren, 2000). This
is surely a stance much more helpful to Kristjnssons cause than the conservative com-
munitarianism that has been mistaken for Aristotelian. Asked to identify an existing true
community, Aristotle would almost certainly have named his own Lyceum, which operated
very much as a partnership of friends in pursuing the life of inquiry he took to be the best
life for human beings (Curren, 2014c; Lynch, 1972). Character education in the schools of
pluralistic democracies cannot be predicated on assuming there is a singular best life for
everyone, but it should be predicated on schools being just communities in the liberalized
and developmental Aristotelian sense that they enable children to make progress in living
well in ways they experience as progress (Curren, 2013a, 2013b).
Virtue ethicists are inclined to deny that rules play any useful role in right action or
character formation, but no one can seriously imagine schools without rules, school lead-
ers who do not refer to principles in modeling responsible decision-making, or practice in
good habits that is not rule-guided (Curren, 2015a). The rules of Aristotelian just school
communities would be conducive to the formation of good character and partnership in
learning, while enabling diverse students to experience progress in living well in their own
lives. The application of rules requires judgment, of course, but this is no objection to the
widespread view that they play important roles in sound upbringing, character education,
and ethical decision-making. One role in moral education that I would scarcely be the first
to emphasize is in defining what is to be practiced in order to become virtuous. Another is
that the simple rules of conduct from which children begin will later be objects of inquiry,
as moral understanding and judgment are advanced through conversation and analysis of
situations encountered in life and literature.
Aristotle argues in the closing pages of his Nicomachean Ethics (NE) that, in cities and
households alike, it is impossible to cultivate virtue without the knowledge of legislation he
will present in the Politics, a work all but ignored by the contemporary virtue ethics move-
ment: And surely he who wants to make men, whether many or few, better by his care must
try to become capable of legislating, if it is through laws that we can become good (Barnes,
1984, p. 1866 [NE X.9 1180b2426]). Law has compulsive power he writes, but it is at the
same time an account proceeding from a sort of practical wisdom and intelligenceintelli-
gence and right order of the kind most suitable to guiding habituation or the acquisition of
virtue (p. 1865 [1180a1422]). Laws aim at the common advantage and prescribe the acts
of brave, temperate, good-tempered, and in all other ways virtuous peoplethe whole of
virtue toward others (pp. 17821783 [1129b1426]). The law bids us practice every virtue
and forbids us to practice any vice [and makes these prescriptions] with a view to educa-
tion for the common good (p. 1784 [1130b2427]). The laws of a society, and analogously
the rules of a household, are instruments of character education, in other words, and they
encourage virtue toward others, which entails goodwill, valuing others as rational beings,
and the like (Curren, 2000; Walker, Curren, & Jones, 2016).
References to a just community approach to moral education will remind many readers
of Lawrence Kohlberg, so a few words by way of contrast are in order. The Kohlbergian
6 R. Curren

vision of a just school community was modeled on the ideal of a self-governing democracy,
whereby students were to have an equal voice in formulating and judging school rules
(Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989). An Aristotelian approach would not give students an
equal voice in school governance, but it would take students perspectives on the norms
of life in school seriously and it would act on those perspectives to the extent that they
are perceptive and sensible. Acknowledging students perspectives would also facilitate
their internalization of the moral ideas expressed by the rules on which schools operate, as
Kohlberg realized. From an Aristotelian perspective, the task of societies and institutions
is to enable everyone to live well, and, in order to do their part, schools must be focused
on the substance of school rules and norms being optimal for students development. This
is an aspect of a school community being just, and one that I take to be foundational to a
schools perceived moral authority and success in character education.
The reality of many schools today is that they attempt to control students through rigidly
administered systems of rules and punishments, which are neither efficacious in improving
student conduct, nor just (Bahena et al., 2012; Williams, 2013). They are unjust because
the exclusionary punishments meted out too often result in students being denied the
education they are entitled to. They are unjust because they impose conditions of life in
schools that offer students too little opportunity to meet their basic relational, autonomy,
and competence needs in acceptable ways. And they are unjust because they are shaped by
a retributive, rather than formative, mindset. An Aristotelian perspective would implore
educational leaders to adopt a more formative and judicious perspective on school rules and
how to handle infractions. Would a virtue ethical approach, which typically insists there is
no role for rules in moral choice and education, do the same? I wish I could be confident
that it would. I see no prospect of schoolsor homesmaking do without rules that provide
needed structure, so it is important to think carefully about how to optimize the educational
use we make of rules. Doing so requires that Aristotelian character education be grounded
in relevant bodies of psychology, and it is to this I now turn.

