Moral Education through Philosophical Inquiry

Over time the question of moral education has been approached from different pedagogical and philosophical perspectives to which correspond different educational models and practices. Accordingly, contemporary educational debate has highlighted different frames of reference for the definition of the educational goal expected from moral education on the basis of different epistemic and existential positions which lead to very distant and different educational approaches that should be integrated within a wider pedagogical framework as far as in human life it is almost impossible to separate out the ethical from the deontic, private from public, intra-moral from extra-moral. For this reason it is necessary to work out educational goals that help pupils to position themselves in the world taking into account the regulative as well as the normative dimensions of human living and acting on the basis of a reflective rationality and work out adequate educational tools. As philosophical inquiry develops the individual capacity to understand ethical problems and articulate moral judgment creating the motives that sustain ethical agency, it constitutes an effective tool for moral education, according to an educational framework which aims at integrating individual and collective dimensions of human experiencing and acting.