Education Based On Limitation

Moral education is one of the core issues in Durkheim’s Social Theory. Durkheim discusses theoretically this issue in one hand, and he also considers it as one of the plans of moral-rebuilt in another hand, so that he carried out it by himself during his teaching career. According to Durkheim, moral education emphasizes the training of the spirit of discipline and self-sacrifice, which is regarded fallible against the background of pluralism. However, this paper argues that, Durkheim’s thought of moral education is by no means only a theory of moral socialization, because he focuses on social order, and in the mean time deals with the issue of individual freedom. Among the three factors of the morality, the most important factor is the intellectuality, which guarantees the realization of freedom. It turns the negative obedience into the positive participation. The moral education is to cultivate the "reflective will" and introduce the person to recognize himself, and to find the possibility of the life which is based on one’s limitation. This paper re-interprets Durkheim’s heritage of moral education, and indicates that the substance of moral education contains both factors of individualization and socialization, which points to the liberal education of man.