On Virtue And Character Education

Facing the moral crisis predicament of the society in the contemporary world, the western ethics academic circles has rised a kind of modern virtue ethics movement by introspecting since the 1980s, which aims at recovering the traditional virtue ethics of the ancient Greece. Reflecting on the school moral education, the moral education mode based on virtue ethics——character education has renewed.The development's trend of ethics research and the moral education practices of some of the western countries and regions have already expressed that it is the inevitable choice of contemporary school's moral education to return to character education. Our government and the theory horizon also have focused on moral qualities, character and character education. We may say that the moral education with the important part of character education will be recognised and carried out in China at the predictable future. Therefore, it is necessary and urgent to do deep research on character education. The character education requires theories guidance which will be carried out in China in the future. The research on character education has been lack of thorough analysis from its ethical philosophy foundation——virtue ethics at present.Therefore, this thesis has choosen the angle of the relationship of virtue and character education to explain and study deeply,in order to actively discuss the good method of solving the predicament of the moral theories and the practice crisis. The author thinks that virtue ethics is the ethical philosophy foundation of character education, and that character education is the realization of individual virtues-forming, and that character education embodies virtue ethics, and can achieve the aim of unifying individual virtues-forming and social good with building the moral community of character education; and combine the virtue ethics resources of China and western and the outside environmental supplement of normative ethics, in order to make great effort on building a more complete character education.The thesis mainly includes four chapters.The 1st chapter relates to virtue and virtue ethics. It is mainly about the theory and the comparison research of the Chinese and western virtue ethics, and has defined the connotation of virtue, and thus get the true meaning of the Chinese and western virtue ethics:be a person with virtue.The 2nd chapter is about character and character education. It has mainly analysed and defined the connotation of character and character education, and has demonstrated that the ethical philosophy foundation of character education is virtue ethics.The 3rd chapter is about the relationship of virtue and character education. It has mainly analysed and demonstrated the connection of both, that character education is the realization of individual virtues-forming, and that character education embodies virtue ethics. And it demands integrating the virtue ethics resources of China and western in order to instruct character education better. At the same time, the character education besides needs the guidance of virtue ethics, which builds the moral community as the inside environmental supplement, it still needs the outside environmental supplement of normative ethics (system and norm), and virtues-forming is the process of virtue and norm gonging forward together.The 4th chapter relates to the practice of character education:the experiences and lessons and inspirations of American character education. The American character education is the typical model of the practice of character education. It has mainly expatiated on the history track and the theory and the practice of American character education, and has analysed the American school character education how to melt virtue into it, and has evaluated the experiences and lessons of it and provided some instructive and useful suggestions for our moral education.