Education in a Post-Metaphysical World: Rethinking Educational Policy and Practice Through Jürgen Habermas♠Discourse Morality 9781472541109

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For Charlie

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Permissions Please note that a modified version of Chapter 2 originally appeared in Journal of Philosophy of Education as ‘The Good, the Worthwhile, and the Obligatory: On the Moral Universalism of R. S. Peters’ Conception of Education.’ Journal of Philosophy of Education, 43(S1) (2010). Please note that a modified version of Chapter 3 originally appeared in Educational Theory as ‘R. S. Peters and Jürgen Habermas: Presuppositions of Practical Reason and Educational Justice.’ Educational Theory, Vol. 59(1) (2009) pp. 1–15. The author would like to thank both journals for permission to publish these articles in the form they are offered here.

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Introduction: Education and Public Understanding

Education Speaking Back to Philosophy? This books aims to address a foundational question for educational policy and teacher practice. Namely, what is the nature, scope and meaning of the moral value of education in the public sphere? In characterizing this question as foundational I mean that addressing it is basic to understanding what it is that the moral community owes to persons from an educational point of view, if anything. In what follows I will endeavor to develop a sense of the question and how it can contribute to our understanding of the policies and practices that are deemed relevant to and meaningful for the educational domain. As a philosophical work my analysis engages with intellectual traditions that may seem, on the surface, to be removed from the daily workings of educational institutions, their practices, and the policies that inform them. This is especially so because I will argue against any equivocation between concepts such as schooling, training and earned qualifications, on the one hand, and education, on the other. I simply don’t think that we can reduce the latter to the former. As a consequence I will spend more time focusing on a broader analysis of the concept of education as a philosophical and normative problem in its own right than in directly addressing the specific policies often subsumed under the categories of schooling or curriculum development. However, I want to avoid the impression that specific policies and other practical concerns do not deserve philosophical attention, or that practical matters are merely questions of a first order to which second order, philosophical reflections are applied.1 Philosophers of education have often emphasized the importance of practical issues and rather than repeat these claims I will simply concur. However, while education is often something to which philosophy is seen to be applied to, I want to show how education can and must ‘speak back’ to philosophy. By this I mean that moral and political

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philosophy often works from the assumption, mistakenly I argue, that public moral understanding is primarily a concern for mature moral agents alone and that the moral principles warranted by such a community address, fundamentally and in its central purpose, the relationships and interests among persons in possession of fully-formed desires, preferences and worldviews. Such philosophical traditions see the ontological and epistemological dimensions of moral life as governed by agents who have already passed through an educational process and where such processes are at most empirical or contingent pre-conditions of rational moral agency – something that may be regulated or constrained by moral principles, or used simply as a means to the ends of social policy, but by itself has no ethical agenda. Such a philosophical outlook fails to promote public understanding of the value of education in ways that can sufficiently inform meaningful and justifiable policies and practices. Accordingly, my focus is to show that the public understanding of educational value represents a problem that moral and political philosophy must take seriously as part of any attempt to develop a comprehensive account of moral life. Therefore, much of the book will focus on a discussion of how the concept of education poses a problem for moral and political thought. For example, I avail of Jürgen Habermas’ theory of Discourse Morality in order to show how citizens can collectively construct public moral understanding. Habermas’ theory represents an important contribution in this respect. However, I also argue that the theory is, as currently formulated, unable incorporate the educational domain as a moral theme in its own right as opposed to a merely ad hoc or empirical consideration. So I want to show that in thinking about education from an ethical standpoint we must do more than simply apply various metaethical theories to education in a top-down fashion, or simply focus in on the logical consistency of different government policies. The approach I proffer works from the view that the connections between the conceptual analysis of education, the justification of various principles proffered in addressing extant problems in educational institutions, and the ways in which citizens are to engage in such practices of analysis and justification are more organic and connected than either other approach suggests. How we deliberate about education, the assumptions we make about its nature and its scope, and the possibilities for educational value and experience tied into these deliberations have direct bearing on the reasons that policy-makers, teachers and parents will have for acting and valuing in the ways that they do.

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Despite these more abstract concerns, the inquiry that I offer here began to form in the context of my own professional experience. My interest in philosophical questions about education intensified through my own work as a teacher and school principal in Northern Canada. It was during this time I was introduced to many of the ethical, political and institutional tensions in aboriginal education. Formal education often conflicted or contradicted the priorities of the indigenous communities of the region. In this context, the institutional demands of a ‘modernizing’ and ‘civilizing’ state, assured in its perspective on what the education calls for, were paramount while resistance to and skepticism about such demands were often unjustly characterized as yet another example of the moral and political failings of the Innu and Inuit people. Here, the standardization of curricula and the intensification of behavioral and outcomes-based curricula were carried forward to an extent that I could never have anticipated during my own teacher preparation. This intensification was accompanied by the conviction, seemingly shared by many, that such an approach would rescue the school system from what was often seen as a failure to achieve academic success for its aboriginal students. It was not simply a strident faith in standardization and outcomes that seemed problematic. The very understanding of education under which we were laboring and through which local policy was developed and applied seemed to generate problems. The idea seemed to be that if Innu and Inuit students measured higher on achievement tests, it would simply follow that students were having a better educational experience. Yet, in addition to the epistemological shortcomings of assessments of this order, the criterion of success that underwrote it presumed a narrow view of what education can and ought to offer. It also entailed an equally narrow conception of what students and parents were owed, or could have reasonable claim to, as a matter of right as part of that educational domain. And yet within the very communities to which these understandings were being imposed existed rich and diverse forms of life that, because they did not immediately fit the vision of education on offer, were deemed to be a distraction from the proper task at hand. The political and historical context of colonialism in Northern Canada goes some way in explaining why schooling, and the understanding of education that informed it, worked this way. But at a more general level the policies and practices of formal schooling in aboriginal education, as elsewhere, seemed to be increasingly defined by a particular concept of education – a particular solution to the problem of how a society should shape the interests, dispositions

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and capacities of its members. This solution entailed a worked out notion of the terms through which and the principles under which we ought to reason about educational worth or value. The concept of education under which educators were operating circumscribed a specific set of terms and principles that warranted what counts as reasonable judgments about education, and these terms and principles severely limited the potential to respond to the needs and interests of the Innu and Inuit community.2 Clearly, the ubiquity of this concept of education served particular interests and, when seen in the context of colonial and neo-colonial history, possessed a certain ideological value. Outcomes and behavioral objectives certainly made the schooling process much less ambiguous and therefore much easier to administer and direct. The application of this concept produced an intensely managed practical space within which policy-makers, administrators, teacher and parents could make reasonable judgments about what is educationally worthwhile. This concept saw the educational process as having an irreducible means-end form and a substance fully constituted through language intrinsic to the institutional bureaucracy. In this respect the understanding of education on offer wasn’t really a public understanding but one designed by the interests of a particular group of stakeholders. This projected an educational world largely alienated from the experience of teachers, students and the community at large. For example, the bureaucratization of educational language placed limits on what could be publicly articulated as reasonable or worthwhile or good. So, for example, while one could not speak seriously about the imaginative experience of the child engaging with an interesting text or the value of oral storytelling, one could seriously speak about how the classroom was scoring at an average higher than the latest criterion-referenced test. While one could not articulate a strongly humanistic vision of social justice for education, one could emphasize the importance of uniformity in the educational experience as a matter of ‘fairness’. The understanding of education as I encountered it is a very familiar one and was by no means particular to the Northern context. It represents a way of reasoning about the educational domain that has been generalized across Western institutions. It should be familiar to almost anyone working in the formal education system today. Joseph Dunne characterizes this concept of education through the development of his own counter-concept based on a reconstructive account of Aristotelian phronesis or practical wisdom. For Dunne, the space within which the productive ambiguity of the educational experience takes place serves as a

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necessary condition for learning and development. But this space is subverted by a technical rationality that excludes much of what makes education worthwhile to begin with: The logic whereby so much that seemed to me ineliminable from teaching could be so lightly disregarded was an instrumentalist one. In profiling a teacher’s objectives, this model sought to separate ends and means, to repose everything of value that a teacher might accomplish in the ends (i.e., objectives) and then to construe all problems of teaching as ones simply of finding the most suitable means to the achievement of these ends. Every classroom activity could now be conceived of as purely instrumental, i.e., as a means which was in itself neutral and therefore substitutable in principle by any other means, the only criterion for such substitutions being efficiency and economy in achieving those ends – in deciding in the first instance what objectives were worth teaching. (Dunne, 1993, p. 5)

Dunne masterfully characterizes the logic of this concept of education. His philosophical critique of its operation in modern life is a classic in the literature. Such an analysis has clear import for teachers and policy-makers. The ways in which we value education and the philosophical assumptions we make about what we teach directly informs the reasons they have for teaching in one way and not another way (see Clark, 2011, 1989). I want to suggest that the implications of this dominant concept of education extends beyond the classroom, acting not only on policy and practice, teacher and student, but through the way in which we reason, as a public, about the value of education. This means that an Aristotelian critique, while making a powerful contribution to our understanding of the internal life of teaching and learning, is insufficient by itself. This is because complicating any critique of the concept of education is that, in undertaking such a critique, we seemingly cannot but appeal to an understanding of education of our own; one that is equally partial. Technical rationality is warranted by principles that endorse, or at least grant as permissible, the values served by technical rationality. We may have good reasons to resist or challenge such principles on the grounds that they exclude much of what is worthwhile for all citizens. On the one hand, such a resistance cannot be launched from a naïve Enlightenment position of neutrality, objectivity or from a ‘view from nowhere’. To sound the right Hegelian note, education is a part of cultural life and cannot be understood entirely apart from it. And yet, in a modern world characterized by many conceptions of flourishing and of the good life it is difficult to see how appealing to another concept (or restoring the vitality of an older one) is not itself the imposition of another

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logic, one which, while perhaps resonant with the tastes and sensibilities of academic philosophers or school teachers, may in its own way be arbitrarily restrictive in the possibilities for public deliberation on the values that ought to underwrite our educational policies and practices. This appears to be a problem that must be taken seriously by philosophy, not simply as an extension of moral or political theory, but as a basic normative question for any democratic moral community – how does a plural citizenry construct public understanding on the value of education, how does it formulate in ethical terms the way in which that community ought help persons become persons within that same community, in a way that is appropriately inclusive of the various interests and perspectives that can potentially comprise that same undertaking?

Philosophy of Education as a Tradition While any work that is philosophical and also bearing on education in some way can plausibly be labeled as or included within the tradition of philosophy of education, this work consciously identifies itself with this tradition and the canonical texts that have come to define it as a branch of philosophy in its own right. The emphasis on tradition is relevant here because my understanding of the nature and scope of education is largely indebted to both the conceptual analysis approach and the moral philosophical work undertaken in the early days of the philosophy of education in the 1960s at the University of London though the work of R. S. Peters, Paul Hirst, Robert Dearden, and John White, among others. More needs to be said about the relationship between the work in this book and that tradition, and this requires some understanding of philosophy of education as it stands today. The conceptual analysis of education has been a longstanding theme for philosophy of education. Yet, much has transpired in the discipline since the early contributions of Dearden, Hirst and Peters, and much contemporary philosophical work has, for many reasons, shifted away from directly addressing such abstract themes and transitioned into the more direct form of applied philosophy perhaps comparable to work in medical ethics (White, 1987). This applied form of philosophy of education is seen to be engaged more directly with questions of culture and community, policy and practice. The idea here seems to be twofold: i) that philosophy of education should in some way be seen to be directly relevant to contemporary issues in educational policy and practice and that ii) the style of analysis originally

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proffered in various forms in the 1960s has run aground or come up short in substantial (and crippling) ways. On the surface it seems fairly uncontroversial that philosophy should have something determinate to say about policy and practice in the educational domain. However, if the idea of philosophers modeling themselves after medical ethicists seems appealing, it should be known that the value of philosophy of medicine is by no means assured. At the pedagogical level, there have been a variety of criticisms on the limited educational value of teaching philosophy in medical ethics (Clouser and Gert, 1990; Cowley, 2005). At a policy level, the direct involvement of philosophers and medical ethicists in developing and justifying public health care policy continues to be a matter of controversy and is by no means a settled matter (for a sample of the debate, see Brock, 1987; Kamm, 1990; Varelius, 2008; Weisbard, 1987; Lillehammer, 2003; Kymlica, 1993). The difficulty with a closely applied or ‘medical ethics’ model of philosophy of education is not with the nature of applied work generally, but with the methodological concern that focusing on applied work exclusively can presume a settled answer to just what education is. Just as the practitioners in Northern Canada labored under a specific understanding of education with its own settled presumptions regarding what counts as educationally worthwhile or valuable, a philosophy of education that restricts itself to a straightforward application of theories and philosophical accounts to contemporary issues in educational policy and practice engages in a tacit endorsement of the concept of education that has determined those practices and policies, even when such philosophy presumes to be critical of those same policies. A comparison with medical ethics is again useful, here. Medical ethicists are sometimes seen to be tacitly endorsing a dominant and narrow biomedical model of health and well-being, where philosophical reasoning about health care is premised on the assumed justifiability and integrity of the norms and values of the health care system as we understand it today. Metaethical theories and political philosophies require translation, rearticulation and critical assessment in light of the domain of health care to which those theories and philosophies are being applied, a domain that is by no means straightforwardly biomedical even if as an empirical fact many of the policy disputes and ethical quandaries that preoccupy health care institutions occur in a biomedical context. Similarly, a philosophy of education focused on an overriding concern with contemporary policies and practices alone may risk engaging in a similar endorsement. After all, in the very judgment of what is deemed to be a relevant or appropriate case to apply concepts from the philosophy of education is to advance a

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certain account of what is worthwhile or valuable in education (Clark, 2011). Consequently, when our reasoning is limited to say, contemporary school policies, we import a certain idea of what counts as education along with it i.e. based in the school, guided by the state, etc. Yet, the presumptive justifiability of state schooling is not itself a demonstration of the educational worth of the schooling process. John Wilson was also concerned about the potential for philosophy of education to become too myopic, too enamored of the institutional mechanisms of schooling in its own emphasis on application. Wilson articulates the point with reference to the concept of education as follows: How are we to know that something is a concept or conception of education, rather than of something else, unless we already know what ‘education’ means and can identify or distinguish education from other things? It will not do to say that, if the individual describes his concept as a concept of X, then it is eo ipso a concept of X; for he may misdescribe it, and so may other individuals. (2003, p. 103)

Now it is clear that Wilson at times resisted the impetus to apply philosophical concepts to questions or policy and practice too strongly. His claims against the directions that philosophy of education has taken are sometimes reactionary and detract from his own analysis (Standish, 2006). Wilson evinces a deep faith in the power of formal logic and conceptual analysis to construct a perspective on education entirely outside of culture, ideology, politics, history and human interests. On this transcendental view, education represents an autonomous domain or sphere of value. Here, the concept of education can offer up sui generis principles and reasons articulating the conditions under which a process can be ascertained to be educationally worthwhile. This extreme position runs into its own problem, and I will discuss this approach more fully in Chapter 1. However, I’m sympathetic to Wilson’s broader point that applied work in philosophy of education cannot assume a settled view of what education is and ought to be and, further, that we can proceed with a cogent moral and political analysis of contemporary issues in educational policy and practice on this basis. To this I would add a second point – that our best hope in addressing the nature and scope of education is through an attempt to reconstruct, rehabilitate, or rescue the analysis of education originated by R. S. Peters and others. I will discuss this ‘reconstructive’ approach in more detail in Chapter 2. Important here is that for many, Peters’ approach to philosophical thinking

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about education has had its moment pass. True, the hybrid of conceptual analysis and moral philosophy developed by Peters in his Ethics and Education and carried forth in his later work is largely seen to have succumbed to trenchant criticism offered by others working in the tradition. But I think it would be far too hasty to suggest, as John White does, that such a project has ‘run into the sand’ (1987). Philosophy is an ongoing conversation. The history of the discipline shows that projects that once seemed to have ‘run aground’ against insurmountable criticism have a habit of being refitted and set out to sea once again, often to strike out in new directions. Kantian scholarship, for example, so long seen to have little to offer to modern moral or political theory has undergone a dramatic resurgence since the publication of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. I make the comparison between Kant, Rawls and Peters not in order to make an equivalence between them (though I will argue that they are working in similar methodological territory in the Interlude of the book), but to point out that it is unwise to dismiss a particular perspective or theoretical framework simply because it does not have a great deal of traction at the present time. In fact, part of the argument in this book will be to show that some of the developments in contemporary moral and political theory offer philosophical resources that can help us push the conceptual analysis project out of the sand and back into the water, even if we need to streamline the design and repurpose the hull in the process. Before we do any of this, however, I’d like to return once more to Northern Canada and to where my own reflections on the concept of education began to take shape.

Reasoning from the Concept of Education Labrador, Canada is a Northern region of oceanic lakes, endless forests and wind-scraped mountains. The land is populated by a diverse mix of various indigenous groups and people of European descent (known colloquially as ‘settlers’). The tranquility of the land belies a turbulent social history attributable to the colonization and ‘integration’ perpetrated by the Canadian and Newfoundland Governments. Canada’s policies throughout the twentieth century involved successive attempts to extinguish the cultural heritage of the Innu, Inuit and Metis peoples of the region (Samson, 2003). The school system was instrumental to this project (for a brief account, see Denov and Campbell, 2002). While ‘extinguishment’ is no longer an explicit policy, school districts have been struggling with student truancy, parental apathy and low

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teacher morale. While the region has managed to construct a public education system, graduation rates for the district are abysmal, teacher retention is next to nonexistent, and relations between the communities and the schools can be tense during the best of times (for a broader overview of the inequalities in schooling between indigenous students and other groups, see Richards and Scott, 2009). These tensions sometimes arise from unwanted state intervention in cultural life. In coastal Labrador, many parents are strongly in favor of withdrawing their children for weeks at a time in order to participate in the migratory Caribou hunt. The hunt is highly valued among the Innu community. Young children often accompany their parents or extended families for such journeys. A clash between the values of modern culture and the more traditional culture of the Innu becomes clear in the competing judgments that teachers and parents make about the appropriateness of these extended absences from the school. Teachers, for example, may express frustration at what they see as Innu parents’ failure to meet their civic obligation to promote a healthy respect for and value of formal schooling. The parents’ ‘indulgence’ of their children’s desire to join the hunt represents a failure to promote Innu children’s future opportunities and life-chances. Parents, on the other hand, see the state school system’s failure to adapt its policies to accommodate traditional practices as a failure to respect the Innu way of life. Such disagreement may seem like an aberration or idiosyncrasy – a growing pain that all traditional communities must undergo as they make the transition to modern society. Yet, the basic terms of disagreement also inform contemporary policy discussions in places such as the UK. State support of faith schools, for example, continues to be a contentious issue for specific cultural communities, politicians and the general public (Jackson, 2003). Some argue that the increase in faith schools will only serve to contribute to a perceived fragmentation and segregation of the UK’s cultural fabric. Others claim that faith communities have a right to establish institutional mechanisms by which that community’s ethical, cultural and traditional values may be transmitted. The particulars of faith schooling and aboriginal education are undoubtedly different. The historical factors shaping the Canadian context are distinct from the factors shaping the tensions surrounding faith schooling in the UK. But if we take a step back it’s also apparent that there are some striking common features among these particulars. Both provoke interesting questions about the limits of the state and the plausibility of a valid and applicable conception of parental rights to educational decision making. And both are fraught between

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arguments that either favor or disfavor the primacy of tradition in political life. In both cases the ideal of schooling for autonomy can be employed (or perhaps rejected) as part of our deliberations. These are all conceptual lenses through which educational theorists and philosophers can bring such disputes into sharper focus, and perhaps to even offer something of a resolution. However, if we step back even further, now from the various arguments and counter-arguments that may come to mind when trying to come to some resolution in each case, an even broader theme emerges. This theme is tied into a more fundamental question lurking among the many discussions about policy, practice and politics. For while in the Canadian context the discourse of aboriginal education is informed by a particular political, prudential and historical arguments, and the UK context the discourse of faith schooling is informed by another set of arguments, both deliberations unavoidably converge on a more basic disagreement. In the UK context there is certainly a role for debate about how faith schools can act as helpful or harmful agents on the social fabric. And in the Canadian context, many policy-makers are interested in how school attendance can influence aboriginal student achievement. And in both contexts, the extent to which parents and the state should make decisions regarding children’s formative interests is a pressing question. Each debate has value in its own right. Yet, threading through each discussion is a continuous reference to the idea of education. For example, when we critique faith schools we are concerned about the effects that the kind of education children may receive in attending such schools will have on the greater community. It is of course implied in such a question that what children may receive in such contexts is a kind of miseducation, or a straying from some perceived ideal. If children get the right kind of education, so the argument might go, children will be well suited for life in modern Britain. Faiths schooling undermines this. Such a claim, of course, presumes something about what an education ought to be. Alternatively, some Canadian teachers are concerned that by letting Innu students skip school in order to participate in a traditional hunt these students will miss out on their education. Yet, an Innu parent might reasonably submit that what they are offering their children is educational and having an opportunity to participate fully in such traditions is what it means to be educated. Like the critics and defenders of faith schools, each side is deploying or appealing to some sort of idea or ideal of what education is or ought to be as an enterprise. The concept of education intrudes on disagreements other than those of culture, faith and tradition. In the United States, for example, controversial issues around the student’s right to free speech are resolved by appeal to the

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Tinker Test. The Tinker Test is a legal criterion which states that student freedom of speech may only be curtailed when there is ‘material and substantial disruption’ to the education process (Blacker, 2009). Now, it is clear that in applying the Tinker Test to difficult cases, judges have a particular conception of the educational process and the ideals served by this process in view – otherwise we would not know when any one disruption has been material or substantive. Such a conception cannot be determined substantively by the legal mechanism alone. Otherwise the test is a mere formalism. So, just what are the standards judges appeal to in assessing the educational worth of such a process, and what are the defining features of this conception? What standards ought they to appeal? Is this conception a universally good one, or does it only apply to the US context, or to mainstream cultural and religious communities in the US? Could these defining features be generalized, for example, such that they can tell what ought to be common in education among Canadian, British and American and other contexts? Could these common standards be used to help us understand what is at stake for the Innu students of Northern Canada, as well as faith school attendees in the UK? The Tinker Test is only informative, meaningful and subject to critical assessment insofar as we have some shareable understanding of just what it is that we are referring to when we are using the term, ‘education’. What distinctly educational reasons does the Tinker Test offer that provides sufficient reason to suppress freedom of speech? And what is it that makes those reasons distinctly educational? Until we have such clarity the relevance and application of the idea of education to issues such as faith schooling, native and aboriginal education and educational rights remain unresolved and indeterminate. Clarity in terms of the scope, meaning, and nature of the concept of education is crucial if we are to move forward in our understanding of fundamental issues in educational policy and practice. For example, universal human rights legislation states that all people have a right to educational provision (1948). This usually is taken to mean that governments have an obligation to establish appropriate institutions for this purpose (usually in the form of state schooling). While the development of such institutions has value, it is not clear what particular concept of education is behind this rights standard. More crucially, it may not be the case that there can be a shared universal standard that would comprise a meaningful right to education. The kind of standards I am referring to are not standards of student attainment or success (though they could comprising such things), but the kind of standards upon which a public can make reasoned and justifiable judgments

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about the worthwhileness of specific actions or policies that claim to be of educational merit. For example, while state schooling is almost universal it does not follow that the majority of people attending state schools are participating in a process that all persons have a right or one that respects the interests of all groups affected by such an institutional network. State schooling is established on the premise that it plays a key role in fostering a person’s education, but the grounds on which we can judge that schools are actually meeting this duty is not well established or understood as a matter of shared public understanding. To claim that access to education is a universal standard of social justice while at the same time being unable to articulate how institutions can meet this social obligation is self-defeating. It would be much the same as saying that society ought to have equal access to a legal system as a matter of right, but be unable to provide any clear position of what counts as a justifiable legal system. Ensuring that people have equal access to a misconceived legal system seems wrongheaded. Why is such understanding important in the educational domain? At the very least we should be concerned because disagreements over the aims of schooling, intellectual freedom, learning, and human development take a central role in many of our contemporary political and moral arguments. And as the example of human rights above shows, the normative force of educational claims rest on the extent of our clarity and understanding of what such claims are appealing to. If we are not clear on what an educational claim, such as the kind that Innu and Inuit parents, are actually claiming, or what a demand for educational equality is asking for, we may be making claims about and demands for something so vague that we are never really clear what it is we are asking for, or are unable to respond appropriately to someone who says these claims have already been met (or not met). Accordingly, a fundamental contribution to understanding a concept is grasping the concept’s normative status. By normative I mean that the concept offers reasons for or against certain actions, policies or practices that reflect an understanding of the signature values embodied by that same concept. These reasons will have a certain kind of meaning and scope in the public sphere depending on the particular concept at play.

Overview of the Argument I will argue that while various cultures and communities in the public sphere may operate through reasonably different, but implicitly held, concepts of

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education, these competing views of education contain potential moral and ethical insights that can potentially contribute to a shared public understanding of educational value. The book is divided into two sections. The first section of the book has two aims. First, I establish the normative status of education as one that is fundamentally moral in conception. This conclusion is derived from an attempt to define the place of educational value in our practical reasoning. I do this by discussing the nature of practical reason and examining the relationship between practical reasoning and different possible conceptions of education. I argue that R. S. Peters’ concept of education comes closest to capturing the appropriate nature of this relationship. Peters argues that educational value was fundamentally situated within practical reasoning about the good life and worthwhile activities. I critique this position and argue that while educational value is indeed informed by the good and what is worthwhile, it is fundamentally situated in practical reasoning regarding matters of moral rightness or obligation. Second, I develop a conception of morality suitable to the concept of education as moral rightness or obligation. I adopt the position that claims to moral rightness are a matter of public justification, or ‘morality in the narrow sense’ as developed by Graham Haydon. Moral agreements in such a context represent the fulfillment of deliberative conditions of symmetry and reciprocity. I undertake a critical examination of the metaethics of both R. S. Peters and Jürgen Habermas in further developing this position. Part One concludes that while educational value in the public sphere may be moral in the narrow sense, the theories developed by Habermas and Peters are unable to account for the conditions necessary for citizens to arrive at reasonable agreements regarding public moral norms that reflect a shared understanding of educational value. The insufficiency of these accounts leaves the justification and observance of such norms open to distortion in ways that undermine the interests of vulnerable and underrepresented groups and individuals. The second section takes up these themes through a critical reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’ Discourse Morality. Here, I examine different ways in which Habermas’ Discourse Principle (D) can be applied to the educational domain. I argue that the most promising approach is to revise his moral principle of universalization (U) in order to account for the educational interests of citizens and persons who may be unable to participate fully in public discourse. Moral norms and principles justified through this more inclusive account of public morality are argued to have an educational potential which was lacking in

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earlier versions of (U). I devote the remainder of this section to showing how public moral understanding of educational value can be applied to questions of community, educational policy and practice.

Notes 1 R. S. Peters suggests this kind of division of intellectual labor in the introduction to his Ethics and Education (1966). We can probably make a useful epistemological distinction between first and second order, but it does not follow from this that this distinction should correlate with an intellectual division of labor between practitioners and philosophers. If anything, philosophical reflection on professional judgment has shown that higher-order reflection is integral to good practice. See, for example, the work of Donald Schön (1983). 2 While I sometimes refer to the Innu and Inuit interchangeably, it is important not to elide the differences between them, especially with respect to their views on tradition and sovereignty. For example, many Innu leaders have sovereignty as the end goal for in their ongoing negotiation with provincial and federal governments. The Inuit, on the other hand, have emphasized negotiations that safeguards their traditional ways of life and interests in economic development, including self-government within Canada (Alcantara, 2007).

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What Kind of Concept is the Concept of Education?

In this chapter I argue that any understanding of education that can warrant educational aims, policies and practices under conditions defined by differing ideals of the good life must necessarily be grounded in a conception of moral value that is reasonable for and applicable to all persons. The argument runs as follows: first, I argue that common educational values must be responsive to a demand for public justification i.e. the actions, norms and policies warranted by this form of value could be reasonably accepted by others. I further argue that this kind of understanding can only be achieved through the appeal to practical principles. I then argue that while public reasoning about education can appeal to a variety of practical principles, principles that are moral in conception are fundamental. I conclude that moral principles essential to the public justification of educational values can be identified when the analysis looks beyond what I term ‘generic’ conditions of moral justification – conditions of moral justification formulated from the exclusive epistemic standpoint of fully developed moral agents.

