Lydia Amir

In this paper I continue to probe the roles of philosophy and psychology in moral education. In a previous article published in this journal, I criticized the moral views of various schools of psychotherapy, and argued that philosophers are the sole professionals equipped to teach normative morality in a pluralistic, critical, and reasoned way. In this paper, I argue that effective moral education involves emotional education; that philosophers’ views of emotions tend to be reductive, and when they are not, they point to an irreducibility of affectivity which is not amenable to philosophical investigation. While emotional and moral education should go hand in hand, philosophers seem poorly equipped for the former. Psychotherapists are trained in educating emotions and in attending the irreducible affectivity of individual emotions. Interested as we might be in psychotherapists’ specialization in emotional education, we cannot dissociate it from moral education, as emotional education is not value-free. Recalling that psychological theories involve views of morality which do not withstand critical examination, we are reluctant to entrust psychotherapists with moral education. Turning once again to psychology, we realize that we have added a new complexity to the initial problematic status of psychological moral education. While emotional and moral education should go hand in hand, the untenable situation that obtains is that philosophers educate us morally while psychologists educate us emotionally. Moral education is impaired whether it is left to psychotherapists or to philosophers. I conclude by sharing some thoughts on the possibilities of amending this situation.