![Sample our Education journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5932/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Education.jpg"})
Abstract
I argue for a broad education in narratives as a way to address several problems found in moral psychology and social cognition. First, an education in narratives will address a common problem of narrowness or lack of diversity, shared by virtue ethics and the simulation theory of social cognition. Secondly, it also solves the ‘starting problem’ involved in the simulation approach. These discussions also relate directly to theories of empathy with special significance given to situational empathy.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the research support offered by the Australian Research Council (ARC)’s project, Embodied Virtues and Expertise (project number/ID: DP1095109), led by Richard Menary and David Simpson. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the ARC sponsored Workshop on virtues and expertise, University of Hertfordshire (July 2011), the International Institute for Hermeneutics meeting, Philadelphia (October 2011), and a seminar on narrative practices at The Balzan Project. St. John’s College, Oxford (January 2013). I thank the participants at those meetings, and two anonymous referees of this journal for helpful comments.
Notes
1. At least on the face of it, what, following Vasiliou, I am calling the Aristotelian eye is akin to what Karin Kukkonen (private correspondence), following Simon Blackburn, calls the ‘Aristotelian nose’: the idea that phronesis allows us to sniff out the right answers in difficult moral situations. Blackburn (Citation2010) writes that ‘few have been happy with any compulsory principle for selecting principles. An alternative, often associated with Aristotle, is that by education and experience a kind of practical wisdom or ‘nose’ for solutions can be formed and trained, becoming eventually a kind of second nature’.
2. Richard Rorty (Citation1989, xvi) suggests that ‘the novel, the movie, and the TV program have, gradually but steadily, replaced the sermon and the treatise as the principal vehicles of moral change and progress’.
3. I am contrasting the idea that we mindread in a way that concerns knowing beliefs and desires as hidden mental states, and the idea that knowing the circumstances and contextualized meaning of the other person’s behavior is in most cases sufficient for understanding that person. As I make clear below, the rich insight that comes with a broader and diverse set of narratives is the sort of intuitive insight provided by phronesis: the Aristotelian eye that allows us to recognize meaning and relevance in a way that avoids the starting problem.