The Demand for Justification On the account that I develop, education must be grounded in moral value. This will involve showing that education does not refer to a sui generis or autonomous form of value, nor is it fundamentally a collection of practices that each have their own internal standard. For most of this chapter I will be talking about moral value in broad terms. In subsequent chapters I offer a more specific account. However, before proceeding I will make some preliminary remarks about just the kind of moral value that I have in view and why I think

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this account of value is a necessary one for a full understanding of the nature and scope of education. Consider that the term ‘moral’ could potentially refer to any and all those values that constitute an individual’s view of the world. This use of the term ‘moral’ is too broad and indeterminate for our purposes. Rather than counter with a specific account in its entirety, however, I will only here introduce the idea that the conception of morality that I proffer is a public and principled conception of morality. This conception draws from Graham Haydon’s notion of ‘public morality’ or ‘morality in the narrow sense’ (1999). By public morality I mean a moral understanding that actions, policies and norms are justifiable only to the extent that they are defensible through reasons that could be shared with others in that same public. Such a morality does not seek to account for all of what we value, but it does coordinate our reasonable expectations of treatment between persons regardless of their particular community or cultural context. This public is universal and the principles justified in such a public are generalizable and applicable to all its members (Martin, 2009). Why is public justification important? The idea that we should be able to justify actions, norms and policies to others is a central feature of modern moral and political philosophy (see Rawls, 1980; Habermas, 1990a; Peters, 1966). In later chapters I will explain the philosophical grounds informing this central feature. However, an example may serve us better at this early stage. In the introduction I referred to my experiences as a teacher-practitioner in Northern Canada. Here, many found the academic focus of much of the school curriculum to be restrictive. These concerns usually distilled into a recurring concern by the larger community: why should Innu students have to learn academic subjects instead of more traditional skills such as hunting, fishing and tracking? This question reminds us that many of our educational practices are simply handed down with little justification to those that are expected to abide by them. This narrow remit for the justification of existing practices is compounded by the fact that the frame of our educational thought is often restricted to technical questions of effectiveness, with little attention paid to the normative context or rationale within which education operates. Much teacher preparation, for example, involves detailed examination of potential ethical controversies arising in schools – whether or not someone has the right to wear a certain form of cultural dress, or whether school choice will lead to further inequalities in society. These are what I call general moral issues – they reflect concerns that affect many walks of life and institutions and where the educational domain

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is but one context to which such concerns may apply. These are important questions of value that are definitive of civic life more generally. However, deliberation on the value of education itself, and the way in which this value ought to inform our practices, seems less prominent. Keeping focus on the value of education in its own right is to remind ourselves that the educational domain is at the same time a normative domain. For example, Richard Pring characterizes the normative domain of education in the following way: [It is] more than a set of specific actions in which a particular person is helped to learn this or that. It is an activity in which the teacher is sharing in a moral enterprise, namely, the initiation of (usually) young people into a worthwhile way of seeing the world, of experiencing it, of relating to others in a more human and understanding way. (Pring, 2005, p. 106)

We might take issue with the particular conception of value at play in Pring’s characterization of the educational domain – why is the experience of initiation a central value, for example? – but I think that the larger point, that education is an enterprise whose values cannot and should not be reduced to specific questions of technique, is worth taking. As Joseph Dunne’s work has shown, a focus on technical rationality misunderstands the holistic nature of teaching and learning from the start. The educational domain is constituted through values, and these values cannot be reduced to means, ends or principles entirely external to this domain. If education is indeed a ‘moral enterprise’, even in a broad and as now undefined sense, the substance of this enterprise relies on the justifiability, to others, of the various educational policies and practices informed by our understanding of that domain – otherwise education risks becoming an oppressive mechanism at the level of conception. Given this fact, how do we respond to the implicit claim of interest embedded in the Innu and Inuit demand – the claim that they ought to be provided an opportunity to learn traditional cultural practices? Is this claim a reasonable one? If so, is this a distinctly educational claim? True, it would be wrong to assume that all Innu and Inuit parents reject the academic curriculum. Regardless, the nature of the disagreement and the challenge of arriving at a cogent response to these questions suggest more complex problems for education than mere policy-making or political compromise can address alone. More needs to be said about the demand for justification and what this

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means for public understanding. In doing so, I want to move the discussion away from moral value for the moment and focus on justification and how this relates to education specifically. Once this relationship is clarified we will return to the question of how, or if, moral values should figure prominently in such justifications and in what ways education may actually be a moral enterprise.

The Case for Principles The demand for justification is a demand for good reasons. We label such reasons as ‘good’ by virtue of the fact that we believe that they are relevant in deciding the issue at hand – this is why we find them convincing for ourselves and why we think they should be convincing for others. For example, we could argue that sorting children into different classrooms on the basis of academic ability is wrong for the reason that this produces social class differences. This seems compelling because we take inequality to be a relevant reason in arguments about justice and fairness. Why? Reasons derive their value from practical principles or rules that, because they are taken to be valid, are appropriate for guiding our actions. For example, take the principle that public institutions ought not to directly promote inequalities. This is a guiding principle for the institutions of modern liberal democracies (even though what counts as inequality and the extent to which we ought to remedy such inequalities remain controversial). If streaming directly promotes social inequalities, we have a good, if not definitive, reason to claim that it is an unjust policy. Good educational reasons should also be derived from valid practical principles. They make it possible to determine which reasons are relevant to our assessment and justification of the worth of educational policies and which reasons are not. In fact, even though we do not always make our principles explicit, they are indispensable to the justification of actions and policies in the public sphere: [B]road principles…may have an important role in public policy debate…for the general public, to say that nurses and doctors should be caring people is itself to talk at the level of general principles…discourse at the level of general principles is surely inescapable at public policy levels. (Haydon, 1999, p. 111)

Haydon emphasizes generalizable principles because they are what make mutual understanding possible between citizens. In other words, they are what make

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reasons intelligible and shareable. This is an essential condition of publicity. For example, we could argue that students need to learn academic subjects for the reason that such learning is crucial for economic agency in a market economy. This reason is relevant for all of us so long as we all hold to the principle that education ought to provide students with a capacity for economic agency. The appeal to practical principle does not always satisfy the demand for justification. Appealing to a principle can simply move the demand back a step. A reason is relevant for us so long as we hold to the principle that gives it value. But one can appeal to a number of practical principles. And even when we agree that all of the principles in question are valid we still must decide which of these valid principles are relevant to disagreements in the educational domain. The Innu can, after all, respond by appealing to a principle of tolerance whereby institutions ought to, at the least, respect the cultural distinctiveness of minority cultures. The importance of heritage makes the principle of education for economic agency one that, at least for the Innu, may not reasonably be accepted. Perhaps the Innu have a different conception of educational value informed by different practical principles. The fact of disagreement alone does not entail that generalizable principles are implausible. A principle is not non-generalizable simply because someone rejects it. We can reasonably accept truth-telling as a shared principle even though some people reject the principle and choose to deceive. The rejection of such principles may be unreasonable, or done so in error. Perhaps the Innu are being obstinate or failing to appropriately consider the interests of their children in refusing to abide by the principle, for example. Similarly, it is possible that the defenders of faith schools in the UK are unfairly privileging the preservation of a religious tradition over their children’s right to be full participants in economic and civic life. So the question really is: do we have good reasons for either accepting or rejecting certain principles for education as generalizable? Is either principle – that of education for economic agency or tolerance, in any way justifiable to others? If both are justifiable, which one is most appropriate in the case of the Innu and Inuit of Labrador, or in the case of faith schools?1 More crucially, if good reasons rely on valid and applicable principles, how can we justify those principles without recourse to another principle? Principles are supposed to render decisions non-arbitrary. But how do we make our principles non-arbitrary? The demand for justification challenges us to critically reflect on the values underlying generally accepted practices. However, it now seems that the standard of justification itself is a matter for critical reflection. For example,

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if we hold to the principle that community traditions have fundamental justificatory authority and weight, educational policies can be judged by what the community takes to be the authoritative tradition. The real problem, on this view, is how to interpret and clarify what this tradition is and then apply it in an appropriate and consistent way. What are the standards of a given community, and would the teaching of academic subjects meet such standards? How do we assess the claims of individuals in the community who object to the tradition? In any case, the traditionalist’s position will run up against those who appeal to a different principle of justification. The latter might argue, for example, that the principles of the modern liberal democratic community to which the Innu are also members are foundational. The rights and freedoms guaranteed by liberal democratic states will set the standard by which we assess curriculum debates generally and the Innu case specifically. This defense is complicated by the fact that a traditionalist could assert that liberal-democratic principles themselves represent a tradition. The traditionalist can then ask why the Innu tradition is not as authoritative as a liberal-democratic one. One returns yet again to a demand for justification.

The Conceptual Analysis of Education and Practical Principles The terms of disagreement over educational matters such as social policy and curriculum design can center on the justifiability of competing conceptions of education, comprised of practical principles, and where the standard of justification for such principles is itself in dispute. Take the example of social justice in education. If we think schools are, fundamentally, a means to promoting social equality, measuring economic outcomes might be a good way of assessing the effectiveness of a school system. However, social equality outcomes do not necessarily reflect anything of educational worth unless we have good reason to think that the central purpose of education is as a means to equalizing access to other units of welfare. But this surely cannot be the case by itself. If this was indeed the case, an educational process that works to make students from well-off families less educated in order to make outcomes equal with other students would be warranted. This seems intuitively wrong. The fact that it does not make reasonable or intuitive sense to achieve equality in education by leveling down the achievements of some suggests that education means more than formal equality. True, egalitarians have argued that

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leveling down is not required by principles of justice – John Rawls’ well know account stands as good example of this. However, explaining why leveling down does not make sense for specific goods such as education requires some account of why that good is valuable in the first place. If something is so valuable or morally special that it should be distributed equally, we should be clear on what makes it valuable. Reasonableness, as an abstract requirement of justification or legitimacy, cannot by itself resolve basic disagreements of public understanding about education. Consider health care. Health care is not distributed equally simply because it promotes social equality. It is distributed equally because being healthy has value. And so because health care is valuable in identifiable ways it ought to be distributed equally. In fact, because we can identify the values that comprise health care we can define the relation between individuals and its distribution. We don’t think that people who are thoroughly healthy should get the same amount of heath care as people who are desperately ill. Furthermore, egalitarian analysis of health care has shown how it is indispensible for actively pursuing a good life for any person and so its distribution should be insensitive to wealth (Daniels, 1981, 2001, 2009). We recognize that when you are ill you are owed a certain kind of care regardless of your ability to pay. Nor does it make sense to level down health care outcomes for some simply as a means to equalizing between groups. Our understanding of the nature and purpose of health care militates against such conclusions. Similar clarity can help us understand what kinds of principles are necessary for and appropriate to public reasoning about education. Here I wish to make a broad distinction between three different ways that citizens may frame their reasoning about the value of education. I do not suggest that what is offered is a complete account; rather, what I aim to do is demonstrate that the kind of practical principles or rational standards that underwrite the justification of actions, norms or policies in the educational domain will play a constructive role in our understanding of what the value of education is actually taken to be rightly or wrongly. These three conceptions are termed ‘composite conceptions’, ‘autonomous conceptions’, and ‘nested conceptions’. To be clear: the scheme I will offer is a rough classification and is not meant to be definitive. The conceptions I detail are more properly considered as three distinct families of educational thinking where a variety of educational theories and philosophical claims about education could be grouped under each family. What the theories belonging to each family share are some basic comprehensive views about the nature of educational value. For example, many utilitarian

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accounts of educational value could certainly belong to the family of what I term ‘composite’ conceptions of education even though the particulars of different utilitarian theories may differ. What all theories under the term share is not fundamentally a utilitarian outlook, however, but the idea that the educational worth of an action, policy or principle can be determined through a general survey of all the good and bad reasons warranted by a plethora of values that happen to overlap with the educational domain in any one case. Accordingly, utilitarian theories in this family hold to the idea that the educational value of policies or principles can be determined through a general survey of good and bad consequences warranted by a plethora of discrete values that happen to overlap with the educational domain in any one case. Utilitarian theories are not necessarily composite, however. For example, a rule-utilitarian conception is autonomous if it works from the assumption that the educational worth of a policy or principle can largely be weighted in terms of a sui generis set of ‘educationally distinct’ positive and negative consequences. So in this respect conceptions of education are freestanding from any particular moral or political theory. They differentiate themselves more in terms of the place of educational value in practical reasoning. The system of classification aims to show how comprehensive assumptions about how we ought to publicly reason about basic issues in education entails assumptions about the nature and scope of educational value.

Composite Conceptions of Educational Value Composite concepts of education understand the educational domain as having no principled or foundational rational basis. Sound educational judgments in the public sphere are simply comprised of all those reasons we have for preferring certain outcomes over others, but none of those reasons are given value by virtue of a distinct or defined sphere of educational value. To put this differently, there is no signature ‘theory of value’ underlying education that the public can apply to order or rank the importance or weight of reasons for or against certain policies or practices. Under this conception, competing claims about education are simply an amalgam of prudential, political, local, and historical considerations. The standard of justification is termed ‘composite’ in the sense that judgments involve the careful weighing of a number of different values, none of which necessarily make any particular claim about education. In the case of conflicts between traditional communities and modern school systems, for example,

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the issue may be primarily institutional. Can conventional state schooling be administered in traditional communities? Or the issue may involve political considerations – how much power should the state cede to local communities asserting control over the management of basic institutions? Here, the key to addressing educational disagreements in the public sphere is a careful parsing out of the issues at hand – political rights, material inequality, and effectiveness of teaching strategies – and weighing up the costs and benefits these reasons offer. Each situation will be different. No one principle or set of principles will do.2 This is essentially a deflationary view of educational value. Are composite accounts the right way to go? Like all deflationary views, the account does benefit from simplicity. And good judgments certainly require a careful consideration about the particulars of a situation, an approach that a composite account seems to encourage. The institutional history of forced residential schooling in Canada, for example, is an important historical fact that must be taken into consideration in any deliberations about the educational value of schooling in that context. Composite reasoning certainly plays a role in the judgments we make about education. As the Innu case suggests, educational judgments cannot be applied in a political and historical vacuum. Institutions such as schools are informed by values extraneous to the central purposes that define them. But composite reasoning does not contribute, fundamentally at least, to any public understanding of educational worth. For while such a procedure may lead to good judgments in terms of running a school in an effective manner, for example, or may lead to a modus vivendi compromise on educational polices, these same judgments have no discernable connection to the educational domain in other than the most arbitrary fashion. If an action, norm or policy is to be justified in a way that reflects a public understanding of what it means for something to have educational worth or value, it must at some level, no matter how abstractly formulated, rely on some general principle or principles of justification. Just as in the case of health care we need some criteria, no matter how basic, showing why one set of reasons would outweigh another set of reasons on educational grounds. This is just what it means to have public understanding about educational value. But what kind of principles are we talking about and are such principles really necessary? As in any context, one can make sound moral judgments in the classroom context. For example, a teacher rightly reports evidence that one of her students is being neglected to the relevant authorities. It is her moral duty to do this. Educators can also make sound prudential judgments in a

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school context. For example, a school principal requires that all students help in the tidying up of school grounds once a week. This policy aims to ensure that they come to respect school space. Both judgments involve the use of practical reason – reasoning about aims, values and actions. But other than being simply moral or prudent, could either claim that their judgments were educationally worthwhile for reasons other than the mere fact that such judgments were made in contexts conventionally associated with education? Let’s put it this way: we could agree that the first action is morally justified, and we could do so because we can recognize that there is a certain rational standard that the teacher’s practical reasoning has met. That she has made the child’s interests a center of her moral concern could be one way (but not the only way) of framing this. And we could agree that the second action was justified on prudential grounds, and we could do so because there is a certain rational standard of what counts as a prudent decision. Her aim was to promote a respect for the environment and the tidying policy is an effective means of achieving this chosen aim. But if we asked either teacher if their action was of educational worth, or was educationally justified, what could they say in response? Is this even a pressing question? After all, the first teacher would probably say that it really doesn’t matter if her action was of educational worth. It was her moral obligation to protect the child. The moral duty to report child neglect is anybody’s duty – it has nothing to do with the fact that the person aware of the neglect is a teacher or educator. No further justification is required. And so it might at first seem odd to say that protecting a child from neglect is of educational worth or value, or that the report was made because it was educationally worthwhile. In our ordinary language use, the term ‘education’ seems predominantly associated with formal schooling and with different kinds of academic activities. Protecting children from neglect doesn’t directly promote academic learning in the ordinary sense – as a general duty one has an obligation to report such neglect regardless of one’s role in society. The duty to protect is not part of the educator’s distinctive moral repertoire. So perhaps we should conclude that moral duties are not meaningfully related to the educational domain but are simply applied to it in a more or less straightforward way. This view has important implications for the assessment of actions and policies. Consider a hypothetical and general moral principle such as ‘One ought to promote respect for the environment.’ Imagine that the teacher who compels her student to clean the school grounds justifies her action by claiming that she was applying this principle. Now, note that the principle does not give

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specific reasons for compelling children to clean. The only claim on us is that we ought to promote this respect where we can. This may involve using educational contexts as a means to such an end. It could also warrant general environmental policies that have no direct bearing on education. The principle’s connection with the educational process is incidental or external. Nor does the principle offer reasons why someone in the teacher’ position ought not to compel children to clean. This general moral principle, in its direct and unmediated application to the educational domain, isn’t able to tell us much at all about the meaning and value of the practice of compelling children to clean in the educational context – the principle, taken alone, simply suggests that compelling children to clean is a morally permissible means to the fulfillment of the duty specified by the principle.3 The unprincipled conception of education posited in this example lacks what Joseph Raz has called ‘exclusionary reasons’ built into it – reasons generated by higher order principles that can trump or override our reasons for doing X or Y (Raz, 1975). It seems clear that broad norms or principles are insufficient for supplying exclusionary reasons insofar as they are not informed by or translated through a public understanding of values specific to education. If compelling children to clean were morally permissible in most cases the principle has nothing recommending why compelling children to clean is (or is not) educationally worthwhile. Is coercion a justifiable part of a process having educational value, or is there something about education that would recommend against this? Without some principled understanding of education at play the answer remains indeterminate. There is no framework of understanding proffering exclusionary reasons that could ever make possible a judgment like, ‘Under the most general circumstances the proposed action is morally permissible, but given considerations of educational value, it is not.’ Another example will bring this point out. Imagine that the teachers in the previous example were trying to defend the educational worth of their actions. They might appeal to that fact that these actions were a part of a larger series of actions that constitute the work they do as educators, and therefore those actions had derivative educational worth. Reporting neglect or managing the school is one of the many things that they do as educators, and these actions were necessarily for carrying out the enterprise of education. These arguments miss the mark because they fail to clarify the reasons through which that larger enterprise is a justifiable one. The obvious reply to the teachers in either case, for example, is that they have simply deferred the question. If their actions are a part of a larger network of actions that constitute the work they do as educators,

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what makes this larger enterprise justifiable? The fact that ‘this is the work that educators do’ is not a sufficient reason for why educators ought to do what they do and why this doing has educational worth or value. The composite account is able to avoid some these problems. By denying the existence of a specifiable domain of educational value, problems of justification largely evaporate. We can re-describe in more technical philosophical terms how the composite account works in this way by contrasting it with the idea that values can have a distinct formal structure. Kantian terms may be especially instructive, here. For Kant, a morally impermissible action is irrational because, and only because, it fails to conform to the Categorical Imperative (CI). If this is in fact the case for all morally unjustified actions we can infer that morality is autonomous. To say that morality is autonomous is to mean that the moral assessment of actions can only be fundamentally determined by appeal to moral principle and not from other kinds of premises or principles (such as empirical claims or laws). Acting out of moral principle (which includes the motive of duty) is necessary and sufficient for an action to have moral worth or value. According to Kant, the Categorical Imperative is the moral principle that secures the autonomy of morality. The Hypothetical Imperative (HI) does much the same for actions grounded in prudence. Acting so that you undertake the means necessary for an end makes the action rational and prudentially worthwhile. There is no known formal principle analogous to the CI by which the educational worth of an action can be assessed (note that here I am not supposing that the CI is uncontroversial). There is no ‘Educational Imperative’ to measure off our actions against. Consequently, we might reasonably conclude that judgments about educational policies are indeed composite in the sense described above. Reasons of moral worth are simply part of a larger scheme of reasons that can move us for or against a proposed action or policy in the educational domain. And so an educational policy could be morally impermissible, for example, but in weighing the many other reasons in support of that educational policy (political, economic and so on) the policy would, had it not otherwise been recognized as morally impermissible, be justifiably acted on as an educationally worthwhile project. Here, policies can be educationally worthwhile despite the absence of moral worth even if we ought not to act on them for reasons of moral permissibility. Note that this makes educational actions, policies and norms similar to prudential reasoning: I know X is good for me even though I may not do X. Composite conceptions, when translated into the education domain, encourage a certain kind of view of education that detracts from its value

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altogether. For this view would say that action X is educationally worthwhile even though I ought not to do it. The composite account seems to discount from the start the possibility that educational worth is grounded on non-weighable reasons (or non-scalar imperatives, or exclusionary reasons or obligations) that trump more immediate, contingent or instrumental concerns. For composite accounts, the ends achieved by the study of academic subjects by all children may trump the interests of Innu students if the reasons balance out the right way. The only way that such policies can be curbed is through appeal to a more general moral argument, such as an appeal to basic rights and liberties, which may itself reflect little public understanding of the substance of the educational process itself. This is a rather narrow, thin and yet ambiguous conception of education in public life and provides little in the way of deliberative guidance, especially in terms of justifying our actions. It asserts that means-ends thinking about educational value is somehow sufficient and opens the door to an unrestricted instrumentalism in the educational domain.

Autonomous Conceptions of Educational Value So it is perhaps worth exploring the idea that there is something special about education – a standard that trumps or constrains the fundamentally instrumentalist account encouraged by a composite concept of education. Autonomous conceptions are the opposite of composite conceptions. If composite conceptions work on the assumption that there is no coherent or definitive theory of value for education, autonomous conceptions see education as being somehow representative of some unchangeable and timeless set of values. While an action can be assessed from a moral point of view, this view asserts that there is a set of conditions under which the same action is irrational or unreasonable because it contradicts a salient repertoire of educational values. This latter assessment would be seen to be a different form of assessment altogether. Here, even if an action were morally permissible under more general circumstances it would remain unjustified insofar as the action is being assessed in terms of educational worth. Take the example of a teacher that indoctrinates students. Here it would be wrong to indoctrinate other people because it goes against fundamental educational values. The fact that indoctrination is generally held to be morally impermissible has no direct bearing on the unjustifiability of indoctrination in the educational domain, however. So if it turned out (as unlikely as it may be) that indoctrination is actually morally permissible in many cases (perhaps we

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were mistaken in our moral assessment), it would always be unjustifiable in the educational domain. On the autonomous account it would require a separate argument to show why indoctrination is educationally justifiable. The example could work the other way. A teacher spends much of his time preparing students against indoctrination. He encourages them to be critical. He spends hours getting them to examine arguments for logical fallacies, rejecting any argument that is not completely sound. Perhaps we could say that he has fulfilled a moral duty – a duty to protect the vulnerable from indoctrination. On the autonomous view it would not necessarily follow that what the teacher did was of any educational worth. Perhaps the autonomous conception proffered is governed by the value of learning specifiable content. The teacher has failed to meet the standard set out by these values insofar as he has only taught his students formal rules of logic and argumentation. To sum: to say that education is autonomous is to say that the rational assessment of educational value can only be determined by appeal to some timeless (but at present undetermined) educational principle or standard and not from other premises or principles. On this view, decisions about state schooling and policy may be prudentially wise and morally permissible or good, but until they are justified on autonomous educational grounds they may have no identifiable educational worth. Here, moral worth, prudence and educational worth are three different forms of value. Such an account seems implausible from the start – where would this value come from? This account will, however, require more serious consideration in later chapters – most notably Chapter 5.

Nested Conceptions of Educational Value Nested conceptions view education as being part of morality more generally, where the justifiability of an action, norm or policy in the educational domain is fundamentally moral.4 Here, an action is justified through some identifiable set of educationally relevant reasons having moral worth or value. However, unlike the autonomous case where an action can be assessed on independent educational grounds (it has passed the test of moral permissibility but may actually fail the test of educational worth), the action is assessed on educational grounds where a failure to meet those grounds is a failure of moral duty or obligation. In other words it would be the case that certain forms of moral impermissibility are informed by a meaningful moral understanding of the educational domain and this understanding warrants or justifies specific moral precepts. On this

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account, if indoctrination is impermissible from a moral point of view it can never be seen as having educational worth because such worth is moral worth, albeit of a specific genus or type. This means, unlike composite or autonomous conceptions, the determination of what is educationally worthwhile about a morally impermissible action is unintelligible because we cannot conceive of educational worth apart from moral worth. One can take a closer look at how a nested account would play out in justificatory terms. If educational worth is a type of moral value this means that we need to identify the morally special characteristics of this value. This in turn requires examination of the moral dimensions of education in more specific terms than as general questions of moral permissibility. The identification of such dimensions is crucial if we want to fully understand the moral worth of our actions in the educational domain. The importance of articulating the value of education in meaningful terms that extend beyond the straightforward application of basic principles can be ascertained at the level of justification of specific practices and policies. If teacher X’s actions are properly characterized as indoctrinatory it is generally held to mean that the action is morally impermissible. But what does this assessment of moral permissibility actually tell us about the significance of that action? What, for example, are the wrong-making characteristics of the action? While it might be true that the indoctrinatory act is impermissible, the concept of impermissibility by itself does not explain what is wrong about indoctrination. We could say that a particular instance of indoctrination is wrong for the reason that it violates the principle that one ought not to actively undermine a person’s rational autonomy. The teacher’s intention to indoctrinate another rational being represents a violation of something essential to that person’s humanity. This may be a sufficient reason for indoctrination to be morally impermissible in some cases. But it may not be necessary for judging that indoctrination is wrong, especially when we consider the application of a principle of non-indoctrination in the educational domain. Consider cases where indoctrination occurs as a result of negligent behavior. A teacher, for example, may not bother to explain the rational basis of anything he presents and simply emphasizes that the learning is about memorizing presented material, accepting its truth, and answering correctly on assessments. As a result some of the students become indoctrinated in the same sense as the intentional case. While the teacher’s actions in both cases are morally impermissible it is clear that in this latter case the teacher is not intending that the students become unquestioning adherents of a particular doctrine. It was not

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simply a matter of the teacher focusing on an educational aim that is impermissible in the wider context of morality. In this latter case the aim of the teacher is different – maximizing the success of the student’s academic performance. Clearly, we can make different inferences about the character of the teacher in both cases. One is manipulative; the other is negligent. Their intentions tell us something about who they are. However, it seems also to be true that the teacher’s intentions are not always directly relevant to the justifiability of an action.5 The intentional case of indoctrination is probably impermissible in interactions between any and all persons, but the idea of intention does not cover the entire scope of the meaningful application of the principle. The ‘neglect’ case does not seem to fall under such a principle but nonetheless suggests that at least in some contexts neglecting the proper development of the rational capacities of persons in one’s care, such as children, fails to meet some moral standard or obligation. But it is not my duty to ensure that the rational capacities of all persons I interact with are sufficiently developed and maintained. I cannot be held at fault if, while teaching a new employee at the bank where I work and through the adoption of morally permissible training methods, the employee becomes a very competent but also slavish adherent to the goals of the corporation. Perhaps the employee had a predisposition to such commitments that I had not been previously aware of and had no reason to suspect. The important point here is that we may be tempted to think of indoctrination in terms of intentionality alone because we tend to think of the moral assessment of actions in the context of mature consociates – fully capable agents with fully formed intentions, desires and preferences. Indoctrination may be a means to something I want but it would be wrong to intend to do such a thing to a fellow member of the moral community and so we agree, as a society of mature consociates, that we may not commit such an act. In such a context we do not typically consider ourselves responsible for the rational capacities of others in a positive way – this may be seen to be too strict or demanding an interpretation of beneficence – but we do see active willing of a compromise in the rational capacities of others as a clear violation. Our responsibility for the development and protection of the capacities of other consociates is closer to something of libertarian flavor – I won’t undermine you if you won’t undermine me. And yet I should have reason to be more cautious in educational contexts because there seems to be some salient normative connections between vulnerability, developing rationality, and learning. This is not simply an empirical matter. As someone involved in guiding others through an educational process

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I have a moral responsibility to guard against indoctrination as a part of that enterprise. Consider that if I am working in a context with vulnerable persons who are only beginning to develop their reason, failure to protect these developing rational capacities is properly classified as neglect and therefore impermissible. But it is important to keep in mind that the neglect issue could also apply to fully grown adults that have gone through a traumatic event. After trauma people can manifest vulnerability in all sorts of ways, and we generally take this dependent state as a morally salient, and not simply an empirically contingent, feature in our interactions with them. We always already respect the potential vulnerability of our fellow consociates even though this vulnerability does not always manifest in ways that call on this moral understanding in practice. I make this point here because the normative considerations we must make in the educational domain can apply as much to adults as to children given the norm in question. We don’t usually think of our interactions with other adults as having the same kind of educational relevance, but this is more because of the fact that the probability of the kind of vulnerability these normative considerations have in view is likely higher in our interactions with children as opposed to being a matter of principle. After all, it would be odd to have one moral theory of justification for our dealings with adults, and one for our dealings with children. Yet, much moral theory, especially in the liberal tradition, is framed from the standpoint of resolute persons with fully formed beliefs, preferences and interests but who find themselves seeking to establish some means of rational cooperation with or reasonable co-existence among one another. The interests of children and other vulnerable populations have no reason to be any less a constitutive feature of a well-ordered moral community even though they may be unable to engage in rational cooperation or reasonable co-existence in the same way or on the same terms. Our analysis of the wrongmaking characteristics of indoctrination in the educational domain reveals the limits on the presumption of moral principles as centrally concerned with normative expectations between mature moral agents, where more specific normative strictures on neglect are easily overlooked. Consider a third example which I will define as an ‘accidental’ case. Here we have an instructor who teaches religious studies in a faith-based school. Unbeknownst to him and with no reason to ever suspect so, these teachings have been supplemented outside of the classroom by another teacher who willfully encourages the children to unquestionably adopt, to the exclusion of all other evidence, the first teacher’s expressed religious views. As a consequence the teacher’s students end up adopting the teacher’s religious views

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with an irrational fervor. Clearly, what the teacher has done in the third case is not morally impermissible. There is a difference of permissibility in cases one (intentional), two (neglect) and three (accident). T. M. Scanlon states this difference as follows: ‘What differentiates negligence from a freak accident…is not intent. What differentiates negligence from a freak accident is not the agent’s intention, or necessarily what the agent believed about the likely effects of his or her action, but what he or she should have believed, under the circumstances, about the likely effects of that action’ (2008, p. 14). In the third case, the teacher had no reason to believe that indoctrination was a foreseeable consequence of his actions. And in the first case, it is true that the teacher’s intention to indoctrinate was wrongful, but the intention is wrongful because the act intended is wrongful, and the act is wrongful because of the consequences of that action for the interests of the students, not directly because of the intention to indoctrinate. In the bank-training case, my permissible aim was to train the employee – I could not reasonably be expected to believe that the employee would become indoctrinated into the corporation’s ethos. Similarly, if the teacher was aware that his students are potential targets for fundamentalists, a failure to prioritize the developing student’s critical thinking about issues of faith would also be neglect given the likely effects of his own teachings.6 So it seems clear that the intention to indoctrinate is certainly going to be wrong, but this is because the intended consequences are wrong. However, it is not necessary that indoctrination be what is intended as is clear in the example of the negligent teacher. The example above illustrates that a closer analysis of actions that appear to be generically wrong or right from the perspective of mature moral consociates may in fact be assessed on more specific grounds. The neglect-indoctrination example shows that there are some types of action that are morally impermissible because of the responsibilities that we have to persons in the educational domain. The same may apply to social policy, where policies that directly aim to undermine people’s rational capacities as well as social policies that are simply negligent in ways that undermine the conditions necessary for the development of rational capacities are impermissible. The former is wrong because the intended policy aim is wrong, generally speaking and in any case. The latter is wrong because the principled account of education operative in the example offers exclusionary reasons against the permissibility of such policies – namely reasons warranted by a moral responsibility for the fostering and protection of the rational capacities of others in the educational process.