Psychology
Kristjnsson holds that character education will not be widely and successfully imple-
mented until it is supported by a dominant psychological theory, explaining how the ideals
of the educational theory fit into actual human psychology and are, as such, attainable
(Kristjnsson, 2015, p. 148). Such support does not presently exist, he argues, because
contemporary psychology is not yet virtue-friendly, a claim he has developed in compel-
ling detail in his previous work (Kristjansson, 2013). Kristjnsson is undoubtedly right
that the foundations of character education will not be secure until psychological theory
provides adequate explanatory models of the structure and acquisition of individual virtues
and states of character generally, and he is also right that it has not yet done so. Looking
forward, however, it will be important to cast a wider net; Kristjnsson has focused on Big
Five personality psychology and the role of character virtues and strengths in the positive
psychology movement, but the psychological developments most helpful to character edu-
cation may lie elsewhere.
If our concern as character educators is to understand how our educational ideals fit
into actual human psychology, what bodies of psychological theory and research are impor-
tant? We need to know that states of character are real and how they develop and persist. If
 Journal of Moral Education 7

states of character are complex structures of motivation, emotion, perception, belief, and
responsiveness to reasoning and evidence, we also need to know how the parts of these
complex structures are dynamically interrelated. Despite the attention philosophers have
devoted to situationism, we seem to have good evidence that there are intra-personally sta-
ble, cross-person differences in personal attributes corresponding to virtues (Jayawickreme,
Meindl, Helzer, Furr, & Fleeson, 2014). We also have a significant body of knowledge of the
psychic foundations of good character and factors that contribute to its development. What
we do not yet have, and need, is an explanatory model of how the working parts of virtues
and states of character interact with each other and with the situations in which people act.
There is no need to belabor the approach I have been pursuing myself, which is undoubtedly
only one of many that are possible, but it recognizes that motivation is a central component
of virtues and virtuous states of character, and it draws upon advances in the psychology of
motivation, personality, and well-being associated with Self-Determination Theory (SDT)
(Curren, 2014b, 2015b; Deci & Ryan, 2000, 2012; Ryan, Curren, & Deci, 2013; Walker
et al., 2016). Although SDT has only begun to embrace the language of virtue, it offers rich
resources for understanding the role of external needs-support, patterns and degrees of
internalization of values, internal integrative processes, and the what and why of goal
pursuits, in character formation, virtuous motivation, and human flourishing. It implies that
the Aristotelian just school communities I described above would need to provide students
with sufficient opportunities to meet their basic psychological needs, not only because it
is good for them but because it is foundational to the psychic integration of the virtues of
character that schools aim to nurture.

Phronesis
Kristjnsson and I share the concern that character educators often ignore the important
role of intellectual virtues in Aristotles conception of a true virtue or fully virtuous state
of character (Curren, 2014a, 2014b, 2015a; Curren & Dorn, forthcoming). Habituation
that cultivates the right desires, pleasures, emotions, and perceptions, has dominated the
character education landscape, while the critical thinking, inquiry, understanding, moral
knowledge, and good judgment that are often essential to navigating morally challenging
situations are neglected. Kristjnsson aims to remedy this, addressing phronesis (practical
wisdom or good judgment) in chapter 4, the overcoming of defective upbringing through
intellectual interventions in chapter 5, and educative dialogue in chapter 6.
Aristotle identifies moral virtues as attributes of the desiring or irrational part of the
psyche, and he identifies intellectual virtues as attributes of the rational part of the psyche,
but he qualifies this by noting that these parts of the psyche may be inseparable, like convex
and concave in the circumference of a circle (Barnes, 1984, p. 1741 [NE I.13 1101b2931]).
He also notes that the desiring part of the psyche is not altogether irrational, since it is
often persuaded by reason, as indicated also by the giving of advice and by all reproof and
exhortation (p. 1742 [NE I.13 1102b331103a1]). The point of hypothesizing the existence
of a psyche at all is to explain voluntary movement or action, which Aristotle describes
as originating in choices arising from desire and reasoning with a view to an end for
good action and its opposite cannot exist without a combination of intellect and character
(p. 1798 [NE VI.2 1139a3135]). The basic view here is that what a person desires, perceives
as good, and takes pleasure in is a matter of character, and the understanding and thinking
8 R. Curren

