Volume 5 Issue 2 FALL 2019

Psychological argumentation, weakening the division to heteronomous and autonomous ethics, is directed mainly at the cognitivist paradigm that can be found in the background of founders of the so-called moral psychology (e.g. Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, Elliot Turiel and others). The cognitivists directly followed Kant’s normative ethics (ethics of rules) and held the relationship of a subject to rules for the key distinguishing criterion. Based on the development of a relationship to rules, Piaget, for example, created a theory of moral development of children and differentiated two stages of moral judgement – heteronomous and autonomous. A child keeping the rules not because of a reward or punishment, but because of their own acceptance of the implicit justice in them is the aim. A more differentiated conception of six developmental stages in three levels by Kohlberg is also wellknown, nevertheless, the relationship to norms, measured predominantly as an ability of moral judgement, is also definitely set. Criticism by psychologists is oriented mainly against the thesis of universal validity and consecutiveness of stages, against intellectualization of morality (what went through the process of cognition and justification in a subject is morally good) and against crowding out of the affective and social motivational structure from the moral decision-making process (Vacek 2013, 42–45). An important critical place is also the separation of cognitive powerfulness from the very action, known in psychology as “knowledge–behavior gap”, or “attitude–behavior gap”. Kohlberg’s thesis “he who knows the good chooses the good” (Kohlberg 1981, 189) does not hold. Augusto Blasi (1980, 1983) reported that moral reasoning only accounts for 10 % of the variance in moral behavior (Walker 2004). Eventually, several theoreticians (Carol Gilligan, Sam A. Hardy, Gustavo Carlo) blame cognitivists for monocratic ethics based solely on the value of justice (or, accordance with the norm), which ignores a  pluralist model of ethics integrating several sources of morality (besides rational consistency, for example, care for others, sensitivity to interpersonal relationships, etc.). Moreover, concepts based on the autonomous-heteronomous duality of morality do not notice contextual and situational factors, automatism and hidden impacts of man’s action. Pedagogical argumentation partially holds on to the criticism of cognitivism, but at the same time, it transcends it. An educator and teacher have the entire student’s person in front of them, including emotional capabilities, inner desires, social context and real action, to which creation of their identity is related. With respect to the importance of rational faculty in moral processes, it is not possible to reduce moral education AnDREJ RAJSKý S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 5 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 1 9 1 5 spread that human nature is naturally egoistic and as such 2011). At the beginning of the modern times, an opinion was dividualism and post-dutynarcissism (Gilles Lipovetsky 2008, poraryutilitarianism (Peter Singer), but also post-modern in- Pearce), classical (Jeremy Bentham, John S. Mill) and contem- on one’s own indulgence (Epikuros, Michel onfray, David egoism (e.g. Thomas Hobbes, Max Stirner), hedonism focused philosophy up to present. It embraces explicit philosophical and schools dating back to the beginnings of the European oriented toward the profit of “I” is contained in many currents A set of ethical theories that includes this type of thinking interest. criterion of person’s decision-making is their own individual in a sophisticated manner assumes that the final aim and main in it that explicitly and in a program manner, or implicitly and thor, means every ethical theory and moral practice included The “first-person ethics” (I–ethics), as understood by the au- 3 The First-Person Ethics very morality and moral education. mension of transcendence as constituting meaningfulness of the ethics”, from which “the second-person ethics” includes the di- binary conception of two ethics, I propose a conception of “three guaranteeing human dignity to man. Therefore, instead of the the challenge to transcend, which is a deep inner motive, complexity and, above all, it disposes the acting subject of not sufficient for understanding morality of man in its entire tional conceptions to heteronomous and autonomous ones is The division of ethical systems and the associated educa- relationship. fundamentally engaging all the involved in the educational not lay duties, it points out the attractive beauty of good, other values” (Buber 2016, 76). Effective moral education does an approach that prioritizes unconditionally valid values over all ues exist in the universal sense is impossible to be educated to values is absent. “A man for whom no unconditionally valid val- the Western man, the sense of universal validity of truths and carry it out. Moreover, in the contemporary post-duty world of may be sensitive to good contained in the act and they may might not be able to justify their decisions, however, they dividual principles or values, is capable of moral action; they (Buber 2016, 65). After all, even a man who cannot denote in- class will write a great treatise on the destructive power of a lie” may even easily happen that “the worse notorious liar in the to moral schooling (incitation of cognitive competences). It

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