Value Nature Foster Virtue

Rousseau is a bourgeois democrat, an outstanding enlightenerand educationist in the 18th century in France. He had written anabundance of literature referring to philosophy, politics, education,religion, etc. Moral educational thought is a very importantcomponent part of Rousseau's political, philosophical an educationalthought. And it plays an important role in them. This dissertationmainly expatiate on Rousseau's moral education thought from thefollowing four aspects: the academic foundation, purpose and content,method, historic influence and the contemporary value of Rousseau'smoral educational thinking.The main character of Rousseau's moral educational thought is toadvocate naturalistic moral education. And the academic elements ofRousseau's moral education thought are mechanical materialisticsense-empiricism, social contract theory, the original theory of theunequal society and the theory of natural human nature which basedon virtuous nature. With referring to the aims of his natural education,Rousseau claimed that people should foster unaffected young men andsocial citizen to achieve social holy; With referring to the content ofhis natural education, Rousseau stressed that people should cherishchild's virtuous nature, protect child's virgin makeup, and explorereally useful moral knowledge in their real life; With referring to themethods of his natural education, Rousseau emphasized socialpractice. And he thought that people should implement moraleducation by steps according to body-and-mind status among theyouth. To sum up, Rousseau supposed that people must develop moraleducation which value nature. Without question, this kind of thoughtwould be a sharp weapon when exploding feudal moral education.Rousseau's moral educational thinking not only affected moral education of latter-day bourgeois, but also can be a reference totoday's moral education. For instance, moral education should adhereto human, value the rule of human's body-and-mind development,give attention to both impartiality and justice, advocate equality andfreedom, recognize the importance of exerting emotional education,combine labor with moral education, etc. Those viewpoints are alsovery important to moral education of today's youth. Of course, it hasdefects and shortages. Today, it is helpful for us to extract hisbeneficial thinking inheritance and serve the reality if we analyze andstudy Rousseau's moral educational thought from Marxian standpoint,viewpoint and method to eliminate its defects.