that is also essential to deliberation and choice is a matter of intellect, and both must be in
good order for people to choose and act well. The aim of moral education is presumably
that people should choose and act well, so if we are going to use the term character edu-
cation we should understand that it seems to signify only a part of the education in virtue
that Aristotle advocatedthe education in both moral and intellectual virtues essential to
choosing and acting well.
Several aspects of what I have just outlined are important to what follows. The one I
want to emphasize now, before considering what Kristjnsson says, is Aristotles view that
what a person desires, perceives as good, and takes pleasure in is a matter of character. Each
state of character has its own ideas of the noble and the pleasant, Aristotle writes, and the
good man differs from others most by seeing the truth in each class of things (p. 1758 [NE
III.4 1113a31-33]). A good person perceives what is good as good, and what is bad as bad.
Similarly, a person who lacks temperance or courage and is ruined by pleasure and pain
forthwith fails to see what is choice-worthy (p. 1800 [NE VI.5 1140b1119]). Aristotle does
not, and cannot, assert that instruction and conversation have no impact on what people
perceive as good, but he famously assertsfollowing the implicit message of Platos Republic,
Book Ithat arguments alone are unlikely to sway those who are so badly raised that they
lack even a conception of what is noble (kalon; appropriate) and truly pleasant, since they
have never tasted it (p. 1864 [NE X.9 417]). Aristotle is an empiricist with regard to the
origin of ideas, so we can take at face value his assertion that people who have never been
exposed to models of appropriate action and internalized those models in their own habits
will not even understand arguments about what is truly appropriate. If habituation begins
in familiarity with good models, it is completed in practice through which those models
are incorporated in the character (p. 1864 [NE X.9 17]). We must, in other words, keep
clearly in mind that Aristotle regards perceptions of what is good as largely a trailing effect
of practice that is strongly linked to the shaping of desire and what people find pleasant. It
is for this reason that wisdom in human affairs, whether theoretical (sophia) or practical
(phronesis), requires the possession of good character (Kraut, 1989). We cannot know what
our defects of character prevent us from seeing.
I would also emphasize, however, that I find no doctrine of character permanence in
Aristotle. Habituation will continue long after childhood, and there is no good Aristotelian
reason to doubt it could reshape a persons perceptions of what is good and bad. So I agree
with Kristjnsson that an Aristotelian perspective can accommodate cases in which bad
upbringing is overcome, but I would attach greater importance to perception and the variety
of ways in which it may be altered.
Aristotle identifies phronesis as excellence in deliberating about or calculating what to
do in life generally, as opposed to good judgment in a specific sphere or art (Barnes, 1984,
p;. 1800 [NE VI.5 11402431]). Good judgment is important in medicine, body building,
and other spheres of endeavor, no doubt, but when we speak without qualification of a
person of good judgment we have in mind what Aristotle calls phronesis. Good judgment
in a specific art involves calculating well in pursuit of the good end that is the object of that
art, such as health in the case of medicine, and phronesis similarly involves calculating or
deliberating well with respect to living well in general. In both the specific arts and in life
generally, there are also relevant bodies of knowledge that must inform judgment for it to
be good. The knowledge that Aristotle seems to associate with phronesis is the knowledge
of the human good he aims to systematize in the NE (Curren, 2010).
 Journal of Moral Education 9

