Natality and Morality: Giving Birth to Morality

• In Event: Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: Morality, Moral Disengagement, Identity, and Meaning of Youth

Abstract

This paper attempts to elucidate the importance of natality in an education in morality. John Wilson’s conception of education in morality is combined with Hannah Arendt’s argument for the necessity of natality in education to show that moral education must preserve student natality and expose current conceptions of morality to the risk of revision. Recognition of the essential role of natality in morality requires educators in the field of moral education to engage students in the development of morality rather than in the transmission of specific morals, and to accept the risk that such development may result in changes to existing conceptions of morality.

Author

• Matthew J. Hayden, Drake University