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Education as a Matter of Moral Understanding Most composite educational arguments can probably be reduced to political or prudential questions about such things as state schooling, arguments that may in themselves have very little to say about education (as important as those arguments may be taken by themselves). As I have argued, such conceptions have an instrumental bias built in at a conceptual level. If we want to properly assess the justifiability of educational aims and policies to others in the context of public morality we require a concept of education that has more fundamental normative force. Such a concept must be generated through appeal to reasons that do not rely on some arbitrarily chosen set of values or aims. The nested alternative views education as a matter of moral understanding – a source of moral obligation – and seeks to identify specific moral principles pertaining to contexts likely to have import and relevance in the educational domain. The nested account of justification is fundamental to understanding and assessing the cogency of normative arguments about education. Here, educational policies and practices are publicly justifiable to others when they are warranted by valid moral principles and where those principles are meaningfully informed or codified by an understanding of educational value. But what has been offered so far is only illustrative of the various possibilities for this kind of analysis. What kind of moral principles are we talking about, and what kind of educationally meaningful moral reasons could be generated from those principles? I have begun to outline an account based on Haydon’s idea of public morality, or a morality in the narrow sense, to which all of this hangs – but why this account of morality and how should this conception relate to educational value? In the next chapter I will to begin to address these questions by taking a closer look at the relationship between practical reasoning and education. Such a discussion must begin with R. S. Peters, whose work in ethics and education holds particular relevance to this relationship.

Notes 1 R. M. Hare (1981). Hare thinks that when different prima facie principles conflict (either one of several principles could apply to a situation) critical thinking will provide us with the information necessary for an impartial description of the situation, which will shed light on which principle ought to be chosen. But how

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2

3

4

5 6

does one begin to think critically about education when we do not have agreement on the basic values that constitute it? This approach is principled only in the broadest of senses – there is at the very least the principle that reasons are additive. If a particular conception, for example, decides that a specific set of educational issues are political in nature, then the reasons will be weighted in terms of the political values served by those reasons. Or a conception may presuppose that a set of issues are economic, and so on. I say ‘taken alone’ because there may of course be other principles which would suggest that it is not a morally permissible means. I treat the moral principle in isolation in this example to illustrate the limitations on general moral principles for informing judgments of educational value. Although it does not have to be nested in moral value as I have sought to develop it. As we will see in the next chapter, R. S. Peters, for example, tries to develop a nested conception of education within reasoning about the good life. Much of the discussion on intention, permissibility and the meaning of moral actions is adapted from Scanlon (2008). See Chapters 1 and 2 especially. I think this also means that if it were a fact that religious instruction does likely render people susceptible to indoctrination, this fact is not a sufficient reason to label religious instruction impermissible. It simply means that faith-based schools have a duty to make students aware of such dangers and prepare them for such in a way that undermines this susceptibility. The same principle would apply to any teaching that has such risks, not simply teachings based on religious views.

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Education, Worthwhileness and the Good

I have argued that a rationally acceptable conception of education for public understanding must be grounded in practical principle. I have further contended that educational judgments are fundamentally grounded in moralpractical reasoning, where such judgments refer to a specific class, genus or type of moral worth. This type of moral worth warrants moral obligations that ought to be addressed by any community regardless of specific culture-bound notions of educational value. This specific kind of moral worth therefore ought to represent shared public understanding between diverse communities with different perspectives on the ‘educational good’. However, any such understanding requires a clear account of practical reason, the way in which such an account can support the justification of normative claims generally and the relationship between these justified claims and education specifically. The work of R. S. Peters figures centrally in this respect. Peters’ work represents an ambitious attempt to address the relationship between the meaning(s) of the concept of education, practices and policies that fall under this concept, and the justifiability of such practices and policies. In this chapter I undertake a rational reconstruction of Peters’ project.1 On the one hand, he rightly identifies the concept of education as a problem about what it means to be educated. He rejects the idea that, in order to answer such a question, one appeals to an autonomous or sui generis domain of educational value. He grounds the fundamental normative status of education in prudence, or reasoning about the good life. The account of prudence that Peters offers is novel in that it posits a form of practical reasoning about what is objectively worthwhile for the individual as opposed to subjective wants or preferences. In this respect, the worthwhileness of an aim is what makes it attractive, as opposed to our finding the aim attractive making it worthwhile. In this way the account of education that Peters posits is founded on a purportedly objective conception of the good.

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According to the terminology I proffered in Chapter 1, this strategy presupposes a ‘nested’ conception of education. While I agree with this strategy I will argue that Peters situates education within the wrong form of value. I want to explore why Peters would arrive at such conclusions and clarify where and why I believe he goes wrong. In so doing, I hope to develop the beginnings of a more fruitful approach, albeit one that is greatly indebted to the philosophical work that proceeded it. First, I will give an account of the relationship between the concept of education and practical reason as Peters conceives it. Peters is clearly a moral universalist – he believes that moral judgments can be valid for and applicable to all persons – but the connection between his understanding of moral value and educational value is not always clear. Much of the discussion will focus on this ambiguity. It seems that Peters sees the moral domain as having a primarily incidental relationship to educational justification. But the principles have nothing direct to say about educational value – they apply to all contexts as a consequence of their universality. On this view, basic or general moral principles are simply applied to educational contexts in a ‘top down’ fashion. Yet, Peters is sufficiently foundationalist to require an objective standard for educational justification and he does refer to education as being grounded in ‘ethical foundations’. He therefore attempts to derive what I call a ‘worthwhileness principle’ as an objective principle of practical reasoning for questions of educational worth. For Peters, this principle is situated within practical reasoning about the good or well-lived life and grounds a conception of education focused on the process of initiation into the good life. I then argue that the principle of worthwhileness offers insufficient grounds for educational justification and I conclude that Peters’ often overlooked procedural-communicative theory of moral justification is a more plausible means of addressing questions of educational worth or value.

R. S. Peters on the Concept of Education For Peters, practices and policies in educational contexts, like any practice and policy, are subject to assessment through the application of generic and universalizable rational moral principles. His account of the moral life is most assuredly universalistic, as is clear from Paul Hirst’s impressive overview of his work: Basic to [his] account is a notion of rational universalistic morality as this has emerged from the clash of codes of living and competing views of the world as

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a result of social change and economic expansion. Reflecting about which view of the world was true, which code was correct, men came to accept higher-order principles of a procedural sort for determining such questions. By these means matters of morals came to be distinguished from matters of customs of law, codes could be criticised and revised, and men gradually became able to stand on their own feet as autonomous moral beings. (Hirst, 1986, p. 31)

Peters’ account of both the moral life and practical reason is by no means grounded in any speculative metaphysical perspective or noumenal/phenomenal doctrine. Rather, the universalistic core of morality is uncovered through the development of public and discursive means of addressing competing claims of how we ought to live together. Individuals socialized in such a context soon discover that the interests and values defining their own life and community cannot simply be generalized across other communities – at least insofar as they wish to co-exist peacefully. Peters’ moral universalism is post-metaphysical, appropriately cautious and inclusive in ways that place it in good company with contemporary work in moral philosophy. It is somewhat disappointing, then, that Peters’ attempt to extend a similarly sophisticated universalism into our understanding of education is not as successful. Here, Peters wishes to show how education is an enterprise separate and distinct from other ways in which persons are shaped and changed (1966, pp. 32–5). For him, the implied meaning in the use of the term ‘education’ suggests an undertaking directed at the development of a person as a person and not for contingent ends. The attempt to establish a generalizable concept of education was by no means unchallenged by other analytic philosophers. W. H. Dray, for example, suggested that Peters’ conceptual account of education is more a projection of his own values about what education should be (Dray, 1973, pp. 38–9; Elliott, 1986, pp. 43–4). These objections are perhaps part of the reason why one might read his work in universalistic terms (i.e. a conception of education rationally acceptable and applicable to all) yet find that such a reading does not get one very far. On the one hand, Peters wanted to provide a conceptual analysis wherein we can actually understand what it is we are doing (or claiming to do) when we engage in those activities that we call ‘educational’. On the other hand, he is too sophisticated a philosopher to offer a conceptual clarification of education and leave it at that. He is well aware that as a practical philosophical project, a normative account of education entails more than a description of concepts, and in his reply to Dray he is quick to point out the limits of any

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singularly conceptual approach (1973, p. 43). Even if we are clear about what we are talking about when we use the concept of education in ordinary language, further work needs to be done to show how and to what extent such claims ought to take hold in the lives of developing persons. This tension between Peters’ conceptual analysis and his universalism comes out in two different passages, each of which is worth quoting at length. This first is taken from the ‘conceptual’ aspect of the spectrum: ‘Morality’ can be used as a classificatory term by means of which a form of interpersonal behaviour can be distinguished from custom, law, religious codes and so on. But in ethics and in the practical task of bringing up children, this does not take us very far; for it would involve us in the most feeble form of the naturalistic fallacy to argue that, because we term a form of behaviour ‘moral’, this behaviour is one which should be pursued or encouraged. Nothing about what ought to be done follows from the empirical fact that we use a word in a certain way.2 (1973, p. 255)

The second passage I see as being taken from the ‘universalist’ aspect: It is not to commit some version of the naturalistic fallacy by basing a demand for a type of life on features of human life which make it distinctively human. For this would be to repeat the errors of the old Greek doctrine of function. Rather it is to say that human life already bears witness to the demands of reason. Without some acceptance by men of such demands their life would be unintelligible.

(1981, pp. 110–11) I select these passages for their ‘comparative’ value. Namely, they demonstrate that the conceptual mapping Peters engages in is not restricted to ‘educational’ terms. Moral language games, like educational ones, can benefit from clarification. The first passage is in the context of a critique of Kohlberg’s conception of morality. Here, Kohlberg’s usage of the term ‘moral’ is charged with being unwarrantedly prescriptive in presupposing a usage not always shared by others. On Peters’ view, Kohlberg can only merit such a usage insofar as we understand the more general justificatory framework within which such a language operates – for how else can one who is using such a language rightly say they are making a valid moral claim? The second passage is a kind of methodological inverse of the first. Here we see the universalistic framework directly applied to ‘education’ itself. This latter passage is within the context of an argument about the rationale or justification

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of education and, more specifically, the value of such a justification in the first place. The case is made that there is an immanent connection between the specific value of educational policies and the justification of those same policies. Questioning the substance of the educational account that Peters offers, or the value of giving an account qua account, involved making a demand for justification or for reasons – a demand that presupposes the values of rationality that are ‘immanent’ to the demand for justification itself (1973, p. 253). Here, the concept of education and the universalistic framework intersect. What I mean by this is that while practices of justification, generally speaking, presuppose certain values (such as a commitment to truth, for example) education is different in that it seeks to foster such values in persons. Education is on these grounds isolable from other human practices. I might presuppose similar values in other kinds of reason-giving discourse, but education is a different enterprise in that it directly engages with and promotes such values. Educational processes are not simply a means to other rational practices; they are a condition of possibility for all rational practices. If such an account is sound, then we might be able to defend the institutionalization of educational processes as a distinct human endeavor. One might even be able to use such an account to advocate access to such a process as a matter of moral right.3 From an educational rights perspective this would mean much more than access to ‘schooling’. Shouldn’t everyone have an opportunity to understand the value of reason-giving, equality and impartiality – values that, in Peters’ view, make human community as we know it possible? Human life may always ‘bear witness to reason’, but education is what moves us from passive spectators to active participants. Of course, philosophers with a more contextualist sensibility should be rightly concerned with this line – haven’t we heard similar kinds of argument used to defend cultural imperialism, for example? Indigenous peoples who have been subject to a colonial school system would certainly have reason to express similar reservations. In the next section I will provide a clearer exposition of how Peters arrives at his own concept of education and assess these concerns.

Educational Values; Values of Justification Peters is not always straightforward on the connections between his analysis of the concept of education and his universalistic claims about practical reason. In Ethics and Education, for example, the conceptual analysis of education in

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the first part of the work seems to jar against the transcendental deduction of principles offered in the second part.4 Not much is presented in the way of a clear and sustained account of the relationship between the two. In my view, the most significant aspect of what is offered is in the following: ‘Education’ has notions such as ‘improvement’, ‘betterment’, and ‘the passing on of what is worthwhile’ built into it. That education must involve something of ethical value is, therefore, a matter of logical necessity. There is, however, no logical necessity about the particular values ascribed to the variable of ‘being worthwhile’. The justification of such values, too, must go beyond the realm of conceptual analysis into that of ethical theory. (1966, p. 91)

I take Peters to mean that while our talk about education presupposes value, what is of value is to be decided through practical reasoning. It is exactly at this point where the conceptual analysis and the universalistic framework come together. Either the grounds upon which we justify our educational values are fundamentally dependent on the local cultural and historical context or we can make the case that there are certain universal values intrinsic to education. On a more contextual conception of education, for example, a sufficient justification for science in the curriculum could be that it somehow reflects a shared (but not universalizable) liberal democratic tradition. Having scientific understanding, for example, could be defended on the grounds that there is something about having a scientific understanding that could allow one to flourish in modern democratic communities. In the ‘intrinsic/universal value’ case, on the other hand, the value of science would have to rest on grounds relating to the way in which science reflects values basic to education itself. Our reasons for justifying scientific understanding would be more abstract and general in scope for they would necessarily refer to a standard that transcends any particular context or conception of human flourishing. The study of science might, for example, be claimed to represent a certain quality in critical thought and reason-giving, a quality of discourse to which all persons with a capacity for practical reasoning should have some exposure. But there is nothing about scientific practice that is itself of value in this later case, for there are arguably other types of discourse or practices that could achieve the same educational end. So here science is not a necessary condition for such value. In any case, the kinds of

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reasons for justifying educational judgments on an intrinsic account are those that are valid for any and all educational contexts – they are what comprises the educational domain. In other words, arguments used to rationally justify claims about education would have to appeal to a kind of objective educational principle, similar to the sense in which moral claims must accord with an objective moral principle. Such an account cannot be grounded in the conceptual logic of education alone. This is exactly the kind of mistake that Peters sees some progressive educational thinkers as making (1966, pp. 42–3). Here the objection is not to progressive thought as such, but to a flawed model of justification where certain conditions derived from the mapping of a concept are taken to be fully justified educational ideals. So, for example, the fact that the concept of education entails a degree of voluntariness for the learner is ‘inflated’ into the educational principle that all teaching practices ought always to give children the maximum freedom possible. Even when such pitfalls are clearly identified, such a justificatory project is daunting. If the concept of education is to represent an objective standard Peters needs to develop an argument showing how his own proffered standard is not covertly contingent or conventional.5 Peters’ own theory of moral justification holds some promise here. For Peters, anyone engaged in practical reason presupposes a public and non-coercive moral community of deliberation. This moral community is constituted through a number of moral principles such as the obligation to include all persons in any moral deliberation. I will provide a more detailed examination of this theory of moral justification at both the end of this chapter and in the subsequent chapter. What is important for our purposes at present, however, is that this theory of justification is not made in reference to any specific conception of education. These moral principles of practical reason could be applied to any kind of rational justification, not just in the justification of practices, policies and norms in educational contexts. These ‘objective principles’ of practical reason regulate all action, including action in the educational domain just because such principles are generalizable (valid for all) and general (applicable in many contexts). The relevance of Peters’ procedural principles can only be determined through an application of such principles, from the outside, to these contexts. Ethics and Education devotes large tracts to showing how principles such as the principle of freedom are appropriately applied to classroom practice. For example, one ought to curtail the immediate desires of children so they can exercise greater freedom in

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a rich educational context (pp. 192–8). But freedom, like justice, is still ‘an independent principle’, autonomous from educational concern except as a matter of ad hoc consideration. There is nothing educationally ‘special’ about any of these principles. Consequently, while the exercise of practical reason can justify the moral principles regulating action in educational (as well as all other) contexts, at this point no case is made showing how or even if education meaningfully relates to objective principles of practical reason. But this is exactly where such an argument is needed. As discussed in Chapter 1, there is an important difference between an argument that shows, on the one hand, how moral-practical reasoning can place constraints on an action or policy, and on the other hand an argument that shows why the action or policy is itself an educationally worthwhile undertaking. Peters is sufficiently Kantian to hold that any action presupposes the validity of a public framework where individuals are to be treated as having equal moral worth. In this respect, Peters’ account of the moral life is close to Haydon’s ‘morality in the narrow sense’. But such a framework by itself tells us nothing about the extent to which an action is of educational worth in its own right. This limitation of the application of morality ‘from the outside’, so to speak, invites objections that objective principles represent an ‘empty formalism’ characteristic of other rationalistic accounts of the moral life. As I argued in Chapter 1, the imperative that one ought never to indoctrinate may be a generalizable and applicable claim, but there is nothing in the imperative that taken by itself tells us anything about its educational value. The imperative makes no reference to education as a practice offering ‘exclusionary’ reasons or reasons of obligation for why one ought not to indoctrinate – that is, if there are reasons for why one ought not to indoctrinate, they are at most parasitic on or derived from a prior, general moral understanding. While one can say that indoctrination in an educational context or any other context is morally impermissible and hence irrational, the normative force of this claim is derived from the general moral framework and not from any particular understanding of what education represents as an enterprise. Additionally, while a moral framework focused on ‘deontic’ questions of moral permissibility and impermissibility can constrain particular practices, the failure of such a framework to engage with the nature and scope of educational value leaves it powerless to offer rational criteria for why some permissible practices ought to be adopted over other permissible practices.

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From the standpoint of the general moral point of view that Peters adopts for the purposes of his analysis, learning poetry or push-pin could be permissible. It is clear that Peters assigned universalist morality a primarily prohibitive role in education specifically and practical life more generally.6 Consequently, Peters has to look elsewhere for his foundation: if moral judgments (you may not do X) are distinct from educational judgments (X has educational worth), from what source are educational reasons warranted for justifying the adoption of some practices over others?7 Without such an account, normative arguments about education ultimately become a subjective matter of prudence or goodness as opposed to an obligatory standard.8 Education might be properly described as involving an initiation into worthwhile activities, for example. But can education in any way a represent non-subjective worthwhile activities, or activities that any community must be responsible for ensuring that persons have an opportunity to be initiated into? Can educational processes be subject to selective criteria other than individual or cultural preference? How Peters handles the case for worthwhileness is crucial to understanding why and how he sees education in universalistic (but non-moral) terms. For Peters, education refers to an initiation into worthwhile activities. Yet, the foundationalism within which Peters situates his argument renders any account of worthwhileness a relative or subjective one insofar as such conceptions rest on particular values or principles that cannot be generalized. Your society may value initiation into poetic arts, but ours may see outdoor survival skills as more important. For Peters, our chosen conceptions of the good by themselves are subjective and cannot be used to establish a generalizable standard of educational worth. Yet talk of worthwhile activities seems to inevitably tie into some objective notion of the good. Perhaps among all these notions of the good is a more general, perhaps universalizable, good? If education must refer to worthwhileness, and non-subjective judgments of worthwhileness must presuppose the good, the concept of education must be based on an idea of the good held common between any and all such conceptions. Yet, this concept of education must accommodate many different conceptions, depending on the culture and traditions at play in particular cases.9 The logic of Peters’ account therefore moves in the following direction: there must be some minimal justification or principle for why individuals ought to be initiated into some worthwhile activities over others, whatever they may be and however varying they may be. But does Peters have an argument for this principle?

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He certainly attempts as much. Peters grounds the case for what educational processes ought and can do in a positive sense in his well-known transcendental argument. The cogency of a generalizable conception of education-as-worthwhileness rests primarily on this next step. What I aim to show in this next section is that the argument for worthwhileness is best understood as an attempt to establish a general principle of worthwhileness – a context-transcending practical principle having the same universal status as the other practical principles that Peters derives. This principle is the rational standard to which the concept of education is supposed to refer.

Education: Lost between the Moral Life and the Good Life? To recap: Peters sees educational practices and policies as constrained by a rational, universalistic morality. This is in part derived from his assertion that any justifiable account of education must be grounded in ‘ethical foundations’ that are non-arbitrary. These foundational principles are not metaphysical givens, but those that all persons could adopt without contradiction because they are presupposed by any reasoned action. Rendered in this way, however, educational processes stipulate little in terms of positive rights or duties.10 Education is primarily a matter of goodness or prudence, not moral principle.11 It is an internal question of value, not an overarching or external framework of moral permissibility. Moral principles may happen to be instrumentally useful in promoting the good due to their ordering influence, but otherwise have no intrinsic connection to educational processes (1966, p. 196). It is important to be terminologically clear, here. By ‘prudence’, I (and I also believe Peters) mean questions about the good – of how one wishes to live and flourish. These questions are distinct from questions of moral rightness or ‘morality in the narrow sense’. Jürgen Habermas uses a similar distinction, where ethical questions relate to questions of the good, and moral questions refer to questions of moral rightness (Habermas, 1990). Habermas characterizes such questions as follows: One will be able to choose between pursuing a career in management and training to become a theologian on better grounds after one has become clear about who one is and who one would like to be. Ethical questions are generally answered by unconditional imperatives such as the following: ‘You must embark on a career that affords you the assurance that you are helping people.’ The meaning of this imperative can be understood as an ‘ought’ that is not

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dependent on subjective purposes and preferences and yet is not absolute. What you ‘should’ or ‘must’ do has here the sense that it is ‘good’ for you to act in this way in the long run, all things considered. Aristotle speaks in this connection of paths to the good and happy life. (1993a, p. 5)

These kinds of questions can be distinguished from moral questions: Only a maxim that can be generalized from the perspective of all affected counts as a norm that can command general assent and to that extent is worthy of recognition or, in other words, is morally binding. The question ‘What should I do?’ is answered morally with reference to what one ought to do. Moral commands are categorical or unconditional imperatives that express valid norms or make implicit reference to them. The imperative meaning of these commands alone can be understood as an ‘ought’ that is dependent on neither subjective goals and preferences nor on what is for me the absolute goal of a good, successful or not-failed life. (1993a, p. 8)

I think that it is the former kind of question that Peters sees the concept of education as primarily being responsible for, and this is exactly why he is engaged with important questions of worthwhileness – what objective criteria are there for judging what is worth passing on, and how might this dovetail with what it is we are trying to capture when we speak of education in a general sense? In other words, is there some kind of general procedural principle guiding education’s task of initiating persons into the good life? The extent to which our deliberations can be guided by an objective principle on this matter is no doubt complex. On the one hand, modern pluralism reveals the limited scope of any one conception of the good. On the other hand, conceiving of education as a good-transmitting process is fairly meaningless if there are no criteria by which we can judge which goods are worth transmitting. In order to secure the right level of generality and objectivity, actions and policies grounded in education-as-worthwhileness must meaningfully link with practical principles. But unlike moral principles whose protective role ensures that persons are treated in terms of moral respect simply by virtue of being a person, an objective principle of worthwhileness would refer to the value of initiation of these persons into certain types of activities. In other words, questions of educational worth are ethical questions in Habermas’ sense of the term. This methodological move is significant in another way, for it suggests an important transition from framing principles as a matter of well-ordered

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expectations between a community of mature consociates to principles that directly address the interests of vulnerable persons who have yet to become capable members of the community. Why is it then that, for Peters, judgments of worthwhileness are not simply sublated to or nested within the moral sphere? Would it not be more straightforward to leave educational standards as a matter to be regulated by a universal moral framework? An important development in the move away from this kind of sublation can be found in an earlier paper, co-authored with A. P. Griffiths, called ‘The Autonomy of Prudence’ (1962).12 As the title suggests, the thrust of the paper is to show that, contrary to an empiricist reading of Kant’s project that suggests that morality is only practical insofar as it is prudential or good (i.e. the reason why I should be moral is that because if everyone is moral we will all be better off), judgments of prudence are themselves an autonomous employment of practical reason (pp. 162–3). The argument, briefly stated, is that assessments of the rational force of an action or judgment must be undertaken through an evaluation of the ends (and the means that are employed to achieve that end). This applies to both moral and prudential maxims. However, the kind of prudential judgments that Griffiths and Peters have in mind are claimed to be different from Kant’s hypothetical imperative (HI), where the rationality of actions directed to particular and subjective ends is assessed by the degree to which the action accords with the practical necessity entailed by the willing of that end. Between an autonomous or ‘narrow’ morality and the prudential rationality of the HI is a practical reason of private prudence: ‘Such judgements of private prudence, it is clear, go beyond anything the agent seems himself to want, or actually does want, and concern what he ought to want for himself, and that a wiser person would find satisfaction in’ (p. 167). This goes squarely against Kant, for he saw objective principles of practical reasoning as having two forms alone: either by a conditioned hypothetical imperative where an action is good merely as a means to something else, or an unconditioned categorical imperative where an action is in itself good (Kant, p. 25; 4:414–4:415). Griffiths and Peters think that if there is a third objective practical principle by which an individual’s chosen ends can be assessed as good or bad on non-subjective, yet also non-moral, grounds they can secure the autonomy of prudence and ‘the most general procedural principles of technical prudence’ (Griffiths and Peters, p. 171). They then try to secure the autonomy of private prudence by deriving its transcendental necessity: questions of prudence necessarily presuppose the rational assessment of certain wants (p. 175) and that such a rational assessment

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is only possible insofar as one participates in certain activities in order for one to be able to engage in this kind of reasoning (p. 177). For example, to ask if poetry is worthwhile for me is to also ask for the capacity to assess the worth of activities more generally, which in turn is to ask that one be initiated into activities that allow one to undertake such assessment. Peters is here setting out the objective conditions through which a person can rationally assess a plethora of subjective ends. For Griffiths and Peters, judgments of ‘private prudence’ are objective, practical, autonomous judgments of goodness that are outside the sphere of morality in the narrow sense. This early version of the worthwhileness argument will have implications for Peters’ later work because it anticipates the (in)famous transcendental deduction in Ethics and Education of what are supposed to be universally worthwhile activities. In Ethics and Education Peters argues that the understanding of theoretical forms of thought such as literature and science are necessary for making judgments of ‘private prudence’. The reasons justifying these activities are autonomous from the moral sphere, and perhaps go some way to explaining why the moral-practical principles Peters identified in Ethics are thought to have no intrinsic connection to the concept of education, while worthwhileness does. Here, the transcendental argument derives an objective educational principle showing why one ought to choose end/activity A over end/activity B on ‘private’ prudential grounds. So rather than prescribe our ends in a way that would undermine the plurality of subjective ends or goods proffered by differing conceptions of the good, the principle simply shows that in order to make reasoned choice between competing ends it is necessary that one first develop an overarching understanding of judgment itself, and this involves initiation into theoretical forms of knowledge such as science and other academic subjects familiar to us in schools. On this view, Peters derives what I call the principle of worthwhileness. The principle of worthwhileness is a practical principle that supplies a missing objective standard for making educational judgments. Such a principle exists in a practical space between a morality of permissibility/impermissibility and a subjective ethics of the good life. For example leading children though a science experiment may fall within the boundaries of the moral law; one treats the children with respect, one teaches them in a way that does not undermine the development of their autonomy and so on. But the science activity could be plausibly dropped and replaced with some other activity, such as traditional hunting practices, without contradicting the moral law. So: why do science? The question remains because, while education may in some way be connected

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to worthwhileness, we as yet have no exclusionary reason for why we cannot replace science activities with something else (perhaps anything else) taken to be worthwhile. The worthwhileness principle aims to supply such grounds. Here it is not so much the case of learning science versus hunting, rather, the principle provides reasons for why learning science is something that developing persons should experience if they are to be able to pursue a good life. To deny them science is to deny initiation into a form of knowledge necessary for making judgments about goodness or ‘private prudence’, such as whether they should choose hunting over the science lab in the first place. In effect, the practical principle of worthwhileness is the objective educational principle necessary for any intelligible and generalizable conception of education. If worthwhileness is ‘built into’ the concept of education, and if the initiation into worthwhile activities is presupposed in the form of a transcendental principle of worthwhileness, then there is something about educational worth that is indeed universal – worthwhile activities are those activities that ensure that universally necessary forms of knowledge can be accessed by all persons irrespective of cultural context. Accordingly, a multicultural society, despite many comprehensive views of the good, has an obligation to ensure that such opportunities are in place if the process is to indeed be educational. To say one should prioritize learning literature over hunting is simply to make an educationally relevant and valid claim because according to the principle literature is necessary for making judgments of worthwhilness. Accordingly, educational processes are universally valid because they are necessary for any form of rational human life (1966, pp. 162–3). And so the principle of worthwhileness is meant to express an aspect of ethical-practical reason that has direct educational relevance for developing persons. This all assumes, of course, that initiation in practical reasoning of this sort is in fact universally good in the way that Peters claims. But how well founded is this claim?

Education, Reason and the Good Life How defensible is Peters’ argument about educational worth? Even if we buy into the transcendental argument as a philosophical method, there are other problems. While one can derive practical principles through transcendental argument, Peters see the public adoption and institutionalization of those principles as an ethical-educational standard: ‘[T]o have the concept of a person is to see an individual as an object of respect in a form of life which is conducted

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on the basis of those principles which are the presuppositions of the use of practical reason’ (1966, p. 215). On the one hand, it is possible to interpret the previous passage as simply saying that these presuppositions underlie any form of life, forming the basis of respect for persons. But it can also be taken to mean that one should adopt such principles as an ideal of human flourishing and excellence. Bonnett (1986) rightly picks up on this shift and its implications for Peters’ account of education: The development of mind for Peters then ultimately consists in the internalisation of the standards of rationality where rationality itself, as has been indicated, is seen as a phenomenon in social life…[E]ducation is certainly not to be construed as consisting in mere sets of abstract principles, but something more akin to a form of life in which they are embedded and which they enable. (pp. 114–15)

Even if we can safely say that the rational principle that Peters derives is objective and generalizable in scope, what does it then mean to claim that a form of life based on such principles is universally good? Bernard Williams argues that approaches such as these overstate the role that practical reason should have in our lives: [T]he drive toward a rationalistic conception of rationality…imposes on personal deliberation and on the idea of practical reason itself a model drawn from a particular understanding of public rationality. This understanding requires in principle every decision to be based on grounds that can be discursively explained. (1985, p. 18)

There is a crucial difference between presupposing norms of practical reason and institutionalizing those norms in the form of an ethos to be celebrated by all communities. What one needs to flourish depends on all sorts of contextual features. Accordingly, an account of educational processes whose universal justification is grounded in an endorsement of such a rationalistic ideal of human flourishing is open to objections ranging from its justificatory shortcomings to the moral and political implications of institutionally imposing such a process on more traditional communities that may not see ‘the situation of practical reason’ as all-defining. Reason-giving, deliberation, and the pursuit of worthwhile activities are fundamental to any form of life. Interference with our ability to develop such capacities is morally abhorrent. But positing an educational process that takes

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such capacities to be of central value in a well-lived life is a different kind of claim.13 Consider what Peters says regarding the justification of the curriculum in the context of his transcendental argument: To ask the question ‘Why do this rather than that?’ seriously is therefore…to be committed to those inquiries which are defined by their serious concern with those aspects of reality which give context to the question he is asking.