Deliberating is an intellectual activity, and the first thing to say about how excellence in
deliberation would develop is that practice in doing it carefully would be essential. It would
seem evident that, whatever Aristotle might or might not say, it would be useful to observe
and examine good and bad models of deliberation and be coached by trusted mentors and
peers. Learning all the ways that people miscalculate, overlook relevant considerations,
and in other ways fall short of due diligence is no doubt a lengthy, and perhaps endless,
process, drawing on countless examples. And even if there were a complete science of the
human gooda psychologically grounded theory of human well-being or living wellit
would take time and practice to consistently make enlightened use of that knowledge. The
attainment of practical wisdom is surely a lengthy and incremental process.
Kristjnsson suggests that phronesis develops in the virtuous, turning them into criti-
cal, reflective agents, but it would be more accurate to say that phronesis or excellence in
deliberation develops as people of ordinary virtue become better in assessing situations and
thinking through what to do (Kristjnsson, 2015, p.112). An education in thinking before
acting will have already turned children into reflective agents long before their efforts at
deliberation would qualify as excellent, and it is inconceivable that anyone could consistently
act well without such education.
More generally, Kristjnsson may be setting off on the wrong foot when he begins by
characterizing phronesis not as Aristotle does, but as serving the purpose of living well by
monitoring and guiding the moral virtues and evaluating and providing proper justifica-
tions for the emotional dispositions acquired in habituation (p. 88). What happens in the
development of phronesis, he says, is that it:
gradually latches itself onto every individual moral virtue and infuses it with systematic
reason (the constitutive function of phronesis) while promoting living well in general by helping
us to act virtuously in an overall way (the integrative function of phronesis). (p.112)
The suggestion that excellence in the activity of deliberation latches itself onto states
of the desiring or non-rational part of the psyche is ontologically strained. It is important
to keep in mind that deliberation is the activity through which people make choices, and a
state of moral character is supposed to be a more or (often) less coherent set of desires and
related perceptions and dispositions to experience pleasure or pain. When people act, it is
the person we judge and describe as having or not having good judgment, not their virtues,
as Kristjnssons formulation would imply.
Good judgment may be impossible or less likely if the various moral virtues are not inte-
grated into a coherent package, of course, but the work of self-integration is an activity unto
itselfan activity we should undertake thoughtfully, but one that is nevertheless a different
activity from deliberation. It seems inaccurate, then, to say that evaluating and providing
proper justifications for the emotional dispositions acquired in habituation is a task for
phronesis. Rather, it is a task of self-directed, applied moral inquiry that would rely on the
knowledge of the good for human beings that must also inform phronetic deliberation. It
might be true that acting on a good judgment to suppress a generous or loyal impulse in
an inapt context would tend to inhibit inapt impulses of those kinds in the future, but if
exercises of phronetic deliberation have a shaping effect on the virtues in this way, it is an
indirect effect.
There is much more in Kristjnssons book concerning phronesis than I can address, so
I will finish with a question about it central to chapter 4, namely how helpful Julia Annass
suggestion is, that acquiring virtues is like acquiring complex skills (Annas, 2011). Does
10 R. Curren

education in violin performance or in professional decision-making, provide an illuminating

model for education in phronesis? One of Kristjnssons many arguments is that:
[This] seems to be putting the explanatory order upside down to try to learn about general
phronesis education from education in complex professional skills, rather than vice versa, as
the former seem to come before the lattermorally, psychologically, and logicallyin the
developmental order. There is something decidedly odd, from an Aristotelian perspective,
about the idea of domain-specific phronesis that is not founded on general phronesis. (p. 99)
One response to this would be that arts are referred to by Aristotle as having ends, such
as health in the case of medicine, which are more limited than living well itself. The range
of considerations that must be weighed in judgments in the practice of such arts are cor-
respondingly more limited, because the physician need only promote the patients health
without wronging him. It is the patients task, not the physicians, to weigh health against
other aspects of his life in deciding what to do. The physician will have such decisions to
make in her own life, of course, but not qua physician. Good judgment in medical deci-
sion-making is not phronesis strictly speaking, so I would not agree that the skill analogy
gets the order of explanation wrong. There are surely physicians with excellent professional
judgment who display poor judgment in managing their own lives. Does a good medical
education give us a useful model for education in phronesis? I would hesitate to reject this
out of hand, given Aristotles and Platos reliance on medical science and art as a model for
political science and art, the sphere of phronesis writ large (Curren, 2000).

Conclusion
It can be hard to know when airing differences of perception and understanding may prove
helpful to advancing a common inquiry and common project in educational and social
improvement. I hope this is an occasion on which it does. Kristjnssons book is the fruit
of uncommonly deep and persistent engagement with a topic of fundamental importance
to the public interest, and it is a book that should prove valuable to a wide audience.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Randall Curren is Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Education (secondary) at
the University of Rochester (New York). He held a fractional research Chair of Moral and Virtue
Education at the University of Birmingham (England) and a concurrent professorship in the Royal
Institute of Philosophy in London for 20132015. Prior to that, he was the Ginny and Robert Loughlin
Founders Circle Member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey for 201213.

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