Laila Haghbayan

The question of whether virtue can be taught has persisted as a central philosophical inquiry since antiquity, prominently articulated in Plato’s Republic. This paper undertakes a comparative analysis between Plato’s conception of virtue as the rational harmony of the soul culminating in justice, courage, moderation, and spirit and the contemporary educational framework articulated in Canada, Ontario’s Finding Common Ground: Character Development in Ontario Schools, K-12 (2008). While Plato posits a hierarchical, rationalist vision of virtue attainable by a select intellectual elite, the Ontario policy advocates for an inclusive, pluralistic model of character development grounded in empathy, equity, and democratic participation. Through this juxtaposition, the paper elucidates the enduring tensions between exclusivity and inclusivity in virtue cultivation and explores how these tensions impact the possibility and praxis of teaching virtue in modern, diverse societies. By demonstrating the conceptual continuity and divergence between ancient and contemporary frameworks, this inquiry underscores the persistent relevance of philosophical reflection for educational theory and practice, ultimately revealing that the question of virtue’s teachability remains an open and urgent challenge.

This paper examines the limitations of Hannah Arendt’s institutions of forgiveness and promise as articulated in The Human Condition, particularly in relation to acts of "radical evil." While Arendt posits that certain atrocities are unforgivable due to their capacity to rupture the fabric of human relationality and freedom, this position undermines her own concepts of natality, action, and the unpredictability inherent in human plurality. I argue that excluding radical evil from the domain of forgiveness creates a theoretical and ethical impasse that prevents meaningful political and moral renewal. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s conception of unconditional forgiveness, I propose an alternative framework in which forgiveness, even of the unforgivable functions as an extraordinary, transformative act that resists normalization and allows for the re-creation of political life. This paper contends that such an approach better accommodates the complexities of modern atrocities and aligns more coherently with the ethical imperatives of relationality, freedom, and responsibility in a pluralistic world.

Plato’s Republic contains a detailed description of the education of guardians within his perfect state, the Kallipolis. The purpose of Plato’s state is to ensure that all citizens enjoy the good life. The good life is attained by establishing through reason the best constitution for the just state. Plato describes this constitution in great detail within The Republic. He requires the state’s leaders, the Guardians, to be educated in a rigorous manner over a long period of time to ensure that the state will be run properly and endure. This education within Plato Republic involves four stages: literature and music (Book II); physical training (Book III); mathematics (Book VII); and dialectic (Book VII). The final part of Plato’s syllabus is focused on intellectual training, an extended search using reason to recollect the Forms. The process lasts until the ripe age of fifty when the Guardian is finally approved worthy to rule as a philosopher-king or queen.

This paper explores Hannah Arendt’s concept of Worldlessness as a condition in which meaning, continuity, and public dialogue have eroded under the pressures of individualism, technological rationality, and the decline of shared traditions. Drawing on Arendt’s The Human Condition (1998) and Men in Dark Times (1968) argues that the recovery of the public sphere requires a renewed commitment to dialogue, plurality, and thinking in core Arendtian and humanist values. The public sphere, understood as the space of appearance where individuals disclose themselves through speech and action, must remain open to uncomfortable dialogue rather than censored consensus. In this sense, the paper does not advance a conservative agenda of returning to rigid traditions but rather calls for the reconstitution of a shared world grounded in mutual respect, deliberation, and freedom of thought. Education is framed as a crucial site for cultivating this renewal: not as a means of producing obedience, but as the liberation of the mind through disciplined, reflective, and imaginative thinking. Rejecting both the passivity of contemplative detachment and the abstractions of ideological dogma, whether from the left or the right, the paper advocates for an engaged form of humanist inquiry that anchors individuals once again in a meaningful, common world.

Arendt argues that the purpose of education is to develop responsibility in children so that they can take their place in the world as adult political citizens. Arendt feels in order to develop responsibility in children, it is necessary to create a division between the adult and the child because in modern society, adults are no longer authoritative nor responsible for children (Arendt and Kohn 2006, p.187). Although she makes a convincing argument, it is neither reasonable nor achievable to expect children to develop responsibility in the way Arendt defines it because of how our modern society is structured. Arendt also ignores the fluidity of the space between childhood and adulthood, which has no common defined marker, so this type of separation is not achievable.

Looking at responsibility within a Lévinasian sense, human beings are firstly seen not in the philosophically traditional sense, of being egocentric, but rather seen as ethical subjects based on “the other” (Lévinas & Hand, 1989). The purpose of this paper is to examine the notion of responsibility as Lévinas conceptualized in the idea that human beings are responsible for not only themselves but for others. Lévinas within “Ethics as First Philosophy” (Lévinas & Hand, 1989) states that before all other forms of being in the world there must be responsibility to the Other (Lévinas & Hand, 1989). Lévinas defines this to mean that before freedom of the subject, and their subjectivity, before self-consciousness, before the consciousness of consciousness, before being, and before relativity there is “responsibility for the Other pre-exists any self-consciousness” (Lévinas & Hand, 1989, p.75). Perhaps, Lévinas is saying that a human beings obligation comes before all of what follows from our being in this world, our obligation to the Other beginning with the “face to face” (Lévinas & Hand, 1989, p.75), interaction, which is our first and foremost responsibility, the responsibility to the Other. And to be ethical beings who begin with responsibility we rely on the fundamental relationship of others. This notion of responsibility appears when we encounter, in the face-to-face interaction, the unknowable other. However, does this responsibility extend to more than two individuals and to those outside our immediate proximity? For example, Lévinas states that it is the “face to face” notion of seeing one in distress, yet what if it is a group of people, and what if they are not in close proximity but on the other side of the world? What if they are on the other side of a screen that can also be artificial intelligence in our modern era. Are we still responsible? And if we are responsible, how does Lévinas’s concept of responsibility fit into that situation or is it limited? I want to examine responsibility in terms of proximity through a Lévinasian ethical lens and plurality, defined as more than two individuals, by questioning responsibility in terms of relationality, and vulnerability. I will be looking mainly at five authors Emmanuel Lévinas, Ernst Van Alphen, Judith Butler, Kevin Quashi, and Lisa Guenther, to answer the question of whether Lévinas’s definition of responsibility includes proximity, and plurality.