(1966, p. 164) Note the shift in Peters’ language. Practical questions presuppose the critical assessment of reasons, but does it also entail a ‘commitment to inquiry’?14 What kind of commitment is being asked of here? What a principle of worthwhileness suggests at most is that it would be self-contradictory to ask practical questions and ignore relevant information that could lead us to the right answer. It might mean that educational processes cannot legitimately prevent children from developing the ability to ask, answer and assess the evidentiary reasons necessary in the pursuit of such questions. It does not mean that every educational process ought to posit rigorous intellectual scientific inquiry as a life-ideal. For example, does this also mean that individuals who are mentally impaired and unable to commit to rational inquiry are somehow ‘failures’ in their desire for a good life? A comparison to the moral law is again useful here – for Kantians, moral deliberation presupposes the categorical imperative as an objective practical principle of judgment, but we do not infer our moral obligations directly from such a principle. In other words, (at least for Kant) we do not presuppose a particular moral code in the asking of the moral question. Rather, we propose maxims and submit them to the CI test. If they pass the test, we may adopt them. Similarly, an objective educational principle of worthwhileness cannot directly tell us what is worthwhile. It simply establishes that learning about what is worthwhile between competing alternatives presupposes that one be informed by a reasoned understanding of how to decide for oneself what is worthwhile. In the context of a traditional society, for example, such deliberations might mean a reasoned understanding of the many pursuits available to its members (hunting, fishing, gathering, story-telling, carving etc). It does not necessarily mean scientific reasoning or literary theory. I am not here advocating for an entirely contextualist or relativist account of the good. What I am claiming is that what are contexttranscendent about such practices are at most those most formal features of scientific inquiry, not the content or the value of scientific knowledge itself.

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In a pre-industrial society a similarly reflexive, truth-seeking discourse could occur in the context of their valued pursuits without an explicitly scientific investigation ever taking place.15 Peters shifted the emphasis from morality to prudence in order to provide a more meaningful and substantive conception of what it means to be educated. In actuality, we seem to have supplanted one kind of empty formalism for another. It is not plausible, in my view, that one can legitimately derive a substantive set of universal educational aims on the basis of an abstract goodness principle any more than one can do so on the basis of an abstract moral principle. In either case one simply ends up projecting one’s own conception of the good or the right. It is telling, for example, that in his analysis of worthwhileness Peters characterizes our proper understanding of it as a Socratic attitude where one must have a passionate concern for truth (p. 165). In other words, the fact of practical reason is deftly rendered into a virtue of character and a standard by which we assess what counts as a flourishing life. Peters tries to use the values immanent to the use of practical reason to fill out a quite empty concept – initiation into the good. These values were then used to justify the claim that some aspects of educational actions and policies, such as an engagement with specific worthwhile activities, have universal import. On the assessment I have offered, such a project is unsuccessful. However, I do think that Peters was moving in the right direction. His transition from principles as an ordering mechanism between persons fully incorporated into the moral community to principles that protect the interests of more vulnerable members represents an important move away from what I have been calling ‘generic’ conditions of moral justification. And his argument that education is grounded in practical reasoning helps to show how the educational domain is defined by specific values. In the final section of this chapter I will show how these features of Peters’ account could be used to support a conception of educational actions and policies within a moral context. There is some textual evidence that Peters’ work has some of the resources necessary for such a conception. For while he takes practical principles as setting a standard for excellence in human reasoning he also assigns to them an important public and communicative role. Such an account invites a return to the theme of public justification introduced in Chapter 1.

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Communication and Practical Reason Rather than positing a transcendental ego that imposes structure on experience, Peters is keenly aware of the social development of mind. Yet he also anticipates contemporary thought in Kantian ethics by denying that such a ‘detranscendentalized self ’ entails a completely empiricist account (1966. pp. 46–51). Such a conception of the person is post-metaphysical, by which I mean that the self is a socialized and intersubjective self, formed through participation in public language and communication (1966, pp. 50–1). On this view, the self becomes aware of itself as a self through reciprocal communication with others.16 Rather than endorse an atomistic conception of the person, this is a self formed through engagement with a social context. The types of practical questions that Peters focuses on in his transcendental analysis (what ought I do?; why do this rather than that?) can therefore be understood as public questions that can only be resolved through deliberation with others. The practical principles that Peters subsequently identifies are crucial here because they are derived from presuppositions underlying any public communication. These presuppositions are communicative and those which persons must make if they are to reach mutual understanding with others.17 Consequently, they are regulative and constitutive of the public world that all individuals are initiated into. On this view, public practical reason is the means through which persons become persons and through which they secure their unique identities. Consider how the principle of worthwhileness works on this communicative interpretation. It becomes clear that when I ask the question ‘what is worthwhile?’ it makes little sense to posit the question from the standpoint of some solitary, atomistic agent.18 Activities and practices are social in nature, and so an assessment of their worthwhileness can only take place in a shared evaluative context with other persons. The interpretation of my interests, needs, preferences and long-term goals is formed through my practical deliberation with others. I ask for advice. I contrast possible alternatives and life-experiences. I assess their interpretations within the context of my own unique situation in life. Yet, while the decision to choose one life-plan rather than another takes place within the context of the traditions of my community, the practical reasoning through which such an informed decision is made possible by a far more general competency. Consequently, a continuing process of open deliberation and reciprocal communication is necessary for the possibility of practical reason (1966, pp. 225–6). Through the use of practical reason, one presupposes that there will

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be properly constituted public procedures of communication and at the same time presupposes these procedures will persist over time (though they may also of course, be revised). Consequently, practical reason is a kind of universal, context-transcendent tradition that needs to be maintained and handed down.19 On this view, ‘developing centres of consciousness’ need to be initiated into such a tradition. Here, a communicative interpretation of practical reasoning as a common human tradition is one in which moral norms (the content of the ‘morality in the narrow sense’ of which we have already discussed) can be tested in an open procedure of moral argumentation; a space where informed ethical choices relating to the good life, worthwhile pursuits and one’s own selfunderstanding can only be realized through interaction with others. I think that starting with this account of initiation can move us closer to a concept of education that is valid for and applicable to multicultural contexts. Rather than an account based on activities claimed to be good for the flourishing of all persons, we can instead identify those moral obligations we have to any and all individuals learning to become members of the universal community of practical reason. Practical reason is the means through which persons can become individuals and stand as equal members in a larger moral community. Accordingly, the process as conceived would be representative of a generalizable standard insofar as it does not promote a single conception of the good, but positive insofar as it identifies a kind of initiation to which all persons have a right by virtue of their inclusion in the human community as a matter of moral principle. We can then distinguish a reasoned educational process from contingent or subjective educational aims by the former’s active role in ensuring that such a moral standard of initiation is met. When we speak of education from this point of view, we are presupposing, minimally, that an educational process enables persons to participate in practical reason to the extent that they can capably form their unique identity, freely represent their interests in moral deliberation, and engage in communication aimed at mutual understanding with others. We can take Peters’ moral principle of consideration of interests that he discusses in Ethics and Education as one such example. Such a principle is educationally meaningful and relevant because the validity of a moral judgment rests on the recognition of the needs and interests of others – developing centres of consciousness have a right to learn to be able to represent their interests and the interests of others within moral argumentation. Such a competency is presupposed in the use of practical reason – when I represent my interests I presuppose that I, as well as all others, ought to be able to learn

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to represent their interests in a competent way. The already uncovered principle of worthwhileness is another example. When teachers or policy-makers make judgments about what is a worthwhile activity in an educational context, for example, they also presuppose that all other persons should be able to make informed judgments about worthwhileness. This means having an opportunity to communicate with others about such alternatives, to be able to consider the experiences of other persons and to make well-informed judgments on the basis of such practical deliberations. Accordingly, representing interests and evaluating worthwhileness involve demanding competencies not naturally acquired. It requires opportunities to experience a well-ordered social life with other persons where one is free to learn how to reflect and reason about possible life choices, exchange unique perspectives, explore biographical differences and establish a critical distance from one’s own immediate context. Accordingly, any process that wishes to call itself educational must reflect such demands. The contradiction in denying children these experiences is not that the denial of a particular activity contradicts the worthwhileness principle; rather, making judgments about what is worthwhile for others without affording them the opportunity to develop similar competencies for judgment is self-contradictory. I think this stricture hits on the right level of formality and generality to meet conditions of rational acceptability in multicultural contexts without being too ‘thin’ or meaningless from an educational standpoint.20 What is offered here is only a basic outline. Such an account would have to be able to show why a communicative interpretation of practical reasoning is more plausible than a more foundational one, particularly in light of post-foundational skepticism about the universality of moral judgments. Furthermore, a detailed case needs to be made for why initiation into practical reason can be understood as a ground of moral obligation, and not simply a theory of the good. What I have shown so far is only that the concept of education cannot be about the good simply. The next chapter will continue the discussion of Peters’ work by focusing on his communicative conception of practical reasoning.

Notes 1 By ‘rational reconstruction’ I mean that the focus of my account is not to produce a thorough exposition of everything that Peters argued in detail, but to identify his major claims, elucidate why he proceeded to argue in the fashion that he did, and explore the consequences of this line of reasoning.

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2 Peters (1966) at times applies this methodological point to his own transcendental deduction of moral principles. 3 Though I am not myself aware of Peters ever defending such a view, it seems to be a plausible consequence of his account. 4 Peters’ transcendental argument is covered in detail in Chapter 3. 5 ‘Most writers dealing with “the aims of education” persuasively parade the particular values which they commend such as ‘the self-realization of the individual’; but they have little to offer in the way of justification’ (1966, p. 91). 6 As I will argue, ‘narrow’ morality does not have to play an exclusively prohibitive role. Even if it does, a more careful examination of moral judgment shows that such judgments can be educationally meaningful. However, Peters does not take this point of view and therefore has to go in other directions to ground his account of educational judgment. 7 Note that this analysis presupposes that such intrinsic reasons are possible, and only then does it make sense to seek to establish the conditions of their possibility. For those with more acquaintance with Peters’ work – I think this is in part why he places such an emphasis on language use and on the distinction between terms such as ‘training’ and ‘education’. Having shown that we can cogently deliberate about education as having intrinsic value, the way is then clear to take seriously the question of what are the conditions of possibility for such value. 8 As an example see Peters (1973, p. 28). 9 Axel Honneth, for example, has been working toward a kind of ‘formal anthropology’ that can define the universal features of a good and well-lived life (Honneth, 2007; Martin, 2007). 10 ‘It has been argued that the concept of “education” intimates no special processes, though it may rule out some. Nevertheless, it may be possible to justify on ethical grounds principles such as fairness and freedom in dealing with children’ (1966, p. 92). 11 ‘I take the concept of “education” to be almost as unspecific in terms of content as something like “good” or “worthwhile”, with the notion of “transmission of ” or of “initiation into” prefixed to it’ (1973, p. 43). 12 I would like to thank John White for directing me to this particular work. 13 See, for example, John White’s The Aims of Education Restated (1982). 14 On the moral, social and political limits of such an ideal of human flourishing, see ‘Norms and Values: On Hilary Putnam’s Kantian Pragmatism’ in Jürgen Habermas’ Truth and Justification (2005). 15 Although it does remain possible that scientific methods could be employed incidentally. I think Peters is open to this interpretation when he says that a person could have their thinking differentiated into different pursuits such as science or historical awareness, or such forms could ‘be only obscurely intimated in an undifferentiated way’ (1966, p. 164).

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16 For a more detailed account of such a process, see the many works by George Mead as well as Habermas (1992), and the Conclusion of this book. 17 This is what Jürgen Habermas would refer to as communicative reason. My interpretation of Peters from here on in is largely based on a Habermasian framework. This will be the focus of Chapters 3 and 4. 18 This is in contradiction to Peters’ early work on private prudence, where what I ‘ought’ to want as opposed to what I ‘ought’ to do morally is distinguished by the fact that in the former, what one ought to do only affects the individual (1962, p. 179). 19 Krassimir Stojanov has recently arrived at similar conclusions about the viability of Peters’ project, though the focus of his analysis is based on the work of Axel Honneth as opposed to Habermas (Stojanov, 2009). 20 Of course, exactly what kind of competencies we are talking about remains to be spelled out. This is undertaken in more detail in Chapter 6. In the meantime, however, we can speak of ‘competencies’ in a broad sense, meaning that whatever one needs to be able to participate in practical discourse must not be stifled.

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R. S. Peters’ Theory of Justification

R. S. Peters’ rejects the idea that educational judgments represent an autonomous domain of practical reasoning – the idea that actions and policies can be justified through appeal to a formal practical principle distinct from either morality or prudence.1 On the terms I offer his concept of education is not comprehensively composite either – he accepts the idea that valid educational judgments must refer, fundamentally, to specific criteria. Instead, Peters’ justification scheme runs along lines similar to what I have termed a nested concept of education. According to this view, any conception of education is fundamentally situated within a certain kind of practical reasoning. In Peters’ case, those actions and policies are educationally worthwhile that promote initiation into those forms of knowledge that make judgments of worthwhileness possible. Education is primarily nested within our practical reasoning about the good or ethical life, or, to put it differently, a publicly justified conception of educational value presupposes a theory of the good. The transcendental derivation of this practical principle is supposed to ensure that actions and policies that promote initiation into the good do not warrant educational aims that favor any one conception of the good over another. Initiation into theoretical activities is supposed to be necessary for anyone who reasons. I have argued, however, that this conception is unconvincing because of reasonable doubts about the necessity of theoretical forms of knowledge such as science and poetry for making judgments of the good life. Such a conception is biased toward various conceptions of the good that may exist in a multicultural community. However, I concluded that the more general procedural and communicative framework of justification that Peters works within holds greater promise and I made some suggestive points about what an account of education grounded within such a framework might look like. One of the key challenges has been to show how education could refer to standards acceptable within or reasonable

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for citizens of a pluralistic society. Accordingly, the model of justification used to inform such a concept of education must show how judgments that are the product of such a model are in fact generalizable across various forms of life. Nesting the justification of education within a procedural account of moralpractical reason is, in my view, the best way of achieving this. There are at least two key aspects of this justification scheme. First, how do we identify what is of obligatory educational worth among many morally permissible actions and policies? In other words, if educational worth is a type of moral worth, what moral grounds support educational worth specifically? What sets it apart from other types of moral worth? The second concern is more pressing: what if morality is not autonomous? If morality itself were not demonstrably autonomous, the justification scheme that informs a concept of education would quickly fall apart. Here is why: if moral judgments rest fundamentally on premises that are empirical or conditional, they cannot be valid and applicable for all persons because the contexts within which such judgments are made would be the decisive feature. As every situation is different, it would make no sense to talk about moral principles specific to education because it would be impossible to generalize across different cases. Educational worth conceived within such a conception of morality would be fundamentally a matter of context. To sum: if the publicity or shareability of the concept of education hinges on it being a moral concept, the conception of morality that informs the concept must in turn be generalizable. Accordingly, the next two chapters will focus on a model of justification that aims to establish the autonomy of the moral point of view. In this chapter I will focus primarily on R. S. Peters’ procedural theory of justification as one plausible means of establishing the autonomy of morality. This will be followed by a critique of Peters’ procedural theory through the help of Jürgen Habermas, who himself takes Peters’ theory as a starting point for his own procedural theory. Contre Peters, Habermas rightly shows that proceduralism entails an epistemic, not moral, principle of inclusion. The nature, scope and implications of this form of inclusion for moral justification are detailed in the chapter that follows.

Morality and Public Justification As we have seen, the moral justification of actions and policies becomes increasingly complex in pluralist societies. Depending on our cultural standpoint

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or historical tradition, practical reasoning about moral issues will differ. One plausible solution to this challenge is a model of public justification. When I say public justification, I mean that any valid moral principle must be worthy of recognition in a public setting. When I say public justification, I mean that educators, policy-makers, and the larger public are to understand that positions taken for or against actions or policies on moral grounds require justification through the reciprocal and public exchange of reasons. In other words, moral questions can be answered only within a public, practical discourse. On this view, practical discourse aims for an unforced (non-coerced) agreement between those concerned with the debate.2 This dovetails with the idea of morality in the narrow sense. However, before moving into a detailed discussion of what such a public discourse requires, a contemporary example will provide needed context. As I have already discussed, the issue of compulsory schooling in certain parts of Northern Canada is a matter of deep disagreement. In coastal Labrador, for example, many parents are in favor of withdrawing their children for weeks at a time in order to participate in the migratory Caribou hunt. The hunt is highly valued among most members of Innu communities. Young children often accompany their parents or extended families for such journeys. A clash between the values of mainstream culture and the more traditional culture of the Innu becomes clear in the judgments that teachers and parents make about the appropriateness of these extended absences from the school. Teachers, for example, may express frustration at what they see as Innu parents’ failure to meet their obligation to promote a healthy respect for formal schooling. The parents’ indulgence of their children’s desire to join the hunt stands as a failure to protect the child’s future opportunities and life-chances. Parents, on the other hand, see the state school system’s failure to adapt its policies to accommodate traditional practices as a failure to respect the Innu way of life. This disagreement reflects a controversy about the ends of education that has a clear moral dimension. Teachers have an obligation to support their students. Parents feel similar obligations to their children. The ends entailed by these shared obligations appear to conflict. And while each group may be willing to deliberate on the issue, relying on some pre-existing common consensus on values or standards will not suffice. The presumptive worth of formal schooling is not a generally shared value. Many Innu parents have an opposing consensus that makes it difficult to see how provision of schooling is a moral duty. Of course, the reasons Innu parents might give to teachers and administrators in defending their claim are not necessarily good reasons. Values of

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tradition, ancestry, and hunting are deeply entrenched in the world of many Innu and this makes the legitimacy of pulling children from formal schooling seem reasonable. However, a claim such as ‘participating in hunting caribou is what children ought to do’ does not take on the same intuitive sense of rightness or reasonableness for most teachers that it may for an Innu community. In this case, there is a clear dispute regarding the basic principles upon which the legitimacy of competing actions and policies is assessed. The values that appear to warrant reasons for or against actions and policies of moral concern are not always generalizable to other groups. The relevance of reasons exchanged in a practical discourse cannot always be warranted through appeal to shared or common values. This is where the procedural model of justification proffered by R. S. Peters comes into play. Procedural models eschew an appeal to shared values. Instead, they seek a common ground in those conditions that are necessary for public justification. On this view, appropriately conceived rules of public discourse provide the framework through which participants can arrive at a moral agreement. Such an approach is committed to respecting many different forms of life while identifying means through which these different forms of life can co-exist on terms of equal respect.

Procedural Theory and Moral Justification The appeal to public justification represents an important development in post-metaphysical moral epistemology. R. S. Peters’ Ethics and Education is an excellent example of one such development. Peters looks to various theories of justification in the history of modern moral theory and sees that all fail to account for one of two necessary requirements for the rational justification of moral principles. He refers to these requirements as the ‘autonomy’ and the ‘objectivity’ of moral principles. Some moral theories, such as naturalism, rely upon empirical generalizations that undermine the ‘autonomy of ethics’ from other forms of justification. Peters argues that ‘autonomy of ethics…is the claim that no moral judgment can be deduced from any set of premises which does not itself contain a moral judgment or principle’ (1966, p. 97). Moral theories that fail to do this end up as cases of the naturalistic fallacy. Other moral theories preserve the autonomy of moral-practical reason at the expense of its objectivity. Peters describes objectivity as the assumption that error is possible in moral matters and that moral rightness is independent of belief. To claim objectivity is to deny that the adoption of moral values is merely

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a matter of taste or preference (1966, p. 99). Some moral theories concede that morality is its own distinct domain, but are unable to account for the truth, rightness or objectivity of moral claims (D. H. Prichard (1912) would be one such example). Peters is interested in developing a theory of moral justification that preserves both the autonomy and objectivity of morality. If such a theory can hold autonomy and objectivity firmly in place, justified moral principles can be taken to be valid and applicable for all persons. However, Peters is well aware that such a theory cannot involve a return to foundationalism, especially where such foundations are based on substantive assumptions about what is good or right. There is always the possibility that one foundationalist theory of justification, even one that preserves moral autonomy and objectivity, can be replaced by another moral theory that purports to meet the same criteria of autonomy and objectivity but simply relies on different assumptions, presuppositions, or judgments – in other words, a different foundation. Foundationalist theories, therefore, typically shift the dispute from conflicting moral judgments to skepticism regarding the very foundational principles that were supposed to settle the conflict. Recall that these issues were introduced in Chapter 1 in the context of disagreement over practical principles. Therefore, even if we agreed that the moral domain is an autonomous one, and even if we admit the possible objectivity of moral judgments, the particular principles we appeal to in making an autonomous and objective moral argument must also be justified as objective and autonomous. Peters addresses this concern by offering a transcendental account of the necessary conditions for the use of practical reason: here, argument about what one ought or ought not to do unavoidably presupposes the public dimension of justification. Insofar as we engage in public discourse, we make further presuppositions: scientific discourse, for example, will entail presuppositions that are specific to it and must necessarily be presupposed by participants in order for that discourse to be intelligible (1966, p. 115). The principle of non-contradiction, for example, appears to be a necessary presupposition for any public discourse that aims for truth or rightness – if participants intentionally contradicted themselves, any such discourse oriented to the truth would be unintelligible. These presuppositions, if they are in fact necessary and unavoidable in the sense meant by Peters, could stand as valid principles that anyone participating in the discourse must adopt: ‘if it could be shown that certain principles are necessary for a form of discourse to have meaning, to be applied to or to have a point, then this would be a very strong argument for the justification of the principles’ (p. 115).

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Within the transcendental argument, Peters goes on to develop a principle of justification that simply states that anyone who asks the question ‘what ought I do?’ in practical reason presupposes that there are principles that can be used to distinguish between good and bad reasons for doing something – that is, reasons for treating one person differently than another, for example (p. 122). Peters is worth quoting at length on this point: The situation postulated is one in which any individual, possessed of a public language, asks the question ‘What ought I to do?’ There are alternatives open to him and he is asking for reasons for adopting one alternative rather than another. A person who uses the discourse of practical reason seriously is committed to choosing rather than plumping, the notion ‘ought’ being more or less equivalent to the notion of there being reasons for something. Basic, therefore, to the notion of acting with reason is the very formal principle of no distinctions without differences…[T]o use practical discourse seriously is to be committed to the search for such reasons…[W]ithout this presupposition the discourse would lack point. (p. 121)

Peters’ ‘principle of justice’ or ‘principle of justification’ very simply refers to ‘the principle that there should be principles’ (p. 123). The principle of justification eschews traditional foundationalism, but does not endorse infinite regress. The purported unavoidability and necessity of presupposing that reasons are relevant as a part of any intelligible practical discourse transcendentally ‘grounds’ the principle of justice from which all other subsidiary principles are derived. The principle of justice, for example, entails the further presupposition that there are additional criteria (that is, principles) that can be used to determine the relevance of competing reasons. Consequently, the necessary presupposition that there be principles for evaluating the epistemic force of reasons is supposed to absolve moral deliberation and justification of any charge of arbitrariness, ‘for it has been argued that it is a principle that must be accepted if practical reasoning is to have any point and application’ (p. 125). This form of argument should be familiar from Chapter 2. Recall that Peters transcendentally grounds the principle of worthwhileness on the claim that anyone who asks ‘what is worthwhile’ presupposes that there are reasons for and against some activities over others.

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From Public Practical Reason to Public Moral Reason Having demonstrated that anyone who asks ‘what ought I to do?’ is committed to public justification, all that remains is to determine the kinds of subsidiary principles that are necessary for the specific kind of ‘ought’ question being asked. Consider the question, ‘why ought I consider the interests of others in pursuing my own ends?’ Similar to the approach taken in the derivation of the worthwhileness principle, the answer is revealed through transcendental reflection upon the necessary presupposition entailed in asking such a question. First the publicity of the question is affirmed: ‘The answer is surely that consideration of the interest of others is a presupposition of the question, “Why do this rather than that?” This question…is a question of public discourse’ (p. 171). Once the publicity of the question has been established, one looks to the specific meaning of the question. Such an analysis reveals that even an irredeemably self-interested party engaged in a debate over interests must necessarily presuppose that everyone’s interests be considered in practical discourse. This is because anyone asking the public question of interests while excluding the interest-claims of others endorses his or her own exclusion: In entering into such a discourse any rational man must assume not only that there are worthwhile things to do but that he might want to engage in such worthwhile things. If he thought that, having discussed such matters with his fellows, his stake in such a worthwhile life was going to be completely ignored, it is difficult to conceive how he would ever take the step of engaging in such a public discussion. As a rational man he must see, too, that what applies to him applies to any other man engaging in such a discussion; for how could he think that he alone has any claims? (p. 171)

In other words, the very question of interests presupposes that the reasons underlying one’s own interests will be recognized and, insofar as the speaker is rational and capable of acting without contradiction, he must also grant the same recognition of reasons to others that are also participating in the discourse and engaged in the same kinds of presuppositions. On this basis, Peters claims to have justified a principle of consideration of interests (pp. 172–8). While the principle cannot decide the question of which interests ought to be recognized (for this is for the participants in the discourse to decide), it does stipulate that everybody has a moral right to participate in and make a contribution to the public determination of which interests ought to be recognized by all persons.

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By tracing out the presuppositions that anyone committed to the public justification of actions and policies must necessarily make, Peters claims to have established a universalistic, autonomous and objective framework for morality. Despite many perspectives on the good life, Peters can refer to practical presuppositions as necessary grounds for properly assessing the validity of any moral claim because such presuppositions are necessary and unavoidable for all who engage in practical deliberation. Furthermore, the public nature of justification means that these principles are constitutive of a framework for guiding practical deliberation across differing cultural or other such worldviews and where ‘these fundamental principles…are all of a procedural rather than a substantive character. They thus provide a procedural framework of principles within which substantive solutions can be sought to both moral and political problems’ (p. 299). Moral principles set out a procedure for assessing the epistemic force of moral reasons offered in discourse about moral issues. What they do not do is to decide for the participants in the discussion the answers to these questions in the way that moral foundationalism typically does.3 In a procedural model of justification, the participants are to be each convinced of the moral worth of a policy through the use of public reason. Compare this to a formal principle such as the categorical imperative, where the individual privately checks to see if his or her subjective maxim conforms to moral law as a test of moral worth. In the case between the Innu and the Labrador School System, Peters would likely argue that insofar that all participants wish to resolve the matter through the use of practical reason, principles such as fairness and liberty are necessary for moral debate to be at all possible. This is the impartial or neutral ground upon which the disputants can deliberate, even if their substantive values differ. We could imagine, for example, that the Innu may come to recognize that their own claims to an interest (such as cultural preservation) presuppose that the interests of children in that community ought to be considered as well. Children’s formative interests may extend beyond an interest in cultural preservation alone, and this might mean being more epistemically open about the substance of these interests. Similarly, the reasons policy-makers have for promoting school attendance are no longer properly understood to be self-evident assertions about the ‘goodness’ of formal schooling; rather, they represent moral claims about what is in the interests of the various individuals affected by the policy. On this view, the shared commitment to a genuine consideration of all concerned forms a bridge, albeit a very minimal one, between different forms of life. We can apply this to other educational contexts as well. Consider that the content of the UK’s National Curriculum has been

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premised on the idea that it is warranted by a common set of values, namely, well-being, human development and preparation for change (Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, 2011). Peters would likely also claim the legitimacy of such values as central public values for education rests on the extent to which and ways in which agreement on such values was arrived at through adherence to procedural principles of practical reason. Peters’ conception of practical discourse, should it sustain its claims about universality, autonomy and impartiality despite the existence of a plurality of forms of life, can serve as a framework for the rational justification of morally worthwhile actions or policies. As the principle of consideration of interests shows, for example, the interests of the children, parents and policy-makers must be given consideration in any case made for or against proposed polices. We have a moral duty to consider the interests of all persons as part of any public moral discourse. A morally worthwhile and valid policy jointly shared by the Innu, teachers and policy-makers could only be accepted after all such interests have been given due consideration.

