Perfect imperfection: articulation in moral formation

ABSTRACT

In response to Adam’s concern that when one tries to articulate a moral commitment, the commitment is ‘falsified,’ I examine the importance of a particular articulation in the process of moral development and look for a way to engage in this articulation, while avoiding the pitfalls Adams identified. Via the example of moral formation, and more specifically, exemplarity, I show the role of articulation in moral growth. Moreover, I attempt to show that partial and imperfect articulation can lead to moral growth. For if this articulation is understood as inherently partial, it does not fall into the pitfall of ‘falsification,’ nor other well-known pitfalls in the process of moral formation through exemplarity.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral formation
• moral growth
• exemplarity
• imperfection

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1103a15-1103b25, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, vol II, Past Masters, (Clayton, Ga: InteLex Corporation, 1992), 1742–1743, http://pm.nlx.com/xtf/view?docId=aristotle/aristotle.02.xml.

2. Wouter Sanderse, “Role Modelling,” Journal of Moral Education 42, no. 1 (2013): 28–42; Pieter H. Vos, “Learning from Exemplars,” Journal of Beliefs and Values 39, no. 1 (2018): 17–28, https://doi.org/10.1080/13617672.2017.1393295; Kristján Kristjánsson, ‘Emulation,’ Journal of Moral Education 35, no. 1 (March 2006): 37–49.

3. Cf. Linda Zagzebski, Exemplarist, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190655846.001.0001.

4. Zagzebski, Exemplarist, 138.

5. I use “learner,” as also Linda Zagzebski does, to indicate not only moral formation in the context of education, but moral development in general.

6. Kristjánsson, “Emulation,” 40.

7. Sanderse, “Role Modelling,” 35–37; Vos, “Learning from Exemplars,” 22–23.

8. Vos, “Learning from Exemplars,” 23.

9. Kristjánsson, “Emulation,” 48.

10. Kristjánsson, “Emulation,” 44–48. See also Sanderse, “Role Modelling.”

11. Zagzebski, Exemplarist Moral Theory, 147.

12. Zagzebski, Exemplarist, 129–155.

13. Zagzebski, Exemplarist, 184–86.

14. Vos, “Learning from Exemplars,” 18–23.

15. Kristjánsson, “Emulation,” 41.

16. See Zagzebski who elaborates this example in greater detail. Zagzebski, Exemplarist, 189–92.

17. Zagzebski, Exemplarist, 190.

18. Wouter Sanderse, “Role Modelling,” 37.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dominique A. Gosewisch

Dominique Gosewisch is PhD researcher at the Protestant Theological University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her dissertation is on law, virtue, and grace in the ethics of Reformed Scholastics, and focuses on the tension between divine and human action. Recent publication: Dominique Klamer, “Law, Virtue, and Duty in Petrus van Mastricht’s Theoretico-Practica Theologia,” in The Transcendent Character of the Good: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives, ed. Petruschka Schaafsma, Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory (New York, NY: Routledge, 2023), 139–55.