Education or Legislation? (Part 5), 7-3-2010

 [Continued from Education or Legislation? (Part 4), 7-3-2010. sch 2/9/23.] 

I have two quotations supporting my thesis that education provides the best means for teaching the virtues. Please consider the difference in the sources as well as any similarity in content:

... Reason does not teach the principles wither in mathematics or in actions; [with actions] it is virtue, either natural or habituated, that teaches correct beleif about the principle....

Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII, Chapter 8, §4.

Habituation I take as a form of education, but one that happens after schooling. 

Now, I give you Proverbs 11, 14: 

For lack of guidance a people falls; security lies in many counselors.

 Pull that one apart as you please, I read it as advocating education and an educated populace.

Aristotle says a happy life is the goal of ethics. (Book I of Nicomachean Ethics). Reading Proverbs, Wisdom of Solomon, and Wisdom of Sirach make the same point.

A question remains for me: what of those incapable of or refuse to learn? 

I suspect those falling into these categories will be not be educated in any other areas, either. We must lean on the weak reed of the law to protect society from their actions. Those refusing to learn I equate with Aristotle's intemperate people, and those not paying any attention I class with his incontinent types:

Evidently, then, incontinence is not a vice, though presumably it is one in away. For incontience is against one's decision, but vice records with decision. All the same, incontinence is similar to vice in its actions...

Moreover, the incontinent person is the sort to pursue excessive bodily pleasures against correct reason, but not because he is persuaded [it is best]. The intemperate person, however, is persuaded beause he is the sort of person to pursue them. Hence the incontinet person is easily persuaded out of it, while the intemperate person is not.

 Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII, Chapter 8, §§ 3- 4.

How the law shall deal with these two types is an important question. Let them study ethics before being released to the wider world. Probation should teach the incontinent, while the intemperate will not learn from probation.  And what do we want from our criminal law? Regulation of behavior capable of disturbing the peace of civil society. Probation needs to be seen as an educational function of the law. We should not expect the same results from the intemperate as we would from the incontinent. I think we can understand the difference. After all, cannot the public tell the difference between a toy poodle and a pit bull?

Finally, action needs to be taken. Dithering does not get the job done. Let there be dissent and controversy. Do not let fears silence ideas. I did that and learned to hate myself deeply. Those who disagree about the need or utility for teaching ethics are not the danger. Those seeing the need who do nothing are the danger.

sch