On The Limits of a ‘Moralized’ Public Discourse Jürgen Habermas’ project of Discourse Morality has a number of similarities to Peters’ approach. Like Peters, Habermas seeks to develop a procedural model of justification by which participants in practical discourse could come to a rationally motivated agreement on a proposed moral norm (principle) or judgment. Habermas claims to identify the unavoidable and pragmatically necessary presuppositions that anyone who argues cogently must make in the course of justifying a moral norm or principle.4 His theory of Discourse Morality is developed through his engagement with a fictional ‘skeptic’ who acts as a kind of foil, challenging each step taken in the construction and justification of the procedure. The skeptic’s role is to challenge the procedure’s claims to universality, autonomy and objectivity. If the moral theory meets with the satisfaction of a demanding skeptical position, we can reasonably conclude that Discourse Morality can make good on its promise. Clearly, Habermas is dealing with challenges to moral autonomy and objectivity in a manner similar to Peters. Both philosophers understand that the shift away from tradition and foundationalism as an authoritative basis for moral principles has another side: the philosopher him- or herself faces the self-reflexive challenge of demonstrating

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how his or her own claims about autonomy and objectivity do not covertly endorse his or her own tradition or way of life.5 Consequently, Habermas claims that any universal discursive presupposition will have met two criteria. First, the discourse from which presuppositions are derived must be so general that they cannot be replaced by what he calls ‘functional equivalents’; such discourses can only be replaced by ‘discourses or competences’ of the same kind (1990a, p. 82). I take Habermas to mean that if we can answer the same types of question (for example, moral questions) under entirely different presuppositions, then the universality and impartiality of the presuppositions are called into question. If I can choose which presuppositions I make in a particular discourse, the choice of one set of presuppositions (as opposed to other, ‘equally useful’ presuppositions) can be read as an historically or culturally variable matter. If presuppositions are variable in this sense, then they cannot form the basis of an impartial procedure. How can we be mistaken in our identification of universal presuppositions? A simple example will help. I might claim that ‘others being present’ is a necessary and unavoidable presupposition of scientific discourse. But clearly this is not the case if by ‘others being present’ we mean that there are literally people in the room with you at the moment the discourse is being undertaken. Letter writing, journal articles, email and other forms of text can be contributions to scientific discourse. Therefore, while the presupposition can be made by specific individuals depending on their circumstances (a scientific conference), it is not a necessary one. It does not give meaning and point to scientific discourse. ‘Being present’, at least in the literal sense used here is not an irreplaceable presupposition of scientific discourse. Accordingly, Habermas argues that the domain to which our presuppositional analysis is applied must be clear – we must know what kind of discourse we are examining and we must be sure that the presuppositions identified are in fact unavoidable and necessary for that discourse. The second requirement issues directly from the first. The definition of any domain must not presume anything about the normative content of the discourse being analyzed: ‘the delineation of an object domain must not already prejudge the normative content of its own presuppositions, or one will be guilty of a petito principii that could have been avoided’ (1990a, p. 83). When identifying the presuppositions of moral discourse, for example, one cannot assume that they are moral presuppositions. When identifying the presuppositions necessary for scientific discourse one cannot assume that they represent scientific principles in their substance. Rather, they are the rules necessary for arriving at conclusions that are moral or scientific in substance. Such principles

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are proposed, argued and justified in the discourse. To do otherwise would beg the question because the procedure would be asserting substantive moral or scientific norms or conclusions before the deliberation on the worth of any proposed principle could begin.6 It is at this stage that Peters joins Habermas in the philosophical arena: R. S. Peters tries to avoid both pitfalls. He limits himself to practical discourses, i.e., to processes of reaching understanding designed to answer practical questions of the form of What ought I do? In restricting himself to these issues, Peters hopes to single out an order of discourses for which there are no substitutes and at the same time to avoid normative prejudgments in the demarcation of practical discourse.

(1990a, p. 84) Habermas illustrates the formal and pragmatic nature of Peters’ project by citing the following methodologically important passage by Peters: It is always possible to produce ad hominem arguments pointing out what any individual must actually presuppose in saying what he actually says. But these are bound to be very contingent, depending upon private idiosyncrasies, and would obviously be of little use in developing a general ethical theory. Of far more importance are arguments pointing to what any individual must presuppose in so far as he uses a public form of discourse in seriously discussing with others or with himself what he ought to do. In a similar way one might inquire into the presuppositions of using scientific discourse. These arguments would be concerned not with prying into individual idiosyncrasies but with probing public presuppositions. (Peters, 1966, p. 114; quoted in Habermas, 1990a, p. 84)

Clearly, Peters has methodological considerations in mind similar to those outlined by Habermas, and Habermas sees the symmetry between his analysis and that of Peters. Up until this point, Habermas’ and Peters’ analysis travel along the same rails. However, Habermas identifies two central problems in Peters’ account. Habermas labels the first objection as falling under the petito principii objection discussed previously: ‘[I]n the normative presuppositions of discourse Peters finds only the normative substance that he had previously put into his implicit definition of practical discourse. This objection could be raised against Peters’ semantic deduction of the principle of equal treatment’ (1990a, p. 84). In this short passage lies a complex (but important) objection. Peters essentially engages in a question-begging argument when, starting with the meaning

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of the sentence ‘What ought I to do?’ as a premise, he derives a substantive moral principle that is identical with the very meaning that he attributes to the question itself. In asking ‘What ought I do?’ the speaker postulates that ‘there are alternatives open to him and he is asking for reasons for adopting one alternative rather than another’ (1966, p. 121). Peters interprets the word ‘ought’ in this context as meaning ‘more or less equivalent to the notion of there being reasons for something’ (p. 121). Peters further interprets ‘ought’ to mean that there cannot be differences of treatment without good reasons, thus securing the principle of equal treatment. However, if we look at Peters’ argument more carefully we can find the question-begging to which Habermas alludes. First, the meaning of ‘ought’ is a premise used in Peters’ inference of a formal principle that states that we must justify differences in our treatment of persons on the basis of relevant reasons.7 Second, this principle is identical with the meaning that Peters attributes to the term ‘ought’ itself. Peters’ definition of the linguistic term ‘ought’ and the principle inferred from it are one and the same. This is a formal logical fallacy. This objection is not fatal. As Habermas himself notes, Peters can counter this objection by broadening the scope of the presuppositions themselves (1990a, p. 85). Were they to apply to public discourse in general, there would be no need to appeal to the meaning of the word ‘ought’ because argumentation as argumentation presupposes the epistemic force of reason-giving. In other words, it is not the use of the word ‘ought’ that entails a presupposition, but the demand for or act of justification in general. In fact, individuals can and do debate normative questions without ever having to use the phrase ‘what ought I do?’ It is the practice of argumentation, not the particular language used in any one moment of argumentation, that involves a presupposition. At this more general level of analysis we see that any argument against the procedural theory itself relies on these same argumentative presuppositions.8 Habermas cites Peters as implicitly making use of this counter-objection from time to time, as in the case of his justification of a moral principle of liberty: The argument, however, need not be based simply on the manifest interest of anyone who seriously asks the question ‘what ought I to do?’ For the principle of liberty, at least in the sphere of opinion, is also surely a general presupposition of this form of discourse into which any rational being is initiated when he laboriously learns to reason. In matters where reason is paramount it is argument rather than force of inner illumination that is decisive. The conditions of argument include letting any rational being contribute to a public discussion.

(1966, p. 181)

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This leads directly to Habermas’ second objection, which essentially runs as follows: argumentative presuppositions may be a necessary condition for public discourse, but these are not self-evidently moral in nature. I may recognize that argumentation entails epistemic commitments, but nothing in these commitments requires that I understand and experience them as a moral obligation.9 I might presuppose that a person’s interests, like my own, represent relevant reasons in the case for or against the truth or rightness of an action or policy, but it does not follow that I am committed, at a phenomenological level, to recognizing those interests as a matter of moral respect in contexts outside of moral deliberation. In line with the public and procedural model of justification being proffered, individuals need to be convinced on the basis of moral arguments that the normative content of argumentative presuppositions is worthy of recognition as a moral imperative. Consider: in leaping, we might presuppose the norm that we should look before we leap. When we leap we are leaping toward something and looking at what we are leaping toward allows us to do the leaping properly. Assume the presupposition holds. Even if it does, other arguments need to be made to show why looking is a moral duty (one argument could be that blindly leaping may result in us severely injuring others and ourselves in landing). Similarly, we cannot move directly from presuppositions to duties: ‘basic norms of law and morality fall outside the jurisdiction of moral theory; they must be viewed as substantive principles to be justified in practical discourses’ (Habermas, 1990a, p. 86). Peters himself is committed to the procedural and epistemic construal of moral justification insofar as he claims that justification is a public practice conducted on the basis of public reasons. Such a view tells us that it is not within the aegis of one person alone to dictate the moral norms that we ought to abide by. When Peters does in fact do such a thing, he is contradicting his own procedural model of justification. In this respect, his ‘moralized’ conception of public justification is self-defeating.10

Proceduralism and the Concept of Education Habermas identifies a third, related problem with Peters’ analysis, this one centered on the application of his procedural theory to educational matters. On Habermas’ account, Peters incorrectly derives ‘basic [moral] norms’ and then ‘offers some merely ad hoc reflections’ on the basis of such norms – namely, reflections about the moral particulars of education (1990a, p. 84). Habermas

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has little or nothing to say about education here, but he is concerned with the apparent discordance between Peters’ claims about the publicity condition of justification, on the one hand, and his substantive moral assumptions about education evinced through in his own analysis. While Habermas is right in identifying the shortcomings of Peters’ procedural approach – rules of argumentation are not self-evidently moral – I think that Habermas is prematurely dismissive of the rationale behind Peters’ analysis of education. Habermas’ primary concern seems to be that Peters makes moral claims that contradict the terms of his own procedural model. He would likely articulate his concerns in the following manner: Peters’ procedure is undermined once he prescribes basic moral norms in advance of his own conception of an unrestricted, public practical discourse – once our Innu and policy-maker participants are dictated what basic moral principles they are committed to from the very beginning of the debate, the possibilities for discussion, new information, and the discovery of formerly neglected interests become greatly constrained.11 The ad hoc derivation of educational judgments made by Peters in the latter part of Ethics and Education are exemplary of this error. If moral justification is public and procedural in the sense meant by Peters – open to all persons, inclusive of all relevant information, and so on – why make such ad hoc judgments in the first place? However, I interpret Peters’ analysis here as a struggle with the intuition that there is much more to be said about the relationship between the moral point of view and educational processes. As I have previously argued, it seems clear that Peters saw moral principles as primarily ‘external’ to education in the sense that basic moral principles are typically applied to educational contexts as they can in any context. They do not recommend specific educationally worthwhile policies – that is a role for ethical-practical reasoning about the good life. Yet, he seems to want to make those same general moral principles more determinate in the kind of deliberative guidance they offer educators in their moral thinking. For example, his detailed reflections on the role of punishment in education are situated within his analysis of the procedural moral principle of freedom. I speculate that Peters would be (rightly) unconvinced that general moral principles by themselves are refined enough to sufficiently address the complexity of moral issues in education. Hence his need to continually refine his ‘principle of justice’ with respect to specific questions of children’s interests, discipline, and educational liberty. Here, Peters shows how procedural moral principles can be made to take into consideration morally special characteristics of educational settings, reflected in so-called ad hoc reflections. It is almost as if,

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having separated moral questions from educational questions, he then struggles to bring them back together again through the rigorous application of such principles to educational contexts. This reflects back on the idea, broached in the introduction, that moral theory is often framed from the standpoint of socialized persons with fully formed beliefs, preferences and interests but who find themselves seeking to establish some means of cooperating with or living reasonably among one another. As a consequence, educational questions are a kind of subsidiary matter or side concern to the full justification of moral principles and where persons who have not fully acquired a capacity to reason about actions, values and preferences represent a social problem to be addressed that is distal from the core concerns of any one moral or political theory. I read Peters’ ‘ad hoc’ reflections, to which Habermas refers, as an attempt to challenge this kind of hegemony in moral and political theory. It seems that Peters may have been amenable to a concept of education nested in moral-practical reason. Yet, we can see why Habermas’ refinement of Peters’ approach can prove more fruitful in this respect: any procedure dedicated to the moral justification of educationally worthwhile actions or policies must be consistent with its own procedural rules. Accordingly, a nested concept of education may reflect or represent moral duties that are educationally meaningful, but what these specific moral duties are in substance is a matter of public moral discourse alone. But what kind of moral actions and policies would fall under this concept? And what would make them educationally relevant? How could they vindicate Peters’ intuitions about the importance of the inclusion of educational values into a larger theory of morality? We can begin with a fairly straightforward observation. If moral principles must be publicly justified, individuals must learn to be able to participate in public deliberation. This means exploring the presuppositions of practical reason with an eye to their educational implications. Practical discourse, argumentation and reason-giving are demanding epistemic tasks, tasks that ‘developing centers of consciousness’ need to be initiated into. For Peters, having the capacity to engage in practical discourse is to have been socialized into a form of life to which all have a right to participate in. To have the concept of a person, for example, ‘is to see an individual as an object of respect in a form of life which is conducted on the basis of those [procedural] principles which are presuppositions of the use of practical reason’ (p. 215). We might find Peters’ derivation of such a moral framework somewhat premature given our prior analysis of argumentative discourse – we cannot

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simply assert that we have a moral obligation to socialize people into these basic competencies and skills. However, his larger point is worth considering – that practical discourse is something that we have to be initiated into, and if we fail to provide equal opportunities for initiation into that discourse, public justification fails. This minimal (but no less demanding) obligation may be a starting point for establishing the criteria of educational processes. In order to illustrate what such an argument could look like, I will continue with the theme of initiation into practical reason that I began at the end of the previous chapter. Consider, for example, that on the procedural model offered by Peters, anyone who argues for an action or policy that would lead to the exclusion of future persons from participating in public discourse is engaged in a contradiction. Imagine if I were to argue that for the sake of a more efficient school system, we ignore the difficult project of teaching children the communicative skills they need for rational deliberation. ‘They’ll probably figure it out themselves,’ so the argument might go. This is a contradiction: the act of claiming X entails the presupposition that I myself have received the necessary and sufficient communicative socialization required to claim X competently. This competency, after all, is not given but acquired (learned?) through a more or less successful and ongoing process of socialization. Yet my argument claims that one can rightly exclude others by denying the kind of socialization such persons will need in order to take part in the same discourse. The practice of argumentation presupposes the inclusion of everyone (as well as myself), but the content of my argument calls for the exclusion of some others (as well as myself) – a clear contradiction. This demonstrates that argumentation entails the epistemic procedural principle that we cannot argue for the systematic exclusion of others from public discourse – and this includes exclusion on the basis of a denial of the cultural, social, or linguistic capital necessary for participation. Clearly, such a principle would have relevance for the justification of educational policy. The possibility that we first need to be initiated into practical reason before we can contribute to discourse potentially expands the scope of our epistemic/ argumentative rights and duties. On the account of initiation inspired by the reconstruction of the work of R. S. Peters in Chapter 1, a communicative account of practical reason and our initiation into it directly entails moral rights and duties of distinctly educational relevance. This is a moral interpretation of rules of discourse. However, Habermas’ critique shows that we cannot assume the justificatory leap from a procedural account of practical reasoning to educationally meaningful moral rights and duties. The relationship between

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morality, proceduralism and education is more complex than this. The procedural principle that all are included in a practical discourse includes our ensuring that people are able to practically reason. If they cannot practically reason, participants cannot arrive at a reasoned agreement on norms of action. They cannot come to know what they ought to do. On this account, the inclusive aspect of initiation into practical reasoning is an epistemic duty, not a moral duty. Peters was right to emphasize the communicative and public character of practical reasoning. He was also moving in the right direction in his general dissatisfaction with the ability of basic moral principles to sufficiently inform our judgments in educational contexts. However, his subsequent attempt to refine such moral principles to make them more informative and determinate in educational contexts undermines the larger procedural account for the reasons expressed in Habermas’ critique. On the Habermasian account, practical presuppositions reflect those epistemic conditions that are necessary for the justification of moral rights and duties. The distinction between epistemic conditions and moral duties has only been expressed through more or less indirect references to Habermas’ preferred construal of procedural ethics. The next chapter will examine Habermas’ account and the relationship between epistemic rules and moral justification in more detail. Once this distinction has been clarified, we can return to proceduralism and its implications for the moral value of education.

Notes 1 One example of a philosophy of education that does appear to follow such a line of argument is developed by John Wilson. In his Preface to Philosophy of Education he develops a transcendental argument for a principle of learning as a universal warrant for context-transcendent justification of educational practice, ‘simply because it is hardly possible when considering the upbringing of people or rational creatures not to be concerned with learning and the objectives of learning’ (1979, p. 53) 2 Clearly, there are parallels to be drawn here between John Rawls’ account of public practical reason and the conception of practical reason I proffer. However, Rawls oversteps the problem of moral justification by bracketing the validity or truthdimension of moral claims that different cultural groups make. He does this by reducing such claims to the expression of comprehensive doctrines that can, at best, overlap. This is different from a public discourse aimed at truth or moral rightness

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and in contrast to the account I am offered suggests a much diminished or ‘thin’ degree of public understanding of educational value. 3 Although I think that this concern about the directive aspect of moral principles can at times be overstated, particularly with respect to Kant. Kant, in his own Enlightenment essay (1996), sees simple rule-following as a sign of immaturity in our rational development. See also Westphal (2009). 4 The details of Discourse Morality, which I will argue stands as an improvement over Peters’ model, will be discussed further in the next chapter. In this chapter I am more interested in Habermas’ critique of Peters. 5 As Peters observes, ‘[A] “moral community”, by definition, has no authority structure, no built-in appeal to consensus. By this is meant that the validity of moral rules is not determined by appeals to authority or to majority agreement as are the rules of states or clubs’ (1966, p. 226). 6 This is not by itself an uncontroversial objection. Karl-Otto Apel claims that presuppositions of communication serve as the ‘ultimate justification’ of moral principles. See Apel (1996) and Habermas (2008). Like Peters, Apel regards communicative presuppositions as foundational in the sense that one can derive basic norms such as the moral duty of truthfulness directly from such presuppositions. Habermas, on the other hand, thinks that these rules only confer epistemic obligations that are necessary if we wish to arrive at a rationally motivated agreement. 7 Peters’ assigned definition of ‘oughtness’ is an interpretation of the meaning of the question ‘what ought I do?’ This is different from the identification of presuppositions that we necessarily presuppose for practical discourse to be intelligible. The former is a matter of interpretation that can be debated, while the latter is not. 8 This also applies to Peters’ ethical principle of worthwhileness. When I am confronted with different activities amongst which I can choose, I presuppose that there are good reasons for choosing one way or the other. What is contentious here is the idea that initiation into theoretical forms of knowledge makes the rational assessment of different choices possible. 9 The same objection is put to Karl-Otto Apel, and the similarities are worth noting: ‘[Apel] interprets the binding force of the normative content of these presuppositions of argumentation directly in a strong, deontologically binding sense and thinks he can derive basic norms, such as the duty of equal treatment or the precept of truthfulness, directly from the reflexive confirmation of this content…[I] t is far from obvious that rules that are constitutive of the practice of argumentation as such, and hence are unavoidable within discourses, also remain binding for regulative action outside of this improbable practice’ (Habermas, 2008, p. 83). 10 Habermas’ alternative is to begin by identifying the epistemic rules of argumentation immanent to argumentation itself, and, insofar as these rules are made explicit,

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formulated in terms of a procedure for use in settling moral questions (1990a, p. 86). The procedure is not itself substantively moral, but agreements under these conditions make a valid claim to moral rightness. Habermas formulates his procedural principle of moral justification as follows: ‘A norm is valid when the foreseeable consequences and side effects of its general observance for the interests and value orientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion’ (Habermas, 1998b, p. 42). Habermas’ principle of justification is detailed in the next chapter. 11 There is also the more philosophically complex issue of will formation. If the participants are simply directed to act in accordance to moral principles of procedure without ever having had the opportunity to be convinced of the validity of principles through the force of reasons then they are not really acting out of a sense of moral principle. They have not bound their will to the principles, rather, they are simply following them because that is what they have been told to do. Therefore, it should follow that any agreement that was the outcome of such an anaemic procedure would also lack rational force among those same participants.

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Jürgen Habermas’ Discourse Morality Complex Proceduralism In the previous chapter, R. S. Peters’ procedural ethics was critically assessed in terms of securing the autonomy and objectivity of the moral domain. One of the central features of this account emphasizes argumentation as a ‘moralized’ public practice, where basic moral principles set out a framework of justification. While the particulars of Peters’ transcendental argument are complex, the core idea is really quite simple: anyone who participates in the discourse of public practical reasoning has a moral duty to respect the equal participation of all others in that same discourse. Public practical reason is on these grounds conceived of as a common human practice having universal moral value. This leads to the educational dimension of the argument: if we must be committed to the inclusion of all persons in practical discourse as a matter of moral principle, initiation into practical reason is an educational imperative or duty having moral worth. Accordingly, a basic moral (and educational) principle of initiation forms an integral part of any procedural ethics. Such a principle could serve as an important bridge between practical reason, moral value and educational value. An appropriately conceived procedure of justification should make it possible for participants to agree on a norm because of the convincing force of reasons. Principles of procedure warrant the value or worth of reasons submitted in any public discourse in the justification of such norms and is therefore central to public understanding. Principles like the initiation principle help participants arrive at reasonable agreement regarding norms relevant to public understanding in the educational domain. However, if moral principles of procedure determine the relevance and justifiability of reasons offered in discourse it is crucial that no procedural principle be included that arbitrarily privilege various reasons or classes of reasons. This methodological stricture can also be read in a positive sense: all procedural principles necessary for determining the relevance and justifiability

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of reasons must form part of the discourse. Otherwise, reasons that should be warranted as relevant to the discussion will be arbitrarily discounted (or never recognized as reasons to begin with) because they are not supported by any principle comprising the procedure. Can the principle of initiation contribute in this positive sense? This seems to be the case because, unlike other principles, the principle of initiation makes salient the potential interests of those who are not yet in a position to represent their own interests in practical discourse. If participants are unaware of such a principle, it follows that they will be unaware of the class of reasons warranted by the principle i.e. reasons that represent the developmental or educational interests of those that have not acquired the competencies necessary for rational discourse. Without the principle of initiation Peters’ procedure is limited to the perspective of fully socialized moral agents deliberating on the ad hoc relevance and value of the educational domain for their own interests as opposed to such domain being included among other basic themes of public moral understanding. Here is why: if participants are to test their deliberations against a rational reconstruction of the procedure they should be explicitly aware of all the deliberative commitments entailed by that procedure. Moral discourse can only address morally salient or relevant features of a situation that we recognize as morally salient. Valid rules of deliberation work to ensure that all such basic moral considerations are made clear. What I am claiming here is that if the principle of initiation is a necessary and distinct contribution to the moral procedure, it is so because it makes explicit a certain set of morally salient features that would otherwise be overlooked. On this view, Peters’ procedural model, combined with his remarks about initiation, can offer an expanded set of morally salient considerations. Among our other basic moral principles is the rule that norms and policies that undermine one’s ability to participate in practical discourse are morally impermissible. This basic rule makes morally salient the idea that a person’s ability to participate as a full member in public discourse is a necessary condition for any moral deliberation. How does moral salience work in such an account? The concept of moral salience as used here is indebted to Barbara Herman (1993). For Herman, ‘rules of moral salience’ involve the acquisition of a basic competency that tips us off to when moral judgment is required. She uses Kant’s well-known example of the shopkeeper to illustrate this: Kant’s example is designed to illustrate our moral thinking and how we should go about judging. However, the example presupposes that we recognize that the situation calls for moral judgment in

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the first place. The saving of a loved one and the precept that stealing is wrong are morally salient features of the situation that flag a need for judgment. Respecting the property of others is derived from a class of interests that ought to inform practical reasoning at a fundamental level and not as a side concern or ad hoc issue. If we did not have such a sense of moral salience we would not be able to recognize the moral dilemma in the first place (pp. 78–82). A concept of education serving as a basic feature of moral understanding that embodies such deliberative presumptions is a potentially useful one. Here the principle of initiation is exemplary of the various dimensions of education and moral life that such a concept makes salient to us. But is such an understanding really necessary? On the surface, the impermissibility of violating the principle of initiation seems parasitic on the Kantian principle of respect for persons – undermining the development of rational autonomy is simply a special case of undermining the exercise of practical reasoning generally. No principle of initiation is necessary for such a judgment. If this is in fact the case, the principle of initiation, and perhaps other ‘rules of moral salience’, are at most psychological or subjective features of our moral understanding – heuristic devices that we acquire through our moral education. A general or overarching moral principle such as the principle of respect is necessary for identifying many questions of moral permissibility. However, this is really only so in the sense of providing a basic moral sensibility with respect to our actions to begin with. The concept of respect for humanity, however, does not elucidate any particular understanding about the justifiability of our actions other than in the most general sense. After all, Kant’s own respect for humanity formula, while describing the general moral attitude we should have toward others, does not by itself explain the justificatory conditions for what makes a proposed maxim rational or irrational. For example, if a teacher habitually lied to her students in order to coerce them into doing her bidding, we can say that the teacher was wrong to take her own interests as a sufficient reason to deceive. She was demonstrating a lack of consideration for the students in her class and by extension a lack of respect for their humanity as an end in itself. But the assessment that her judgment was disrespectful on these general terms alone does not necessarily tell us what makes it wrong in any comprehensive justificatory sense. The assessment may tell us about the quality of her moral sensibility (which is poor), or it may tell us about her relationship with her students (she sees them simply as means). But such an explanation does not disclose the full meaning of the act at the level of justification. (Note that in Kant’s case this work is done by the Categorical Imperative).

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Imagine how the case would change if the principle of initiation were valid and operative. Here what makes the action wrong on a fundamental justificatory level is that in our interactions with developing persons there is the moral requirement that we mean what we say and that our own self-interest is not a sufficient reason to do otherwise. While it is true that meaning what we say is a basic moral requirement in our interactions with all persons, failure to do so in the case of teaching is wrong because it undermines initiation into practical discourse. The teacher is excluding members of humanity from participation in their own humanity. This initiation principle, as I will argue, covers more cases and is able to more comprehensively protect the interests of learners than a basic principle of non-deception. The idea of incorporating the interests of more vulnerable members of the moral community into the basic structure of moral theory suggests two different models of moral assessment that seem to be in play. The first model I have argued is ‘generic’ and represents a bias in much liberal moral theory. This model presumes that the moral community is primarily concerned, at both an epistemic and ontological level, with well-ordered actions between mature consociates with clearly defined intentions, interests or preferences. Such a perspective is seen to represent the primary remit of moral theory (think, for example, of social contract theory where the moral and political arrangements are formulated from the perspective of whatever is defined as a fully rational individual). In the context of procedural moral theory, for example, the deliberation on, justification of and contribution to public moral understanding is generated from the perspective of citizens who have acquired an ability to engage in practical discourse and who have acquired relatively stable interests, desires and preferences. In an empirical sense this is unavoidable – the justification of principles can only be undertaken by those capable of justification. However, the generic model carries this fact one step further: that the scope of application of our moral understanding is primarily concerned with the interests of citizens who have acquired an ability to engage in practical discourse. It confuses the empirical fact that many of our moral judgments are made in the context of fully mature deliberators with the idea that our moral understanding in contexts of vulnerability such as education simply require slight modification in light of such vulnerabilities when they in fact represent a distinct set of interests. For example, the only real difference here in deceiving children versus adults on the generic view is that they are more easily deceived and we should therefore be especially careful in our dealing with them. Here, the case of children or other developmentally vulnerable persons are sufficiently

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protected so long as basic principles are applied in a sufficiently prudent way. The protection of the vulnerable is simply grounded in an empirical distinction as opposed to being a matter of principled reasons. The alternative model I have been developing accounts for the necessity of principles and norms of justification that inform meaningful judgments about distinct forms of value that do not necessarily presume such a deliberative priority. In the context of a procedural moral theory this is suggestive of a kind of ‘complex proceduralism’ where procedural principles reflect the values and interests of persons of equal moral standing but who may be unable to participate on equal terms in public deliberation. Complex proceduralism aims to correct the generic bias of moral theory, not simply as a fact about who can participate in public reason, but in terms of what moral norms and principles mean in terms of their nature, scope and applicability. We can sharpen the distinction between generic and complex proceduralism by showing how the principle of initiation can account for moral relationships that obtain inside of educational contexts in a way that moral principles generated from the perspective of equally capable and mature consociates cannot. For example, the principle of initiation identifies and makes salient a class of reasons that, even if excusing conditions were present that made lying permissible in situation X, would remain impermissible in situation Y because of these additional reasons. Consider: it could plausibly be said that the end of promoting another person’s interests could, in some cases, be an excusing condition that makes lying to that person permissible. The ‘white lie’ may be one example. Lying is generally wrong because it impairs the exercise of all affected person’s practical reason. It is an attack on their rational autonomy and therefore their personhood. But a white lie may be excusable, especially if the person lied to would have ordinarily chosen X, but could not because certain limitations on his exercise of practical reason will not allow it. I cannot rationally choose to be surprised by my birthday, for example. The choosing contradicts the surprise at the level of conception. Excusing conditions for lying obtain when the case to which the norm is typically applied varies enough such that other considerations not encompassed by the norm are relevant to the case. The surprise party is sufficiently atypical from most cases of deception so that the deception may be morally permissible under the circumstances. What if in a particular case excusing conditions that ordinarily applied in a generic sense obtained in the educational relationship? Note that under the generic conception of moral theory no exclusionary reasons apply that could

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override such excusing conditions. If the excusing conditions apply to fully mature consociates, they should also apply to children or other vulnerable persons unless some rationale is offered explaining why such persons represent a ‘special case’. The ‘special case’ approach suggests that the interests and values of persons represent an atypical variant or side concern to the rational structure of the moral community. They may simply involve a more rigorous application of existing principles such that the excusing conditions do not have sufficient rational weight. Note that no principled or meaningful articulation of education is operative, here. The principle of initiation, on the other hand, would obviate such prima facie excusing conditions and require the teacher, at the least, to consider a different class of reasons for not lying to children (reasons warranted by a putative duty to initiate persons into practical discourse). These reasons are not based on contingent empirical distinctions but belong to the basic normative structure of moral understanding and require excusing conditions strong enough to trump the initiation principle also (for example, the students are in imminent danger and a lie is the only means of getting them out of that danger). I’m not suggesting that children should never experience a surprise party, but that the teacher is in a different moral relation where he or she must reflect upon the educational implications of what he or she does to a degree of rigor not always present in other relationships. The principle of initiation emphasizes, over and against the generic interactions implied by moral theory, the moral commitment that educational processes make to the initiation of persons into practical discourse. Such considerations are basic to moral reasoning in education and ensure that such considerations have a hold in our comprehensive moral understanding generally and not simply in institutional settings that we tend to associate with vulnerability, such as in the school. So, to return to an example from Chapter 1, if I am responsible for training adult employees at my place of work and I have reason to believe that one of the trainees is susceptible to indoctrination I have an obligation to act in ways that protect against such an outcome. Recognizing additional classes of reasons as products of the application of moral principles that directly inform permissibility and obligation in learning contexts is important because such reasons reflect our public moral understanding of education in a way that more general principles may not. Education typically involves one person acting with the intention of affecting or changing another person. In this sense, education is very obviously situated within the moral domain. And so the reasons guiding such actions must have a clear basis. Reasons warranted by the principle

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of initiation represent morally salient considerations that can inform the nature and scope of education. A principle of initiation would require that developing persons experience a quality of socialization and communication that enables them to become full participants in discourse. A more general principle of ‘do not deceive’ does not entail such positive requirements because a principle of truthfulness addresses a person’s right to be able to make their own judgments on the basis of good reasons. While the principle of truthfulness or non-deception is certainly applicable to classroom contexts as well as any other context, it does not quite illuminate the educationally meaningful moral reasons why non-deception is a moral requirement in our interactions with developing persons. In being applied to a domain moral principles must be further articulated in their meaning. On this view, complex proceduralism is a requirement for a full account of moral justification as applied to educational practice or policy. As appealing and as useful as Peters’ model is in establishing complex proceduralism and as instructive as a moral principle of initiation might be in illustrating how complex proceduralism might work, the actual justification of such principles remains to be shown. At the end of the previous chapter we saw how Habermas’ critique of R. S. Peters’ procedural theory argued that rules of public discourse are fundamentally epistemic, not moral. To accept the principle of initiation as a moral principle on the grounds offered so far would undermine the requirements of the very procedural model that supports the principle. While an expanded account of a moralized public discourse is not a viable direction to go, however, an expanded account of epistemic rules of discourse remains a possibility. In the remainder of the chapter I will consider the epistemic interpretation of procedural ethics in more detail and examine the implications of this interpretation for complex proceduralism and educational principles. First, I clarify the connection between public morality and public understanding of educational value. Second, I provide an account of Habermas’ project of Discourse Theory of Morality, which offers an appropriately postmetaphysical construction of the autonomy and objectivity of moral rightness. An essential aspect of the procedure is identifying the conditions under which public reasons can be ‘shareable’ across a variety of cultural contexts, or as Habermas terms such reasons, ‘epistemic reasons’. Habermas’ work is broad and complex, and while there are many facets worth exploring in greater detail the ‘shareability’ of reasons will serve as the central focus of my interpretation. Finally, I conclude that while Habermas’ account of moral justification places

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the right emphasis on the epistemic dimension of procedural justification, the theory nonetheless represents a generic account of moral life and requires reassessment with educational interests in view in order to show how such a procedure can be used by citizens to arrive at public understanding of educational values, norms and principles.

Public Morality Reconsidered Can a public or shareable concept of education hinge on it having a principled moral dimension? As I have argued, the response to this in part turns on moral justification – if the concept of education is nested within moral-practical reason education must necessarily be more than a pragmatic process aimed at bringing about a particular state of affairs. A public moral claim means more than what is ‘good for me’ or ‘good for us’ and the same must hold for a concept of education viewed from the perspective of the moral point of view. The concept of education must come to be at least partially constituted and regulated by some determinate set of moral obligations reflective of public understanding of its value. I have so far argued that this ‘nested’ form of educational value can best be expressed through a philosophical examination of the necessary conditions of possibility for public justification. I have been using the phrase ‘public justification’ because such value is categorical and purports to be valid and applicable to all persons.1 A publicly justified morality can be understood in terms of what we have up until now been calling ‘public morality’, or morality in the narrow sense, as developed by Haydon (1999). The norms of public morality are distinguishable from non-generalizable norms or principles – for example, norms of politeness. Conventions of politeness are typically different from the kind of public, justice-orientated moral point of view that we are concerned with – these other normativities can be distinguished from the moral point of view in the sense that they are local or ‘private’ conceptions that cannot be publicly justified and generalized.2 Recall from Chapter 2 that public morality corresponds to what Habermas terms ‘morality’ as opposed to ‘ethics’. The moral assessment of the educational worth of an action, policy or norm is complicated by the fact that, depending on our cultural context or the historical tradition one is situated within, our conception of what education is will differ, and so our public reasoning about education will also differ even if we agree that these issues are a matter of public interest.

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Consider that I have so far argued that such questions are best characterized as questions of moral-practical reason. It was thought that philosophy could help facilitate moral-practical reasoning by identifying its limits, standards and applicability. Kantian ethics, for example, sought to ground practical reason in the form of a moral law where we consider our actions in light of a general prohibition against treating others simply as means to an end. However, such traditions of philosophical thought are today viewed with much skepticism; they may turn out to represent endorsements of situated worldviews that privilege certain interpretations of what stands as ‘moral goodness’. Kantian views are commonly charged with endorsing certain culturally situated conceptions of autonomy and rational choice, for example. On this view, even philosophical accounts of practical reasoning can differ according to culture or tradition. Public justification aims to account for these differences without setting aside the possibility that agreement is possible among them. As Graham Haydon rightly puts it, such questions must be addressed in public space, not because traditions or worldviews are unjustifiable, but because such perspectives by themselves cannot be used to justify decisions on behalf of the entire community: [A] pluralist society is characterized by the existence of competing traditions of thought and practice; and partly because of this…problems arise in society which, even if they could be settled through the resources of a particular tradition, cannot be settled for society in that way because of the plurality of traditions. (1986, p. 98)

The appeal to moral agreement via public justification is not unproblematic. Public claims to moral rightness cannot be justified to others on appeal to metaphysical views, for example. The idea that there is a metaphysical order of reasons or values existing outside ourselves and that can be appealed to in justifying our action to others understandably does not hold up in democratic communities. Under post-metaphysical conditions, the justification of rightness claims on the basis of a transcendent order of value is epistemically mistaken insofar as moral justification is aimed at a public consisting of all persons. Different people from different communities and traditions will each have different conceptions of the sources of moral authority, and their self-understanding of the nature and meaning of moral judgments on issues of public concern (such as education) will subsequently differ.

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In the remainder of this chapter, I will assess Jürgen Habermas’ Theory of Discourse Morality as a program of moral justification that can address these epistemic challenges. Like R. S. Peters, Habermas is interested in establishing the necessary conditions that must hold for an obligatory norm or moral principle to be valid and applicable to all persons. Also like Peters, this project is developed through appeal to a procedural model of practical reason and justification. Unlike Peters, however, Habermas’ proceduralism is not founded on substantive moral rules. Rather, his procedural account is founded on rules considered as epistemic conditions that must obtain for any moral norm or principle to be justified. The focus is not on unavoidable moral principles that can provide a ‘foundation’ for moral reasoning, but on those conditions under which a reason offered in a practical discourse could serve as or contribute to a generalizable or ‘shareable’ reason that others could accept.3 We can state the difference in another way: for Peters participants are a priori committed to a shared and substantive moral framework through the very act of discourse; Habermas’ participants are committed to a shared investigative or rightnessseeking framework.

Discourse Morality and Dialogical Validity Discourse Morality is a grounding of the moral point of view in the communicative structures of rational discourse (Habermas, 1993a, p. 1). It involves a procedure by which individuals can arrive at a rationally motivated and collective agreement regarding moral norms. Individuals can justifiably appeal to such a procedure because it is a philosophical reconstruction of an implicit form of public and rational discourse operative for all persons. Discourse Morality is one in a long line of cognitivist moral theories that attempt to reconstruct the conditions that must obtain for impartial judgments of moral rightness (Habermas, 1990a, p. 43). Discourse Morality directly addresses the problem of how participants in public discourse can reach agreement under post-metaphysical justificatory conditions. Recall that by ‘post-metaphysical conditions’ I mean conditions under which there is no shared or common tradition to ground public morality in an impartial manner: ‘the discourse principle provides an answer to the predicament in which the members of any moral community find themselves when, in making a transition to a modern, pluralistic society, they find themselves faced with the dilemma that though they still argue with reasons

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about moral judgments and beliefs, their substantive background consensus on the underlying moral norms has been shattered’ (1998b, p. 39). Discourse Morality’s solution is to identify rules of discourse that supply the ‘neutral ground’ through which proposed norms can be tested for their validity. These rules are therefore able to ‘stand in’ as a shared framework of justification. What is interesting about this approach is that it is less rigorist than foundational models such as Kant’s framework, in which a proposed action, policy, or moral norm must conform to the exacting criteria of the CI test. For Kant, the CI principle thoroughly and completely determines moral permissibility. As long as each person adheres to common laws of reason, they will arrive at the same answer in regards to the permissibility of a maxim. (Though the CI in fairness does not itself generate moral obligations or duties – practical agents propose the maxims that are then subject to the test. Recent Kant scholarship has emphasized that the CI test is not as formalistic as commonly held (see Lowden, 2000; Wood, 1999; Johnston, 2006; Roth, 2011; Moran, 2009). However, in a procedural model there is no ‘catch-all’ test or principle used as a criterion of moral assessment. The criteria, to use the term loosely, are the individuals in the discourse. Their collective moral perspective decides if a proposed action or policy is convincing. Habermas’ maintains that Kant’s test is monological, internal and solitary while his is dialogical, public and collective. So while we can imagine how a discourse around a particular moral issue might go in the absence of others, for Habermas such an imagining cannot replace real discourses (1998b, p. 65). Otherwise we would be engaged in a yet another monological test with the only superficial difference being that we imaginatively project what we think others would reasonably argue as opposed to what they could rationally will. Unlike the CI test, individuals in discourse do not appeal to set criterion by which the proposed action or policy can be gauged and which can stand-in for the different perspectives of those affected by the general observance of that norm.4 While all persons employ practical reason in some form, our interests and worldviews often differ such that reasoning by any individual alone is insufficient to accommodate the distinct interests and perspectives of other persons as required by discourse’s search for a generalizable interest. In the procedural model when we say a norm is valid we mean that it could be accepted by all in a public discourse under conditions of symmetry and reciprocity. This is what it means to say that a norm is right. But in saying this, the ‘could’ is not a hypothetical – when I propose an action or policy as a valid one I claim that it could be agreed to within discourse but for my claim to be justified it must be

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assessed in a public setting in an actual practical discourse. As an individual I cannot decide on behalf of others that all could agree to my proposed action or policy; rather, I claim that a proposed norm or policy could be agreed to and defended as such in rational public discourse. This is the epistemic meaning of my claim. In this respect, a procedural model of moral reason is also a dialogical interpretation of the CI test: [Kant] tacitly assumes that in making moral judgements each individual can project himself sufficiently into the situation of everyone else through his own imagination. But when the participants can no longer rely on a transcendental preunderstanding grounded in more or less homogenous conditions of life and interests, the moral point of view can only be realized under conditions of communication that ensure that everyone tests the acceptability of a norm, implemented in general practice, also from the perspective of his own understanding of himself and of the world. (1998b, p. 33)

The Shareability of Moral Reasons If the validity of a proposed action, policy or norm rests upon collectively convincing reasons, it is unclear how those reasons can be generally convincing or good without substantive moral principles serving as a foundation. How is this possible? Much depends on the cogency of the reinterpretation of practical reason in dialogical and procedural terms. Recall that in Peters’ procedural framework the moral principle of consideration of interests establishes that the interests of all persons are relevant to any moral decision. Interests are to be accorded moral respect. But once we acknowledge that both my interests and yours are worthy of respect, it is not entirely clear how, when or if my interests can ever trump yours (or vice versa). Moral judgments are difficult in part because they come at a perceived cost. Saying that our interests are of equal moral worth in principle doesn’t help much when these interests conflict. When you defend your interests in public discourse I may be unconvinced because from my perspective, the reasons offered in defending those interests support your interests, not mine. Justification risks being self-serving. Accordingly, any appropriately conceived procedure should show how, if followed, reasons offered in discourse can be convincing for all. We can state the problem in a different way: the reasons that participants offer up in discourse represent a particular interest and these interests reflect

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our particular understanding of the world and ourselves. These interests and reasons are presented as relative to the agent i.e. good for me or my community. Given this fact, how can reason-giving be the medium through which norms could be accepted as generalizable by all and applicable to all? In addressing this problem, Habermas seeks to replace those transcendent views of the world that purportedly generate objective and impartial (i.e. metaphysical) grounds for moral obligation with the perspective of participants in a rational discourse: ‘the [post-traditional] moral point of view is supposed to reconstruct this perspective within the world itself, that is, within the boundaries of our intersubjectively shared world, while preserving the possibility of distancing ourselves from the world as a whole, and hence the possibility of a world-encompassing view’ (1998b, p. 7). It is now the procedure of moral discourse itself that is supposed to supply the epistemic ‘bridge’ between differing perspectives and a generalizable interest. For Habermas, the ‘reconstruction’ from within the social world is grounded in our own intersubjectively shared interactions.5 Habermas cites P. F. Strawson’s (1982) observation that normativity is inseparable at a phenomenological level from the perspective of the agents themselves as evidence of this intersubjectivity – we recognize, for example, feelings of injustice, resentment or unfair treatment from the point of view of someone either breaching a moral norm or as the person affected by that breach. For Habermas, the experience of moral life can only be understood from within this standpoint. Objective or third-person perspectives cut us off from this phenomenological level – a person cannot experience nor express moral condemnation without committing oneself, as a first person, to a shared world of interpersonal experiences.6 I cannot say ‘what X did was wrong’ without presupposing a shared moral world to which both others and myself belong. Habermas sees Strawson’s moral phenomenology as pointing toward an important methodological precept, namely, that any meaningful account of morality must start from the perspective of the agents themselves (1990a, p. 47). An empirical study of ‘moral behaviour’ taken from the standpoint of an evolutionary biologist, for example, cannot account for a first person experience of rightness or obligation. An evolutionary biologist might be able to predict group behavior on the basis of statistical norms. However, we can never gain a first-person understanding of the meaning of morally charged semantic statements such as ‘X ought not to have done Y’ or ‘act Y was unfair’ without ourselves taking on the perspective of the participants affected. The moment we try to interpret the meaning of these claims we already find ourselves taking on the perspective of participants involved in a network of

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norms and obligations. Morality begins with reflection on the meaning of our actions and the actions of others from the perspective of a shared social universe or what George Mead called ‘the generalized other’ (1967). This would initially suggest that we could come to an understanding of the moral point of view through an examination of the semantics of moral language – an examination of what participants in public discourse communicating about moral questions actually say to one another and the truth-conditions referenced by such claims. The idea is that one can infer, from the general semantic conditions under which a moral statement is taken to be valid or right, a common moral principle for all who use that language. To give an example, a sentence such as ‘you ought not to steal that car’ could presuppose a principle to which all who utter the claim (implicitly) subscribe.7 Recall that R. S. Peters undertakes a similar approach at times when he tries to generate moral principles presupposed by anyone who uses the word ‘ought’. However, while the normative content of statements may at one time have been taken to be self-evident, this is only possible on the assumption of a shared linguistic community. The contents of pre-modern moral statements, for example, were in many cases based upon a linguistic world ordered by the shared assumption of a divine creator or divine creators (1998b, p. 36). On this view, moral statements are representations or instantiations of a metaphysical order that exists independently of us and where the validity of such statements is based on the degree to which they accurately represent the rule given by this order. Here ‘justification’ is not a practice but the representation of subjectindependent moral phenomena. A semantic model of moral justification does not seem very plausible from the standpoint of a narrow or public morality. Even if different traditions hold in common the idea of a transcendent order, they will have very different views of what this order consists in substantively.

Validity Claims and the Shareability of Reasons How can a person’s claim to moral truth or rightness be publicly assessed without assessing the status of a shared linguistic community? We first have to be careful not to dismiss these different communities by treating such communities as ‘problems’ that get in the way of moral justification. I may claim that killing is wrong, and my reason for claiming so is that the Bible says as much. It would be unfair to dismiss my claim simply because it is in part supported by a belief in a divine order that others might not share. The idea behind public morality is to coordinate action between people who have very different

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worldviews or traditions, not denigrate persons for holding those views. To do so would be an unreasonable censure of a person’s conception of the good or ethical life. The Innu people’s reasons for wanting their children to participate in their community practices may be informed by an animistic worldview, but it is self-contradictory to dismiss Innu claims because of that worldview. If this were the case, the Innu would be equally entitled to reject the views of those that have a more materialist or Christian worldview. In an appropriately conceived procedure of moral deliberation, we must be able to, at least in principle, seriously consider a moral claim without out-rightly rejecting or accepting the naturalistic, animistic or metaphysical presuppositions that might underlie that claim. An important move in this direction is further clarity on the subject or content of public moral agreement. In order to achieve this, Habermas makes a distinction between a claim to truth and a claim to moral rightness. Moral claims are argued to be analogous to truth-claims about the physical world, not identical with them. Empirical claims, for example, refer to the physical world. Moral claims, on the other hand, refer to a social world.8 The truth of a claim about our shared objective world rests upon the world itself and is independent of discursive validity. We can agree that a truth-claim is true, but despite our best efforts we might turn out to be wrong. The validity of a claim about morality is, on the other hand, inextricably tied to our conception of validity (1990a, pp. 60–1). As Habermas puts it: ‘assertoric statements used in constative speech acts appear to be related to facts while normative statements are related to legitimately ordered interpersonal relations. The truth of propositions seems to signify the existence of states of affairs in much the same way as the rightness of actions signifies the observance of norms’ (1990a, pp. 59–60). To put it another way: when we say that a claim about the objective world is rationally acceptable, we mean that the claim indicates truth and that the truth of the matter is separate from our actual justification of our belief that the claim is true. At some point, the physical world will make up its own mind about our claim regardless of what we might believe or agree on. While our social practices might play a role in constructing the conditions under which our engagement with the external world meets to our satisfaction, we cannot arbitrarily construct the feedback (i.e. truth or falsity) we get from the world as a consequence of our actions, beliefs and expectations.9 On the other hand, while some moral claims may in part be informed by the belief that such claims represent an independent order that is part of an objective world (a truth claim), we can still assess such claims on the extent to

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which they tell us something about legitimately ordered normative expectations. The fact that a belief in God is not universally shared does not mean that the normative claims inspired by such a worldview are not defensible in a public setting. The reasons proffered by the Innu in defending a normative expectation may not be rationally acceptable by all because the meaning or understanding of that norm may be intertwined with their particular cultural beliefs. Yet, it also remains a possibility that the claim by itself could be justified on the basis of independent reasons that can be generally convincing.10 Proceduralism makes this epistemic distinction possible. When we say that a claim to moral rightness is rationally acceptable, it is the quality of justification that has determined the validity of the norm itself – validity is a function of the satisfaction of discursive conditions under which the justification is made (Habermas, 1998b, p. 38). In other words, unlike empirical claims, moral claims reveal an internal connection between the validity claim and validity itself.11 Habermas defines truth as ‘justification-transcendent’ and ‘non-epistemic’ while moral rightness is ‘justification-immanent’ and ‘epistemic’ (2003, pp. 254–8). Truth is justification-transcendent because our reasons for accepting a truth-claim do not determine truth or falsity of the claim itself. Rightness is justification-immanent because reasons for or against a rightnessclaim determine its rightness. Rightness is constructed by the participants in the discourse. The separation of truth claims about an objective world and rightness claims about an intersubjectively shared social world is made possible through Habermas’ focus on communicative rationality. For Habermas, participants in discourse seek to achieve mutual understanding through communicative interaction. Interaction is termed ‘communicative’ when ‘participants coordinate their plans of action consensually, with agreement reached at any point being evaluated in terms of the intersubjective recognition of validity claims’ (1990a, p. 58). Habermas divides validity claims in communicative interaction into three distinct types: claims to truth (understood as claims about a shared objective world), claims to rightness (understood as claims regarding normative expectations we hold of ourselves and of others) and claims to truthfulness (understood as expressive claims about our authentic ‘self ’). Moral norms or principles are connected to validity claims of rightness (1990a, p. 58). This analysis involves a focus on the meaning behind a ‘claim’, be it moral, ethical or empirical. Validity claims have a performative as well as a semantic dimension. The performative dimension has important consequences for the justification of moral norms. This importance can best be demonstrated by

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briefly revisiting the semantic approach to moral justification.12 A semantic conception of moral justification claims that a norm is justified if it can be derived from rules of inference (1998b, p. 36). We can take a moral statement such as ‘taking something without paying is wrong’ and infer a moral principle. For example, I can take the claim that ‘stealing is wrong’ and infer that this statement is based upon the moral assumption that we ought to respect the property of others. However, this deduction is not as settled as it might appear to be. The principle ‘respect the property of others’ leads to the demand for justification: why respect the property of others? We then infer another principle in response to this question, maybe something like ‘we respect the property of others because we ought to respect the dignity of individuals’. This answer can be argued to rest upon a further principle, and so on. The only way to break this deductive chain is to stop at an explanation that might meet our particular satisfaction (an arbitrary stopping point) or to return to our first claim which states that stealing is wrong (circular reasoning). In response, Habermas refers to C. S. Peirce’s observation that language has a three-place relation consisting of what is said (the sign), who is saying it (the speaker) and the audience to whom it is directed (the hearer).13 For Peirce, language is equally a matter of representation, communication and action: ‘as representation and communicative act, a linguistic utterance points in both directions at once: toward the world and toward the addressee’ (Habermas, 2005, p. 3). This triadic relation also holds for moral claims. ‘You ought not to do X’ is a precept that may be directed to any one person at any one time, but it also reflects a belief about intersubjective relations in a general sense. By linking the performative dimension of moral claims with its semantic content, we can understand claims of normative rightness as having an immanent character. By ‘immanent’ I mean that there is an internal connection between justification and normative validity as such: individuals justifying norms must anticipate that their proposed norm can be defended via reasons convincing for all concerned. Claims to moral rightness are judged in terms of their social implications such that they are worthy of recognition by all (2003, p. 248). When I say that my judgment is right, I anticipate that it could be accepted by all persons on the basis of the reasons that I have for taking it to be right.14

Discursive Validity and the Shareability of Reasons If public and rational deliberation is necessary for the justification of moral norms, then it is to discourse itself that we must look in order to understand

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what it means when participants collectively agree that a norm is justified or right. The immanent connection between public justification and moral validity does not mean that moral justification is a matter of simple consensus nor does it entail an ‘anything goes’ approach to moral discourse: ‘[W]e ourselves contribute to the fulfillment of the validity conditions of moral judgments and norms by constructing a world of well-ordered interpersonal relationships. However, this construction is subject to constraints that are not completely at our disposal; otherwise we could not talk about moral insight’ (2003, p. 248). While this does mean abandoning an external, Archimedean standard, it also raises the question of what is the standard or just what are the ‘constraints’ to which Habermas here alludes. How, for example, could a person of Innu heritage with an animistic worldview convince others of the rightness of his or her moral claim if others are unlikely to be convinced of the animistic perspective to which the claim is bound? Public justification holds to a discursive standard of validity. Habermas describes discursive validity as follows: ‘[V]alid norms must deserve recognition by all concerned. It is not sufficient, therefore, for one person to test whether he can will the adoption of a contested norm’ (1990a, p. 65). The public nature of practical discourse means that even a universalization principle such as the Categorical Imperative, which seeks to harmonize moral ends through what each individual agent could will, cannot suffice because of the private or monological nature of the test – the fact that each individual submits his or her own maxim and imaginatively projects the implications of the universal adoption of the maxim runs the risk of a projection of one’s own worldview and perspective (1998b, p. 33; p. 57). This is a plausible concern because the meaning of a maxim derives in part from the context within which the maxim is formed and situated. For example, if a moral agent with an animistic worldview tried to submit a maxim to the CI test it seems likely that if such a maxim were to pass, it would do so because the person submitting the maxim mistakenly assumes that the animistic worldview, and the practices associated and made possible through it, should hold for all persons.15 Now, it might be possible upon critical reflection to remove any references to animistic beliefs in the maxim and then see if the maxim then passes. Yet, because the agent cannot ever really know or understand the worldview of all others, tailoring the maxim by removing culturally situated meanings cannot secure impartiality because we really cannot anticipate just what part of the maxim needs to be tailored. Judgments about what should be removed from the maxim from the perspective of what might be relevant for the other parties presumes we can know for those other parties what

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is in fact relevant. Further, as we will see, removing culturally situated features of a proposed norm or maxim mistakenly assumes that culturally situated values and beliefs cannot make a contribution to the construction of a generalizable moral norm or judgment. Perhaps there is something within the animistic view that can be generalized, such as respect for non-human life. We will only know if it is included for discursive examination.

The Discourse Principle (D) and the Shareability of Reasons Habermas formalizes the discursive conditions of validity for the worthiness of recognition of any proposed norm in the form of a discourse principle (D): (D) Only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse.

(1990, p. 66) The acceptance of a norm means that the claim was supportable by reasons that the participants in discourse found to be convincing and where ‘acceptance achieved under conditions of rational discourse signifies an agreement motivated by epistemic reasons’ (1998b, p. 42). What Habermas means by ‘epistemic reasons’ is an important matter that will be discussed later in this chapter. Through the procedural principle (D) we ascertain the conditions under which any norm can rightly be taken to be publicly justified and worthy of recognition. However, this formulation does not show how exactly a moral norm or policy can come to meet the conditions set out in (D) (1990a, p. 66). After all, the recognition of different norms will entail different procedural standards or different kinds of practical discourse depending on what kind of action the norm coordinates. Consider legal norms, which ‘usually do not display the high degree of abstraction found in moral norms. In general, they do not say what is equally good for all human beings; they regulate the life contact of the citizens of a concrete legal community’ (Habermas, 1998a, p. 153). The legislative norm that we pay parking tickets on time, for example, is not necessarily moral in itself. Its authority extends no further than the legal community in question. Much turns on what would meet the ‘all concerned’ condition of (D). How do participants in moral-practical discourse know when they are fulfilling such conditions? Habermas is able to derive what he calls a ‘bridging principle’ or rule of argumentation through which participants engaged in moral-practical discourse can meet the conditions set out by the Discourse Principle (D). While the ‘all concerned’ condition of the Discourse Principle can entail different

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discursive standards depending on the type of judgment or norm in question, the bridging principle establishes how participants can assess the validity of moral actions, policies or norms. This principle is called the universalization principle (or ‘U’). The derivation of U is undertaken in two steps. The first step is the identification of the premise that participants in rational discourse ‘understand what it means to discuss hypothetically whether norms of action ought to be adopted’ (1990a, p. 92). In other words, participants in practical deliberation are assumed have a pre-understanding of argumentation and the give and take of reasons – without this communicative know-how they would never be able to engage in the practice of rational deliberation to begin with. Participants are presumed to have an intuitive understanding of how to argue and more specifically, what it would mean to justify a norm (1998b, p. 42).16 The second step consists in the identification of presuppositions of argumentation, reformulated as rules of discourse. These presuppositions are idealizations that any speaker must necessarily make in order for the practice of argumentation to be possible. The unavoidability and necessity of such presupposition makes them pragmatic and universal. This method should already be largely familiar from our discussion of R. S. Peters’ procedural ethics. Rather than relying on a normative inference from the meaning of the word ‘ought’, however, Habermas establishes the universality and pragmatic necessity of presuppositions of argumentation by demonstrating that any person who argues against them displays a ‘performative contradiction’ (1990a, p. 89). Consider the argumentative presupposition that nobody who can make a relevant contribution to argument is excluded (1998b, p. 44). Habermas claims that any person who argues against the presupposition is caught in a contradiction: the speaker is including herself by making a claim that stands as a contribution to argumentative discourse. The performance of this claim is made on the presumption that the speaker ought to be included in the discourse. The speaker’s statement asserts that it is permissible to exclude those who could make a relevant contribution. The speech-act relies on the presupposition of inclusion as a condition of its own possibility, yet the content of the speechact is to argue against this same inclusive presupposition. This self-negating performative contradiction involves the speaker making their self an exception to a pragmatically necessary argumentative rule in much the same way that a moral agent contradicts Kant’s CI by excluding themselves from a maxim he or she wills all others to follow (Okshevsky, 2004). It is similar to what Kant calls a practical contradiction.17

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Habermas lists the universal and pragmatic presuppositions of argumentation as follows: that nobody who could make a relevant contribution may be excluded. that all participants are granted an equal opportunity to make contributions. that the participants must mean what they say. that communication must be freed from external and internal coercion so that the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ stances that participants adopt on criticizable validity claims are motivated by the rational force of the better reasons. (1998b, p. 44)

While these presuppositions are necessary and operative features of argumentative discourse, they are idealizations in so far as participants in real practical discourse may not always hold to them and no one condition can be completely satisfied. Meeting them is a qualitiative, not a binary, matter. Regardless of what happens at a sociological level, however, these rules are nonetheless formally necessary for argument to be at all possible. While participants can be made explicitly aware of these idealizations, they are not normative in the moral sense. Habermas calls them argumentative rights and duties (1998b, pp. 44–5). Argumentative discourse is a co-operative and constructive competition for the better argument where only reasons settle the question at hand. For Habermas, epistemic norms and moral norms can, in principle, represent distinct and separate forms of value. Consider that we can have good moral reasons to undermine an epistemic discourse. Imagine, for example, that a group of scientists were trying to determine the most painful method of torture. Data gathered from the torture of human victims is, in such a scientific discourse, a relevant contribution and on epistemic grounds needs to be included. But this is not a moral ‘ought’ – in fact, many of us recognize that in such an instance we would have a moral duty to ensure that the data are not produced. After all, scientists follow ethical research guidelines for moral reasons, even if these guidelines censure contributions that might settle controversial claims to scientific truth. Similarly, while an inquiry into the moral rightness of a judgment or action entails epistemic commitments, these commitments are not a priori moral.

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The Universalization Principle and the Shareability of Moral Reasons Given that, first, participants understand what it means to justify a norm in argumentative practical discourse and, second that they abide by epistemic idealizations when engaged in that discourse, Habermas derives his universalization principle. The universalization principle is stated in the following terms: (U) A norm is valid when the foreseeable consequences and side effects of its general observance for the interests and value-orientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion. (1998b, p. 42)

The U principle is meant to account for three aspects of any moral-practical discourse governed by the discourse principle (D). First, each individual brings their own interests with them into discourse, where each must take into consideration the consequences of the general observance of a proposed norm for his own and others’ ‘interests and value-orientations’.18 Second, Habermas stresses the ‘of each’ and ‘jointly by all’ aspect of the rule. This is because participants need to consider the norm from the perspective of others and they must be able to revise their self-understanding and their understanding of others through discourse. Finally, ‘uncoerced joint acceptance’ indicates that reasons are no longer simply agent-relative or self-referential but justifiably count as epistemic or general reasons, meaning that they can be accepted on their own terms and not through bias, power or intimidation (1998b, p. 43).19 It is on the basis of principle (U) that proposed moral norms can meet the criteria set out by the discourse principle (D). Good reasons are those recognized as convincing from the perspective of participants who are each equally involved in the reciprocal assessment of a proposed norm’s accordance with what Habermas calls a ‘generalizable interest’. Discursive generalizability does not have the same meaning as a maxim which ‘all could rationally will’. Agreement that a moral norm represents a generalizable interest is attained when each person could accept the general observance of that norm as established in a discourse in which all believe argumentative rights and duties have been mutually respected. On this view, moral justification is a cooperative and reciprocal search for common interests. Here it is the adherence of participants to procedural principles of argumentation that make reasons ‘reasons’ in the epistemic sense. There is no a priori account of justice that decides what makes a reason good or bad, rather, the participants themselves come to understand

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what is a good reason through their equal participation in practical discourse. So, for example, to say that it is wrong to limit formal educational provision to academic curricula is to give an epistemic reason when that reason is offered under conditions where all persons are free to assess, accept or object to the validity of that claim.

The Shareability of Moral Reasons: Navigating Between the Good and the Right The U principle is supposed to show how it is possible that moral reasons can be shared among a plurality of agents. But how can reason-giving be the medium through which norms can be justified as generalizable and universally valid and applicable for all, particularly since procedural moral reasoning does not provide guidance as to how and when one person’s agent-relative reasons should trump other people’s reasons? In the process of reaching agreement, for example, am I required to abandon my own interests in favor of some ‘collective’ good? Do I leave my worldview behind? This line of critique is found in some strands of philosophical communitarianism. Communitarians object that the epistemic perspective that would be required of an individual in order to undertake a generalization test in rational discourse is unrealistic. This claim is based on the premise that individuals are always-already situated in a particular cultural or ethical context (Benhabib, 1992, p. 71). Consequently, adopting a neutral perspective or ‘view from nowhere’ would involve a radical purging of all contextual aspects of our identity. It would require that we become ‘unencumbered selves’ – a role that communitarians rightly take to be impossible. This has implications for a discursive test of moral validity. If the only way I can seriously consider the reasons given in discourse under the terms stipulated by the procedure is by adopting an unattainable impartial perspective, discourse doesn’t get very far. Rather than counter this objection, Discourse Morality takes it on board. One of the important insights of the communitarian critique is that regardless of how well conceived a procedural ethic, the procedure stands and falls on the inclusion of culturally situated interests. Any justification of a norm must proceed from pre-understood contexts or background understandings (Habermas, 1998b, p. 37). Any formal procedure of justification, this is to say, must have content to work on. Impartiality is not gained by encouraging participants to cut themselves off from their own perspectives or interests, rather,

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such perspectives are assessed as possible contributions to the construction of a generalizable interest. On a discursive conception of validity, valid moral norms are those which all can take to be worthy of recognition irrespective of one’s own particular commitment to some conception of the good life (Habermas, 1990a, p. 47). It is only though a clear distinction between the good and the right, Habermas claims, that we can adopt a critical distance on our own perspective (1998b, p. 28). But the distinction does not entail complete abstraction. Recall that normative expectations need to be anchored, at a phenomenological level, in the first person. In fact, conceptions of what is good or of value is a necessary condition for discursive validity in a way similar to how a maxim is a necessary condition for the assessment of moral worth in Kant’s conception of moral validity.20 But neither a conception of the good nor a specific maxim alone is sufficient for the justifiability or rightness of moral judgment. A maxim must be tested for permissibility according to a standard. As with any cognitivist moral theory, such a standard must be presupposed if one is to be able to say that one can be mistaken in their moral judgment. On the Kantian model this distinction is made in terms of what I prefer to do and what I am obligated to do. While there is nothing morally impermissible with having preferences, having a preference is not a sufficient reason for claiming that the preferred action has moral worth or is morally permissible. People can reasonably differ in what they prefer. Similarly, my conception of what is good or of value must be tested for justifiability according to a standard if I claim moral rightness for it. On the Habermasian model, the distinction is formulated in terms of what my values are and what my normative expectations are (1998b, p. 55). Values are not ‘inferior’ to normative expectations. Normative expectations are not the only thing that ‘counts’ in an individual’s worldview. Furthermore, assessing such values for their generalizability does not mean that everyone ought to hold all the same values. I can value something more or less. I can value athletics as a key component of a good life without also holding to the expectation that everyone has a moral duty to participate in athletic activity. When assessing actions, policies, and norms there is an important distinction to be made between assessing goodness (values) and rightness (moral permissibility). This is the kind of critical distance participants need to be able to undertake in their moral deliberations. Adopting a critical perspective does not entail an unencumbered self. In fact, having a perspective is necessary for moral deliberation. Values are candidates, but only candidates, for generalization as obligatory norms of action.

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Accordingly, Habermas claims that a discourse ethical conception of practical reasoning does not, on its own, generate justified norms (1990a, p. 103). Substantive norms are not derived from the formal procedure: Practical discourses depend on content brought to them from the outside… practical discourses are always related to the concrete point of departure of a disturbed normative agreement. These antecedent disruptions determine the topics that are up for discussion. The procedure, then, is not formal in the sense that it abstracts from content. Quite the contrary, in its openness, practical discourse is dependent upon contingent content being fed into it from the outside (1990a, p. 103)

The distinction between ‘agent-relative’ and ‘epistemic’ reasons is worth further consideration in this respect. On this view, the meaning of our reasons changes in moral-practical discourse. What it means to give reasons is different when they are given under the conditions of reciprocity and in accordance with the argumentative duties and rights. Reasons are no longer experienced, given or assessed exclusively in terms of what I prefer, or what I think is the best way to live; rather, they are motivated by a concerted effort to understand what is in the interests of all.21 The meaning of our reasons changes because moral rightness just means ‘worthy of recognition by all concerned’. True, in practical discourse the reasons we give will still have a connection to our own values and worldviews. However, in moral deliberation the role of these values adopt a different life as we ‘already tacitly accept the conditions of symmetry or equal consideration for everyone’s interests…every serious participant must examine what is rational for him under the conditions of symmetrical and equal consideration of interests’ (1998b, p. 24). When I give reasons for or against a moral norm under these conditions my reasons represent something greater than expressions of my own values, preferences or private motives: reasons are now taken to be contributions in a co-operative competition for the better argument or what would comprise a generalizable interest. Outside of moral discourse these reasons might be unique, idiosyncratic or reflective of a conception of the good life, but under conditions of moral discourse they have the potential to support generalizable interests and self-understandings (either in the sense that we already shared these interests, or that we have been convinced on the basis of good reasons to recognize this interest as a generalizable one). On this basis reasons take on an epistemic meaning in moral justification (1998b, p. 24). Moral argumentation is therefore not experienced as

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a practice aiming to show why you should recognize my interest as my interest, but that my interest can be an interest of equal value for yourself and all others once collectively examined.

Discourse Morality and the Concept of Education In this chapter, I aimed to show how Habermas’ Discourse Morality is founded on epistemic conditions that must obtain for any moral norm or principle to be justified. This is in contrast to R. S. Peters’ ethics, whose ‘moralized’ procedural account is founded on moral obligation. In establishing the conditions for justifying basic norms, Discourse Morality attempts to make a clear separation between the good and the right. In making a distinction between evaluations of ethical goodness and judgments of moral rightness, participants are able to undertake a critical assessment of their own actions and the wants and interests of others in light of acceptability conditions of symmetry and reciprocity. A self-understanding of actions and policies from the epistemic standpoint of the moral point of view allows individuals to impartially assess the cogency and applicability of proposed rights, duties and obligations. This account of moral justification not only provides a case for the autonomy and objectivity of moral claims, it also provides an important step forward in developing a concept of education that can orient public moral understanding of the educational domain. On the view I seek to develop, a public concept of education represents rights and duties that are of moral worth and have clear educational relevance in their application. It reflects a framework of moral understanding that includes public understanding of educational worth or value. This formulation operates within a standard of justification for moral rights and duties. However, what remains to be shown is that the application of Discourse Morality to the educational domain can reveal moral principles and norms that have educational relevance and can indeed serve as a foundation for public understanding of educational value. Consider that conflicting worldviews may be so entrenched in particular histories and traditions that to speak of an ‘epistemic’ reason in the educational domain may be conceptually impossible. Discursive validity indicates the conditions under which norms can be generalized. But is Discourse Morality, as currently formulated, able to specify the conditions through which generalized norms can represent educationally

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worthwhile policies? After all, a moral concept of education cannot refer to any and all generalizable interests. Indeed, do such reasons and interests exist? Up until this point I have tried to make a case for the solution to the problem of education as one of public understanding. This involved describing and defending proceduralism as necessary for such understanding. However, the discussion has suggested that procedural theories need to be sufficiently comprehensive for citizens to be able to develop public understandings on basic values such as education, especially as they pertain to more vulnerable agents who have not been able to discursively contribute to this public moral understanding. Before pursing these questions in more detail it is worth pausing for a moment to review the ground so far. This reassessment will serve as an opportunity to situate the argument within the larger picture of moral and political theory as well as to clarify and hopefully simplify the steps in the argument to this point.

Notes 1 T. M. Scanlon summarizes this position in the following terms: ‘[W]e can understand the content of morality (or justice) by considering what principles people would (perhaps under special conditions) have reason to agree to, or what principles could be willed (from a certain point of view) to hold universally’ (2000, p. 189). 2 This does not mean that norms of politeness cannot be proposed and argued for as publicly moral within an open, public discourse. Until they win the rational assent of those concerned, however, these norms remain ‘non-generalizable maxims’ – what Habermas calls ‘ethical values’. 3 ‘[O]n this view of justification, the standard for assessments of the cogency of moral reasons and arguments is irreducibly collective. But it is not foundationalist: it does not privilege a particular kind of evidence or argument as the unassailable basis of moral justification’ (Rehg, 2003, p. 89). 4 Kant is able to claim that moral reasoning should lead all persons to reach the same conclusions about moral rightness because he interprets practical reason as a noumenal capacity shared by all persons. The standards of practical reason are therefore harmonized prior to the empirical differences of the noumenal world. For a brief but informative contrast between Kant and Habermas, see Rehg (2003). 5 Instead of imposing justice and social criticism from a transcendental distance, Habermas grounds the emancipatory potential of moral critique in what Axel Honneth calls ‘intramundane transcendence’ in the sense that the normative

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potential of any valid critique must be grounded in social reality: ‘Habermas’ theory of communication…represents a counterpoint to negativist social theories [in the vein of a Foucault or Adorno]…it re-established access to an emancipatory sphere of action…in this model we find a theory of language that can demonstrate convincingly that the endangered potential of human beings consists in their ability to reach communicative understanding’ (2007, pp. 67–8). 6 ‘The objectivating attitude of the non-participant observer annuls the communicative roles of I and Thou, the first and the second persons, and neutralizes the realm of moral phenomena as such’ (Habermas, 1990a, pp. 46–7). 7 This is precisely the approach taken by R. M. Hare (1972) in his account of moral language as universal prescriptivism. 8 Work by the early Hare makes some headway with this distinction in his discussion of what he calls the ‘imperative mood’ (for Hare, normative claims are imperative statements): ‘if [the] criterion of meaningfulness, which is useful in the case of statements of fact, is applied indiscriminately to types of utterance which are not intended to express statements of fact, trouble will result. Imperative sentences do not satisfy this criterion, and it may be that sentences expressing moral judgements do not either; but this only shows that they do not express statements defined by that criterion…it does not mean that they are meaningless, or even that their meaning is of such a character that no logical rules can be given for their employment’ (1972, pp. 8–9). 9 See Habermas’ Truth and Justification (2003) for further discussion of the relationship between pragmatic learning processes and a fact-independent objective world. 10 For readers familiar with John Rawls, note that an overlapping consensus on the claim is supposed to be sufficient. The public reasons supporting the consensus are derived from freestanding principles of justice. 11 Recall that in making a claim to moral rightness I am claiming something that could be accepted by all and the vindication of this claim constitutes validity. 12 See Hare’s analysis of the logic of moral language (1971) as one such example. 13 G. H. Mead adopts a similar theory of meaning in his behaviourist account of social-practical relations of communication: ‘The logical structure of meaning…is to be found in the threefold relationship of gesture to adjustive response. Response on the part of the second organism to the gesture of the first is the interpretation – and brings out the meaning of that gesture…this threefold or triadic relation between the gesture, adjustive response, and resultant of the social act which the gesture initiates is the basis of meaning’ (1967, p. 80). 14 For Habermas’ account of the differences between semantic and pragmatic analysis of speech, see On the Pragmatics of Communication (1998) Chapters 3 and 7. 15 Note that it is not the animistic view itself that makes the generalization wrong. The CI test is not designed to pass judgment on the truth and falsity of worldviews;

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rather, the normative expectation that people should all act as if the world is informed by an animistic perspective cannot be willed. 16 Since this premise is used in the derivation of (U), Habermas cannot assume that participants have anything more than an intuitive sense of what it would mean to justify a norm because to do otherwise would involve a begging of the question in the derivation of the principle. As Kenneth Bayne puts it ‘[T]he notion of justifying a norm of action…must be understood in a relatively weak sense…it must not be understood already to entail the notion of impartiality that should be defined by Principle U. The idea is rather that we can only infer U from the rules of argumentation if we can assume that a person also has some idea of what it means to justify his or her actions, that is, has some general sense of (and interest in) what it means for a social norm to be acceptable to others’ (1992, p. 115). One of the educationally relevant aspects of this restriction is that it assumes a certain set of competences on the part of the participants. This theme will be taken up in subsequent chapters. 17 For more on the practical contradiction interpretation of the CI test (as well as opposing interpretations) see Korsgaard (1996a) and O’Neil (1975). 18 This formulation is designed to address the criticism, prevalent since Hegel’s critique of Kant’s ethics, that universal moral norms are insensitive to the lived experiences, needs and interests of those affected by their application. For a detailed response of discourse morality to these criticisms, see (Habermas, 1993b). 19 The cognitive demands of public moral reasoning and ‘reciprocal role-taking’ are stated in more detail in Chapter 6. 20 To be sure, the value of tradition should not be underplayed, here. Charles Larmore makes this point clearly: ‘[T]he exercise of reason does not consist, as a certain modern individualism does, in peeling away the force of tradition so that we may stand face to face with the real. The Bildung we receive through our place in history is our very view to reality’ (2008, pp. 61–2). 21 Finlayson (2000) argues that impartial epistemic reasons are implausible, and that effective moral discourse seeks out agent-relative interests that are universalizable. For example, we can all have an agent-relative interest in access to clean water. And this interest is universalizable without us having to abstract from our own interests and can be held as a matter of enlightened self-interest. I may ration my water usage simply because if everyone does this, we guarantee access to water for all. He therefore concludes that it is only such agent-relative interests that can properly represent common interests (what he calls ‘distributive interests’). While an account of distributive interests is plausible, it is not immediately clear why there cannot also be common interests held in a ‘thicker’ moral sense. While the value of clean water is agent-relative or relative to the individual, for example, the interest we have in preserving clean water is certainly a jointly held interest. Finlayson only makes a case for the former without overturning the latter. Furthermore, Finlayson objects to the idea that reasons can be ‘agent-neutral’. But I think Habermas would agree

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– epistemic reasons are the consequence of a discourse where one’s own interests (and the interests of individual others) can be altered, transformed or overturned in the construction of a norm equally in the interests of all. This does not require a strictly ‘agent-neutral’ standpoint.

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Interlude: Kantian Constructivism and Education

The first part of the book focused on the nature and scope of justification, the relationship between justification and values, and the place of such values, if any, in our understanding of education. This involved a twofold task – first, an analysis of the place of educational value in practical reasoning and, having argued that educational values are fundamentally moral-practical in nature, the pursuit of a framework of justification whereby moral values can be publicly justified and generalized across different cultural groups in an increasingly diverse society. Such an analysis involved a focus on the role of public reason and justification in the works of R. S. Peters and Jürgen Habermas. Peters plays a significant role because his analysis of the nature and meaning of the concept of education anticipate several of the themes germane to the argument as it has developed. Yet Peters also plays an important role in understanding the limits and challenges of justification under post-metaphysical conditions i.e. justification without appeal to timeless and transcendent suppositions about being, nature, or other similarly metaphysical views. One of the significant challenges here is that under post-metaphysical conditions the plausibility of universalizing moral rules, principles or values begins to fade out of view. Language, culture and social life begin to take on an increasingly important role in determining our meanings. This presents no small problem for the concept of education. If education can plausibly refer to some common moral or political standards in public understanding (such as rights or duties) it must in some way link up with universalizability. Therefore, much of Part I has focused on the conditions of possibility for universalization under post-metaphysical conditions. The justificatory challenges are nonetheless carried over into the Part II of the book. It has been argued that i) educational values are fundamentally moral in nature and scope and ii) under the appropriate discursive conditions moral values can be generalized across various forms of life. The generalization of such values can serve as a foundation for public understanding of education and

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can be used to inform questions of policy and practice. Yet, further arguments need to be made to link these two points and show how educational values are isolable or distinct from other moral values. Accordingly, Part II must now turn to developing an understanding of how a conception of education can arise within the discursive conditions of generalization. However, before moving on it is worth noting that the method of analysis that I have been availing of so far draws from a broader philosophical tradition of understanding moral and political concepts. This tradition is sometimes called ‘Kantian constructivism’. I clearly see Peters approach as, perhaps unbeknownst to itself, falling within or anticipating the Kantian constructivist tradition. While I have already emphasized the Kantianism of Peters’ approach, I have made little direct reference to Kantian constructivism as a whole. Before moving to Part II, I want to reconstruct the argument developed so far in the more specific terminology offered by this tradition. This reconstruction will serve as an opportunity to recap the argument so far, as well as introduce readers unfamiliar with the more technical aspects of Kantian constructivism with its methodological precepts and the role that these precepts have taken in my overall approach.

R. S. Peters and Kantian Constructivism In his groundbreaking essay, ‘What is an Educational Process?’ (1967), R. S. Peters sought to identify the extent to which and the ways in which the meaning of the concept of education can be specified. Here he makes two important claims that, in hindsight, may seem obvious. First, that education cannot refer to just any process, but to criteria to which various processes must conform if they are to rightly be seen as educational (p. 1). These criteria, however, can never be entirely separated from the moral domain, or, as Peters puts it, ‘moral requirements’ (p. 3). These moral requirements can be divided into two types. The first are principles of moral permissibility that ensure that any learner, as a person, remains a center of moral respect despite their vulnerability. The second, that what is achieved in an educational process must be of value, or worthwhile. The first requirement is derived from a universalistic, rational morality. The second is derived from an ethics of the good life. The second claim is about the substance of these criteria. As he puts it, ‘[t] he connexion between ‘education’ and what is valuable can be made explicit without commitment to content. It is a further question what the particular

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standards are in virtue of which achievements are thought to be of value and what grounds there might be of claiming that these are the correct ones’ (p. 4). Peters goes on to concede that, even if there are arguments that could be made to justify these standards, there is ‘no such established harmony’ (p. 4). This concession is certainly an important one. Disagreement about the nature, scope and substance of educational standards or criteria has continued throughout in the philosophy of education and can be reflected in policy debates about what should be included in state curricula. In fact, it would seem fair to say that the attempt to establish a ‘correct’ or generalizable standard in many spheres of life should be a matter of some suspicion. For example, the inevitable outgrowth of the pluralism of the liberal state reveals the extent to which public claims about standards, generally speaking, must not unnecessarily restrict how people carry out their lives. In fact, our understanding of liberalism has shifted from an emphasis on mere tolerance of the lives of others, to the insight that pluralism is constitutive of the liberal state. Such a view is best embodied in Rawls’ introduction to his own account of political liberalism: ‘Political liberalism assumes that, for political purposes, a plurality of reasonable yet incompatible comprehensive doctrines is the normal result of the exercise of human reason within the framework of free institutions of a constitutional democratic regime’ (p. xvi). Beyond the confines of the liberal state, however, there is the additional concern that attempts to universalize standards or criteria as a moral or human rights standard may only serve to legitimate more nefarious neo-colonial political projects of domination and control. Our earlier examples of Innu and Inuit peoples and their shared history of forced residential schooling serve as but one example of this possibility. This is the philosophical context within which we have been working so far: two forms of value, one representing normative rightness and one of ‘goodness’ or worth. How does education, as a domain of practices and aims, judgments and values, relate to these two forms? And having established this relation, what makes these practices, aims, judgments and values different from other practices, aims, judgments and values? For some, these relations and distinctions are just thrown projections of rationalistic philosophical method. It is argued that focusing on conditions of possibility, abstract principles and ideal conditions, obscure the substance and complexity of human values. The pursuit of universal normative standards can only ever end in an oversimplification or misrepresentation of the nature of these values. This critique, however, oftentimes relies on received ideas about a style of philosophical analysis that is both outmoded and outdated. We have relatively

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new (or at least more refined) conceptual resources designed to address some of the more longstanding criticisms of moral universalism, for example. Specifically, the recent growth in the area of scholarship known as Kantian constructivism has much to offer in this respect. The representatives of this area include, but are not limited to, Barbara Herman, Christine Korsgaard, Thomas Hill, and Onora O’Neil.1 It is not my intention to provide a comprehensive account of the many different approaches that comprise this area. However, some general comments can be made. First, Kantian constructivism is an approach to metaethics wherein questions of moral justification and worth are grounded in principles of practical reason. But these principles do not reflect an independent order of values of the metaphysical variety: rather, their structure, scope and authority is grounded in the exercise of practical reason itself. John Rawls sometimes refers to this account as constitutive autonomy (2005, p. 99). Christine Korsgaard draws out the importance of such a project by identifying what is shared in this approach by Rawls and Kant. In both cases what we are looking for is the principles themselves, for we need reasons, ways of choosing and justifying our actions and policies, and reasons are derived from principles. Yet the very structure of the situation seems to forbid us to choose any particular principles…In Rawls’ construction of his problem, it looks as if the choice of any particular principle of justice must be based on an arbitrary preference for one conception of the good over others. In Kant’s construction of his problem, it looks as if the choice of any principle for the will must involve an arbitrary restriction of the will’s freedom. And the solutions proposed by Kant and Rawls take a parallel form. (2003, p. 114)

Kant uses constructivism to develop a solution to the problem of what counts as moral worth. Rawls uses constructivism to develop a solution to the problem of what is a fair distribution of social goods such as income and health. So too, I think, can constructivism be used to develop a solution to the problem of education – what is educationally worthwhile or valuable? This is the context of argumentation which we have been working with in Part I of the book – the reconstruction of the conditions of possibility for making reasoned judgments about education. How does this context of argumentation fall within the Kantian constructivist tradition? When Peters raises the challenge of education as a concept, what I think he is doing is setting up a problem in a fashion similar to that of Rawls and Kant. Kant: What does it mean to say that my action is morally right and has moral worth? What is the right concept of morality? Rawls: What does it

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mean to say that a society is well ordered? What is the right concept of justice? Peters: What does it mean to say that a process has educational worth? What is the right concept of education? Like Kant and Rawls, Peters’ proposed solution, as I take it, is to frame the problem of education as a practical problem, or a problem of practical reason. What both Kant and Rawls look for is a principle that can guide our actions and policies justifiably and legitimately in a political sense. But not just any principle will do. So while Rawls presents a conception of justice in the form of a practical principle that will serve as the solution to the distribution problem, and Kant suggests a conception of morality in the form of a practical principle that will serve as the solution to the problem of moral justification and worth, so too Peters presents a conception of education in the form of a practical principle. This principle must not make similarly arbitrary distinctions between persons in determining what counts as an educationally worthwhile action, policy or norm. Peters suggests that the concept of education presupposes standards or criteria by which we can rightly say that a person has been educated. But as Korsgaard says, and Peters would surely agree, the structure of the situation doesn’t allow us to choose just any standard. But what exactly is Peters’ conception or solution? What is the best argumentation strategy for determining non-arbitrary practical principles? Like Rawls, the method by which Peters arrives at his solution is a post-metaphysical variation of the transcendental argument. Education must involve activities that have value or are ‘worthwhile’ – learning to sew or conduct scientific experiments, for example, can both be said to be worthwhile, but on what rational grounds can either be said to be of educational worth? Peters recognizes that there is little in the way of a ‘harmonious agreement’ concerning what is educationally worthwhile. The ‘common sense’ answers that may easily come to mind when we reflect on the meaning of the word education or our sentiments about schooling only introduce deeper philosophical questions, as he points out in his typically astute manner: ‘Is the saying “Education is of the whole man” a conceptual truth in that “education” rules out one-sided development? Or is it the expression of our moral valuations about what is worthwhile?’ (p. 7). In order to get at such questions, the analysis must go deeper. The practical question of what is educationally justifiable to others must be addressed through the exercise of human reason itself – through ‘constitutive autonomy’. For Kant, the CI is the principle we need if we wish to determine our own laws (and so our own rational will). For Rawls, the principles of justice are those principles we need for any liberal

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society under conditions of multicultural pluralism (and so for our democratic will).2 Similarly, for Peters, the principle of worthwhileness is just that principle we must appeal to if we wish to determine what forms of knowledge and understanding that we ought to be initiating all citizens into (and so perhaps for the educated will). Accordingly, and as we have already seen, the practical principle underlying Peters’ conception of education works in the following way: those activities are of educational value that are necessarily presupposed in asking the practical question, ‘what is a worthwhile activity?’ Education is an initiation into those traditions that one must have if our human reason is to answer normative questions of value.

Two Shortcomings in Peters’ Conception of Education As I have already discussed in Part I, however, we have good reasons to believe that Peters’ practical principle is flawed or incomplete. I think that he makes two missteps in his attempt to develop a non-arbitrary practical principle. First, he separates questions of educational value or worth from universalistic morality or moral worth. This seems to me to be clearly wrong because it negates the possibility that education can be a source of normative value or obligation. An educational standard is necessarily a standard of value. For a standard of value to represent what it means to be an educated person, it must be valid universally. Therefore, any such standard of value must, fundamentally, be that which all persons have an equal interest in attaining. If an educational standard is simply good to attain it is something that a person could conceivably have more or less of, or not at all. What one person loses in terms of the good of education, they may perhaps ‘pick up’ by receiving other goods.3 This is perhaps why attempts to justify academic curricula are often looked upon with a certain degree of suspicion. Ten years of mathematics may be good for you, but I might rather prefer to receive the same investment of resources in a different form, such as in music training. So I think that while Peters has got the concept right (education refers to non-arbitrary standards of initiation or development or experience), his conception is wrong. And his conception is wrong because he is also wrong about the place of the concept of education within practical reason. As I have suggested above, Peters shoots for the wrong kind of practical principle. He thinks the principle is fundamentally about what is good in the ethical sense. I think it is situated within public morality, or morality in the narrow sense.4

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Consider: to solve the problem of a well-ordered society, it is not enough to say that society X or society Y is good. To solve the problem of moral worth, it is not enough to say that action X or action Y is good. Even if action X is good it simply puts off the question that says: if action X is good, are we then obligated to do X? And why not do Y instead? Again, Korsgaard captures this nicely: [E]ven if we know what makes an action good, so long as that is just a piece of knowledge, the knowledge has to be applied in action by way of another sort of norm of action, something like an obligation to do those actions which we know to be good. And there is no way to derive such an obligation from a piece of knowledge that such an action is good. (2003, p. 111)

On constructivist grounds a principle cannot simply assert what is good in an evaluative sense or theoretical sense – it must obligate. Learning about science might encompass all sorts of good things. But are we legitimate in asserting that one has a right to learn science, or that we have a duty as a community of persons to ensure that all new persons are initiated into scientific inquiry? Without a clear principle such assertions could rightly be dismissed as the exercise of arbitrary power or preference (in the case of Rawls) or an arbitrary restriction of the freedom of the will (Kant) or an arbitrary imposition of norms of human development and growth (Peters). And so they cannot serve as the basis of a right or duty. It cannot solve the problem. Alternatively, if our conception of education is simply evaluative or theoretical, with no obligatory dimension, if it is a constitutively subjective assessment on what we think is good, the conception also fails as a solution. Despite his transcendental approach, I think that Peters’ worthwhileness principle can only establish what is good in this weak evaluative sense; theoretical knowledge about what it is good to learn, not how and why this knowledge ought to be an obligatory feature of educational processes. This is why it should come as no surprise that his conception has been rejected on the grounds that it is a projection of his own conception of a good or well-lived life – a manifestation of the cultural preferences of his time and place taken philosophical form. We have yet to be convinced of the obligatory dimension of this conception. The second misstep, however, lies in his solution to the problem of disagreement about educational values and the good. Peters rightly notes that there is little agreement on the correct standards of education.5 This is why he focuses on a fairly standard transcendental argument. If he can identify those

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activities or values that are necessary for the possibility of making judgments of worthwhileness he can get around the problem of disagreement about values altogether. When I assert or disagree about what is worthwhile I presuppose, by my own exercise of practical reasoning or constitutive autonomy, a sufficient understanding of science, art, philosophy and other theoretical activities that will make it possible for me to undertake a reasoned assessment of the many possible activities open to me. And so I can’t really dispute the value of those values without contradicting myself. Or at least that is how the argument is supposed to work. I think Peters is half right in trying to ‘get around’ the problem of agreement. By this I mean that he is right in thinking arguments about educational worth run deeper than simply asserting that one set of values is better than another in terms of potential benefits, uses or pleasures derived from such activities. Equally reasonable people may have equally good, but conflicting, arguments in favor of another set of values. Like Kant and Rawls, his answer instead refers back to the exercise of human practical reason itself. However, his attempts at deriving a set of educational values through transcendental argument have been challenged from a number of fronts, not only in terms of an interrogation of the specific values he arrives at through his derivation, but of the validity of his version of the transcendental argument more generally (Hand, 2010; Montefiore, 1986; Kleing, 1973). However, a plausible alternative is to focus on the conditions necessary for moral agreement on educational criteria instead of on the goodness of educational activities themselves. By focusing on moral agreement I believe that we can avoid both missteps – public understanding emphasizes the moral value of education while at the same time showing how educational values can be universalizable despite a plurality of conceptions of what is good or worthwhile. In this respect, the two missteps are brought back together; educational disagreements are not fundamentally public disagreements about the good but are best conceived as public disputes over moral value. As I have discussed in Part I, there is some evidence that Peters himself was moving toward this late position. This is where Habermas’ work becomes especially germane to the argument. Habermas also works within the Kantian constructivist tradition, broadly conceived.6 Habermas’ general approach is to render the separate and distinct areas of pragmatic-, ethical- and moral-practical reasoning in terms of different forms of communication. For example, moral rightness is not represented in terms of what all could will but in terms of what all reasonable persons can agree to in rational discourse. As we have seen, it can be more accurately

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understood as a reconstruction of Kant’s idea of practical reason in terms of communicative reason, where Kant’s moral principle is reformulated in procedural terms. I do not submit my maxims to a universal law test; rather, I submit them to others as a way of discursively testing their validity (McCarthy, 1994, p. 45). So, in a sense, Habermas helps us to shift the concept of morality in a slightly different, and for our purposes more productive, direction than Kant. While Kant sees morality as a problem of rational willing, Habermas sees morality as a problem of rational moral agreement. Rationally motivated moral agreement is what makes something right. Similarly, while Kant’s solution is to propose the various formulations of the practical principle (understood as a Categorical Imperative test, or CI test) as the conception of morality that solves the problem, Habermas proposes a procedural practical principle of universalization (U) as the conception of morality that solves the problem. In this respect, Habermas is suggesting that the problem of the concept of morality is one of collective rational, non-coercive agreement and not individual rational willing. In Part I, I have argued that by shifting the emphasis of the argument in the deliberative and intersubjective direction exemplified by Habermas’ Kantian constructivism, we can arrive at a practical principle that serves as a more plausible conception of educational value. I did this in two broad steps: first, by returning the concept of education to its rightful place within moral-practical reason. This concept refers to how any person ought to be treated in becoming a person and not simply what is good to learn, or know, or experience. Second, I have argued that any practical principles underwriting public understanding of educational value must be principles of moral agreement. In other words, the conception I proffer is a procedural principle that will include moral agreements about the educational domain. This leads to Part II of the book. If constructivist analysis leads us to thinking about educational value as a type or subtype of principled practical moral value, this introduces a ‘figure-ground’ problem. On what terms and in what ways can we make distinctions between moral principles and practices having intrinsic educational worth from other moral principles and practices? Part II will focus on these questions. Having posited Habermas’ postmetaphysical theory of moral justification as a way of deciding on public moral values, I will now seek to apply his theory in setting out the conditions under which certain educational values can be recognized as public moral values. This will involve reconsidering his theory in terms of what I call ‘complex proceduralism’.

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Notes 1 For an early and influential statement regarding this approach see Rawls (1980), 2 It is crucial to emphasize that neither Rawls nor Kant are simply responding to the demands of specific time and or place. Habermas sees Rawls as not being interested simply in reconstruction of our current preferences for liberal democracy, rather, his project should be understood as a rational reconstruction of ideas that are latent in our political culture and that can then be assessed for their acceptability for any society aiming at social cooperation (Habermas, 1995, p. 120). The principles of justice, for example, determine the relevance of facts about slavery that are ‘already there’, as Rawls puts it. This is one of the reasons why the principles yielded by a conception cannot themselves be arbitrary. 3 Note that Peters says that simply ‘picking things up’ through a process is not educational (1967, p. 11). But even so, why ought we go through an educational process rather then pick things up? 4 Recall that questions about the right (or moral questions) refer to justice-orientated questions about our rights and duties. The good refers to evaluative or ethical questions about how one may wishe to live. See Rawls (1988) and Habermas (1998b). 5 As Rawls points out, individuals can agree on the meaning of a concept, but they can still disagree on the principles used to decide the various matters made explicit by the concept. (2005, p. 14ff). 6 For a very clear account of contrasting features between Habermas’ and Rawls’ constructivism, see McCarthy (1994).

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Applying Habermas’ Discourse Principle to Education

Discourse Morality is comprised of two main insights: one is regarding the basic communicative competencies necessary for rational discourse, and one regarding the presuppositions that persons equipped with such communicative competencies must make when they are engaged in rational discourse. On the basis of these insights Habermas is able to derive a discursive universalization test for moral norms. Despite its universalist aspirations, however, it also acknowledges a clear apprehension of the methodological excesses of abstraction and formalism. Habermas’ framework seeks to avoid a conception of the person antagonistic to community and particularity: worldviews and interests are constitutive of ethical life and a necessary condition for justifying actions, policies or norms. Rather than the atomistic self that has served as a point of contention for many critics of Kantian moral theory, for Habermas persons become persons through an ongoing process of interdependent socialization and intersubjective interaction with others. And yet, this arguably more nuanced philosophical account of the person entails important educational considerations that have yet to be fully accounted for if Discourse Morality is to be meaningfully applied to the educational domain. Accordingly, this chapter will look at how the discourse principle (D) bears on the educational domain. First, I will examine the applicability of Discourse Morality by asking whether universalizable agreements on the basic moral requirements of educational processes are in principle possible. I then examine the other extreme, where public understanding of the educational domain represents a distinct form of practical reasoning and Discourse Morality must be reconfigured in response to such a form. Here, the discourse principle (D) can be applied or ‘operationalized’ in the form of a sui generis universalization principle specific to educational values. I reject both models of application in favor of a ‘middle ground’ approach. This position is Kantian constructivist

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in nature and scope. Here, I argue that Discourse Morality can be applied by participants in the justification of generalizable interests that are of educational relevance. This model is a procedural interpretation of nested conceptions of educational value developed in Chapter 1.

The Discourse Principle and Composite Conceptions of Education Discourse morality purports to make explicit (via a rational reconstruction) the impartial grounds implicit in our intersubjectively shared common communicative structures – the common means through which we argue, represent ourselves, and come to understand one another. However, it would be inappropriate to directly apply such a principle to specific practices and policies. As Klaus Gunther has pointed out, principles such as U or the CI are not ‘super-norms’ that can be directly applied to specific circumstances (1988, p. 6). This is a common error attributed to critical interpretations of both the CI test as well as Habermas’ U test (for an example of the latter, see Wellmer (1991). In both cases, an ethical rigorism results where moral norms or principles are applied to all possible circumstances and at the expense of the particular features of a situation that are themselves morally relevant.1 So in deciding if I may do X, I ask myself if all persons affected by the general observance of act X would agree to my act X were that assessment to be discursively established under conditions of reciprocity and symmetry. Such a procedure would require the imagined internalization of all persons and forms of life, placing overwhelming cognitive demands and misconstruing public rational discourse as a constitutively private test, much like the Categorical Imperative. We have seen the epistemic limitations of individual, monological or private universalization tests in the previous chapter. Rigorism is not distinctly a problem of confusion about public moral reasoning, however. Even a private test such as the CI, when adopted as a strict norm of action, confuses: i) the criteria of assessment of the permissibility of a proposed action in particular situations with ii) a maxim that obligates one to only act in ways that could be universalized across all situations.

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With (i), the fact that an action X is impermissible in situation Y does not entail impermissibility in situation Z and represents an appropriate understanding of the relationship between a metaethic and specific norms and policies. In (ii), the constraint suggested by the CI test is interpreted, incorrectly, as a hard rule – if it is wrong for me to steal in situation Y it is always wrong to steal and so I may never steal regardless of the circumstances. The circumstances defined by Y are in a sense infinite.2 Ethical rigorism can also be a problem for more specific norms and principles and not just metaethical principles. But this problem is not an attribute of formal principles themselves but results from collapsing or confusing the justification of a norm with its application to specific situations. It is clear that just because a moral norm must always be observed as part of our moral understanding this does not mean that the norm is to be applied in all circumstances. Universalizable norms validly apply to all persons, but are only applicable to those persons in situations specified by Y. The applicability of a valid norm simply means that the norm ought to be followed by all persons in those circumstances in which it is appropriate to apply the norm.3 What determines the set of situations defined by Y? The scope of applicability, or Y, of specific norms will be determined by the reasons used to justify them. This is an important issue to be taken up in greater detail in Chapter 6. Important to note here is that the relationship between norms, reasons, and application becomes a crucial part of the moral justification of educational interests. Moral norms are constructed with epistemic reasons. Epistemic reasons are constituted and assessed through an appropriately conceived procedure of argumentation. The procedure of argumentation is defined by conditions that, when mutually fulfilled, ensure that all necessary information required for valid justification is included and properly assessed within dialogue. If education represents a distinct type of moral understanding within the discourse ethical framework, we should be able to show that the procedure enables an intrinsic connection between education and moral reasons. Such a connection would have to be accounted for in order for that procedure to be necessary and sufficient for moral justification of an educational norm. Moral agents may be aware, in a broad phenomenological sense in the field of action that children and other vulnerable persons involved in an educational process ought to be accorded basic moral respect. Any competent teacher or parent knows this intuitively. Yet, as participants in rational discourse they may be unaware how the epistemic conditions of inclusion of vulnerable persons’ interests serve as an articulation of the character of that moral respect. How can

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a basic moral concern for such interests translate, in justificatory and procedural terms, into something more than mere speculation by adult trustees or as empirically determined ‘special cases’, especially in those situations where learners may not have the capacity or opportunity to participate in moral discourse and represent their interests themselves? Until we can identify where in the procedure such a translation can occur, Habermas’ participants remain ignorant of an entire group of interests of educational relevance. Therefore, I aim to define the possible limits of Habermas’ most current formation of Discourse Morality when assessed in reference to normative issues in education. The identification of these limits or ‘epistemic blind spots’ can, in my view, help in constructing a more inclusive formulation of the moral universalization principle, one that counteracts what I see as a bias towards the generic in the theory as I have formulated it. Until this is done, Habermas’ reconstruction of the necessary and sufficient conditions of moral justification remains incomplete. Or is it? Discourse Morality does not purport to settle all questions of value – simply public morality. There is a good possibility that practices that involve socialization and that are often viewed as ‘educational’ by specific cultures are so deeply rooted in these cultures that the justification of basic norms reflecting public understanding on such issues is impossible. Here, the notion of constructing generalizable educational norms wouldn’t make any sense. Generic norms could at most regulate educational policies without contributing directly to the value of such policies as understood by the members of a culture. Understood in this way, for example, a state curriculum such as the UK’s National Curriculum should not be seen as an attempt at a shared account of what is educationally worthwhile or good for all citizens, but as a stipulation of the moral limits on what specific reasonable cultural communities may permissibly adopt as educational policies and practices. Education is not ‘moral’ in the narrow sense and cannot be a source of obligation for all. If this is the case, educational practices simply cannot be justified on an impartial moral basis – reasonable disagreements over educational worth are not really problems of public morality but problems relating to how particular communities want to shape themselves – in other words, educational actions are simply ‘good promoting’ in R. S. Peters’ sense. Educational practices may always be constrained by normative rightness, but there is nothing obligatory about educational value. Habermas cites the abortion debate as one contemporary example of where rational discourse may be unable to provide a public moral response. He

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suggests that the reasons underlying each perspective and the nature of the choice are too agent-relative: ‘it might transpire that descriptions of the problem of abortion are always inextricably interwoven with individual-self descriptions of persons and groups, and thus of identities and life projects. Where an internal connection of this sort exists, the questions must be formulated differently, specifically, in ethical terms’ (1993a, pp. 59–60). Recall Habermas’ distinction between moral and ethical-practical reason. What Habermas is saying is that the understanding individuals employ in making such a decision is so bound to one’s identity and conception of the good that it appears to be impossible to consider the situation from a public moral point of view; the significance of the choice one must make under such circumstances is too contextual and tied to one’s own conception of a well-lived life to generalize across all persons’ ethical self-identities. Such questions simply don’t make sense from the universal, ‘equally good for all’, perspective other than the moral right to make such a choice and the moral obligation to tolerate dissenting views on the issue. What might hold true for one normative category may also hold for educational issues as well. The educational domain may be too deeply woven into the shared identities of particular communities to speak intelligibly of ‘generalizable interests’. We have some reason to take this possibility seriously. The most cursory glance at debates in education, or at the wide range of practices of socialization across the world, suggest that educational values have a certain degree of cultural specificity. A person’s education is in many ways couched in aspirational terms of what they want (or what they want their children to become), linking to some conception of the good or of human flourishing. Similarly, primary education of the young often involves putting them in touch with skills, dispositions and knowledge that will guide them toward what we think are the most worthwhile paths that our particular society has on offer. These paths will differ between and within societies. While educational actions and policies can and should be constrained by moral obligation – education is not morally exempt – many educational aims and ideals do not transgress moral precepts and choosing among those aims may be best left to whatever reasonable worldview a particular community wants to endorse.4 Given this possible scenario, perhaps the best that moral-practical discourse can do is to ensure that such practices do not fall outside of what we can agree to be morally permissible. If this were true, the application of discourse morality to educational themes would be very different from what I have been trying to suggest so far and lies closer to the ‘composite conceptions’ discussed in detail in Chapter 1.

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This discourse-theoretical approach would embrace the often contingent and contextual nature of educational values. Here, judgments about educational practices and policies would be neither distinctly ethical nor moral in nature, but simply the product of a weighting of a variety of competing reasons ranging from legal, political, prudential, and moral. This application of (D) would combine the by now familiar composite premise that rational discourse about education is relative to the weighting of different reasons at different times and to different degrees with the procedural premise that legitimate and justifiable agreements on public norms can only be realized when deliberation is open to all concerned. Rather than determining in what specific ways education has moral value, this approach would simply ensure that educational actions and policies do not illegitimately infringe on the interests of others. In this application of the discursive universalization principle, claims about what is of educational worth are ‘fed’ into a discourse ethical procedure and face public scrutiny but would simply be assessed for their permissibility (X may do Y). But there would be no presumption that there is anything morally intrinsic about educational practices that can recommend us as to what we ought to do (X ought to do Y). Nobody is obligated to adopt such policies in their community. In this respect, public discourse ensures that competing conceptions of education do not unreasonably undermine one another. Clearly, this composite account situates public understanding of education outside of moral value.

The Discourse Principle and Autonomous Conceptions of Education The discourse principle (D) states that those norms are valid that could be accepted by all concerned without coercion in practical discourse. The universalization principle (U) is a specific operationalization of (D) applied to moral value (1998b, p. 45). We can call this UM. UM is a reconstruction and specification, in formal terms, of what deliberants are agreeing to when they reach a decision on a moral norm. Now, one approach might be to begin from the premise that educational reasoning is a special form of reasoning about a distinct form of value (i.e. education as an autonomous value). As in the case of UM, one could then operationalize (D) in the form of an educational universalization principle (UE) – a principle that establishes a discursive test for the generalizability of educational

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worth in the same way that we test for the generalizability of moral worth. Like UM, UE aims for discursive generalizability, but represents the impartial justification of the moral norm’s purported analogue, ‘educational norms’. Accordingly, a hypothetical UE would test for some aspect or aspects of education that are, as John Wilson would argue, of a transcendental and transcultural character (1979, p. 15). These are ‘obligations’ to which anyone aiming to educate is necessarily committed. Like moral norms, they have a deontic, or nonconsequentialist structure, but represent a different form of value from morality. This view can be characterized as a strong transcendental interpretation. The strong transcendentalist argues from the premise that education is distinct from morality (and other forms of practical reasoning) and representative of a distinct set of values. Wilson, for example, claims that education is comprised of conceptual foundations that are necessary for any intelligible and rational debate on educational policy: [I]t is, in fact, an open – and very important – question how far we may reach agreement about matters of education without abandoning rational discussion in favour of the advancement of particular ideologies or ‘commitments’. I believe that we can advance a good deal further than it is nowadays fashionable to suppose. But we can only do this if we are prepared to shelve those specific (substantive) questions of contents…in order to concentrate more closely on the form of the enterprise…Indeed, it is difficult to see what could be meant by ‘rational discussion’ unless we had some grasp of unalienable or nondisputable criteria in terms of which discussion could move towards, if not reach, a conclusion. (1979, p. 66)

Aspects of this argument are appealing. Wilson’s framework asserts a set of educational concepts that we cannot but converge on if we are committed to rational discussion. Is this assertion justified? The strong transcendentalist is left with a difficult task – namely, the identification of ‘non-disputable criteria’ that distinguish rational discussion about education from other rational deliberations. From a discourse-theoretical perspective, this means that one must show how participants engaged in ‘educational discourse’ can meet the conditions set out by D in the same way that Habermas had to bridge between the D and moral discourse. UE must take a procedural form, or be constituted through non-disputable criteria, different from the moral UM. The discursive test must be conceived in such a way that the ‘form of the enterprise’, as Wilson would put it, is represented in the procedure. A discursive UE must be able to reflect those formal differences.

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On the surface of it, such a project may have some plausibility. First, the discourse principle reflects a larger project of normative justification and has implications beyond the scope of public morality. Habermas himself comes to this conclusion: ‘(U) only operationalized a more comprehensive principle of discourse with reference to a particular subject matter, namely, morality. The principle of discourse can also be operationalized for other kinds of questions’ (1998b, p. 46). Habermas’ latter work, for example, has focused on operationalizing D for legal norms (1998a). It stands to reason, then, that it may also be possible to configure D for the educational domain. Second, it does in fact seem reasonable to think that there are some minimal criteria that cross time and culture. We can talk about education in Greek times, for example, without entirely confusing it with Greek medicine. What might such an operationalization look like? The transcendentalist could argue, for example, that the practice of teaching presupposes a minimal rational capacity on the part of learners – people can only learn as learners when they engage with the world through intelligent and cognitive coping with their surroundings. This could then be argued to be a universal presupposition: the teacher (or anyone who teaches for learning) must presuppose the learner’s own cognitive and rational agency. To do otherwise would make teaching pointless. It simply would not be teaching. This means, for example, that training people via a system of rewards and punishments could never represent a legitimate educational process. A person who teaches someone how to do something through explanation, such as how to improve one’s ability to construct a fence, would not bother to do so unless they presupposed that the person’s prior knowledge about fence building was rationally revisable, changeable and open to intelligent and critical assessment by the learner. And so anyone who claims to be teaching is committed to such a presupposition. This presupposition could then be used as a premise in the derivation of the following principle UE: Those educational norms are valid where the foreseeable consequences and side effects arising for the developing of competencies for critical thinking and rational assessment of all concerned as a result of the norm’s general observance can be accepted by everyone.

Participants can give epistemic reasons showing how policies that violate this principle would be educationally impermissible or non-generalizable. Proposed policies, for example, that cut funding to the extent that it becomes inordinately

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difficult to create an environment amenable to critical thinking would likely be rejected as unreasonable. As a generalizable educational value, critical thinking would take rational priority over other initiatives introduced into the educational process. To be a critical thinker is what it means to be an educated person, anywhere. The ideal of critical thinking is a laudable one and may in fact be indispensable for living a good life in modern society. Yet, there is no evidence that the hypothetical presuppositions upon which an imagined UE is based are in fact necessary for practices of teaching and learning.5 The tradition of a teacher-student dynamic made intelligible through generic concepts such as ‘intelligence’ and ‘cognition’ have had far-reaching effects on modern education. However, these concepts are not in themselves unavoidable and universal – let alone formally required. We could just as easily have a conception of hedonistic learners on the basis of a presupposition that people respond only to pleasure and pain. The assumptions underlying both cognitive and hedonistic conceptions are themselves subject to justification and beg questions about rationality and learning. As we have seen with Peters’ analysis, if a form of discourse is founded on concepts that prejudge answers to the very normative questions to which the discourse is aimed, the analysis essentially begs the question (Habermas, 1990a, p. 83). It is clear that the above case stands as an example of such a prejudgment: we presume that teaching is necessarily connected with concepts such as agency and autonomy. But this conception of teaching is normative – presupposing values that have yet to be justified as generalizable and applicable to all. It comes as no surprise that the answers to our educational deliberations come back in favor of proposals advocating critical thinking and rational autonomy because the rules of argumentation illegitimately screen out any reasons for acting otherwise. The analysis assumes that learning and rational autonomy are a priori connected – a presupposition that is by no means self-evidently necessary or unavoidable. Critical thinking is an ideal, not a presupposition. Ideals are valuable. But they are not impartial. They can represent a particular take on the world that many hold to be of great importance. Our reasons for holding to those ideals can reflect a unique set of experiences that are deeply personal or political. Ideals are valuable in their own right as ideals. But they cannot be unqualifiedly used as a basis of justification, nor do they always represent something that is equally good for all. The generalization of an ideal presupposes an impartial framework of justification through which the ideal can be assessed; without

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this framework such ideals can be used to undermine, unjustifiably, the ideals of others. It is for this reason that basing a conception of education on a substantive account of what education ‘really is, ideally’ seems to be an unwise place to start. If education ought be a certain way, it ought to be this way because it reflects actions, policies or norms that are reasonable from the discursive standpoint of those affected by them, not because education has some essential, transcultural features. A second problem is that the kind of norms that arises from the analysis do not govern our practical reasoning in terms of what we owe to ourselves and others. Note that educational norms under this framework could have a deontic structure; education could really be fundamentally about critically thinking as an end in itself and the norms of action that warrant educational policies and practices could be understood in these terms. But having been separated from considerations of moral value, what would make educational norms obligatory? What would it mean when an educational norm conflicted with what morality demands? Just because certain concepts or norms may be necessary for educational practices to be intelligible does not mean that they are good warrants for the justification of actions as a matter of obligation. Abstracted from moral life, educational norms on this account are, paradoxically, non-normative.

Framing a Middle Ground: Discourse Morality and Nested Conceptions of Education We have been looking at the relationship between public morality, reasongiving and educational relevance. In the first relationship, the connection between reasons, norms and educational meaning or relevance is contingent – good educational reasons are simply those reasons that happen to be called educational in the here and now and could comprise almost any kind of reason. In the latter relationship, the connection between reasons, norms and educational meaning or relevance is completely internal: good educational reasons are determined by a prior, unchanging ideal and are applicable to any educational process, but these reasons are essentially non-normative despite their shareability. What we need is an account of reasons, norms and meaning that preserves a connection to moral meaning. My alternative will involve striking a path between the ‘composite’ view of education, on the one hand, and the ‘autonomous’ view, on the other. Part of

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the justification of an approach situated ‘in between’ these accounts involves a discussion of rationale: why should participants find it necessary to abstract from received conceptions of education and seek agreement on a public understanding of the moral value of education to begin with? It is important to note that unlike the transcendental account, nested justification does not account for everything of educational value. It seeks only to account for those candidate educational claims that could be generalizable via public justification. Situated within UM, it is able to recognize the normative rightness of a public educational policy in distinction from the ethical values that define the educational aims of specific communities. In modern Innu communities, for example, deciding which traditional practices to pass on is a reflection on the kind of community that Innu society wants to be as it adopts aspects of European culture. Ethical discourse of this order addresses important issues of identity. Education is clearly a part of this. However, some educational deliberations are the product of conflicting expectations that pertain to all persons and not just a specific people – a conflict of public morality. Having decided to preserve their traditional culture, for example, what nonetheless is morally required of Innu society in the educational domain? In what ways might the decision to preserve traditional life jar with more universal educational requirements? We can get a better picture of the kinds of conflicts that arise in such contexts by examining the rationale of the discourse principle (D): The discourse principle provides an answer to the predicament in which the members of any moral community find themselves when, in making the transition to a modern, pluralistic society, they find themselves faced with the dilemma that though they still argue with reasons about moral judgments and beliefs, their substantive background consensus on the underlying moral norms has been shattered. They find themselves embroiled in global and domestic practical conflicts in need of regulation that they continue to regard as moral, and hence as rationally resolvable, conflicts; but their shared ethos has disintegrated. The following scenario does not depict an ‘original position’ but an ideal-typical development that could have taken place under ideal conditions. (1998b, p. 39)

Conflicting educational actions, policies and norms that exist between different (but reasonable) communities are not de facto morally impermissible. They are based on differing values that are worthwhile from the point of view of each community. However, when different communities with different values find themselves in a situation where they must live together peaceably, practical

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conflicts arise as each group finds that the other community’s norms don’t quite cohere with their own. However, it is at this very moment that the distinction between the ethical and the moral point of view becomes salient. While each community may have certain practices that are enshrined in tradition (the way certain learning resources are distributed or the ways in which a community values knowledge), judgments about these practices no longer have the familiar sense of ‘obviousness’ that they once had before. Certain rituals no longer seem ‘simply’ proper, and previously unquestioned norms no longer have the firm anchoring they once had. Community A has adopted policies informed by values that hold little merit from the perspective of community B (and vice versa). Yet, reasonable agreement is necessary insofar as the observance of such values by one community will have consequences for the other. Individuals must face the possibility that their own norms of action no longer unproblematically represent what one ought to do once the needs and interests of different others are taken into account. Instead of a ‘zero-sum’ conflict where one value is asserted in order to achieve dominance over another value-system, a moral agreement is sought through a search for the right norm of action. In the case of the debate between ‘settler’ teachers and Innu parents discussed in earlier chapters, for example, the Innu might convincingly argue that a norm of respect for traditional reasonable practices of socialization is universally valid and trumps some of the values underpinning the signature practices of state schooling such as the expectation of regular class attendance. This recognition is not a loss. We could imagine, for example, that in the process of reciprocal role-taking it is understood that the value that some participants place on institutionalized education is itself a kind of tradition. When these participants argue that Innu parents should respect formal schooling, they are in fact arguing from respect for tradition as well. We could imagine that this leads to the further discovery by the participants that respect for ‘traditional practices of socialization’ represents a generalizable interest and both sides are in fact appealing to the same interest viewed in the abstract. Anyone in a learning process would like that process to express a minimal degree of respect for the learner’s traditionally held beliefs, even if those beliefs may be challenged. In this respect, state schooling may have an obligation to respect extended trips away from the school for hunting even if this has an impact on educational attainment in the formal setting. There are other alternatives. Discourse participants don’t have to resolve their moral disagreements by constructing and justifying proposed norms. It may turn out that there are already a variety of justified, universally valid norms

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that might be applicable to the situation at hand and the deliberation is more a matter of trying to determine which norm is appropriate. My point about application is to emphasize that justified norms only appear to have an abstract status as a consequence of their generalizability and scope. It is not as if the Innu parents are trying to justify a norm such as: ‘anyone ought to send their children on traditional hunts’. This lies closer to the ethical rigorism mentioned earlier. A valid norm confers legitimate symmetrical expectations – they have to apply equally to all parties. The norm would also have to be applicable to Europeanbased communities and the specific situation of hunting practices alone does not quite capture this. The judgment that others respect initiation into hunting practices is derived from the application of the norm that traditional practices of socialization ought to be minimally respected. The norm applies ‘in favor’ of the Innu because it is the survival of the Innu tradition that is at stake, not the European tradition of most teachers in the case. The scope of application is determined by the epistemic reasons that constitute the norm – the norm is designed to protect ‘the integrity of tradition’ and will therefore apply to those situations where that protection is needed. Because of the precarious position of the culture and the disempowered position of the Innu it is clear that it is the indigenous tradition that is at stake, not the Western tradition of formal schooling. Note that in this respect, the discourse principle may be especially relevant to modern models of public education because public education is (ideally) an inclusive space of which many different cultural groups partake. This does not mean that Discourse Morality presupposes the justifiability of formal schooling. It is possible, for example, that a moral controversy might arise over various practices of human development and socialization found within the family. Some norms, while universally valid, may be less applicable in the context of public education and more applicable in family situations.6 To summarize, the rationale for Discourse Morality in the educational domain can be understood on the following terms: i) it sets out an impartial procedure for regulating value conflicts, ii) it makes no unwarranted valuejudgments about the kind of educational institutions and practices, formal or informal, that might serve as the context of disagreement. Finally, iii) discourse morality is particularly relevant in those cases where distinct cultural communities increasingly overlap, including the ways that these communities socialize members of their own communities. On the discourse ethical account I proffer, education is grounded in rationally motivated discursive agreement on educational interests. However, this agreement is not secured by staking out a distinct

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form of practical reasoning (as the strong transcendentalist might suggest) or by treating educational interests and value as contingent matters (as in the composite approach). Rather, educational justification is grounded in moral agreement in the public sphere on interests that have educational relevance. ‘Educational relevance’ here represents an immanent connection between the norm and the reasons used to justify the norm. Therefore, having developed the broader rationale for the nested approach, the next step is to explain how norms and their reasons can connect in educationally meaningful ways. This means showing how Habermas’ procedure must be reconstructed with educational understanding clearly in view.

Notes 1 Kant’s infamous claim that it is morally impermissible to lie to a would-be murderer to protect his intended victim is one prominent example of this ethical claim. 2 For an excellent account of the components of a maxim, see Chapter 5 of Onora O’Neil’s Acting on Principle (1975). 3 See the following by G. M. Singer (1971), citied in Gunther (1988): ‘[T]he rule derived from the application of the categorical imperative holds only for the circumstances to which it is applied, and, of course, for anyone in the same or similar circumstances, and does not thereby hold for all circumstances. Because it could not be willed to be a universal law that everyone should act in a certain way under certain circumstances, it does not follow that it could not be willed to be a universal law that everyone should act in that way under certain other circumstances. Indeed, on the basis of the categorical imperative, an act which could be wrong in certain circumstances may well be right in other circumstances’ (p. 165). 4 This position is similar to some accounts of Kant’s construal of the moral point of view. Both Albrecht Wellmer and G. H. Mead, for example, arrive at similar conclusions about the determinateness of the moral point of view. They both argue that the categorical imperative suggests a logical priority of non-generalizable maxims (Wellmer, 1991). What we are permitted to do is a wide-open practical space that is simply defined by what we ought not to do. Mead puts it as follows: ‘Any constructive act is…something that lies outside the scope of Kant’s principle. From Kant’s standpoint you assume the standard is there; and then if you slip around it yourself while expecting other people to live up to it, Kant’s principle will find you out. But where there is no standard, it does not help you decide…What Kant’s principle does is to tell you that an act is immoral under certain conditions,

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but it does not tell you what is the moral act’ (Mead, 1967, p. 381). The problem is germane to education because we can have many different culturally situated aims of education which may be morally permissible, yet we seem to have no way of knowing which ones among them we ought to pursue as a moral matter (for a response to Wellmer on this and other related points, see Habermas, 1993a, pp. 30–9). 5 However, Endres (1996) has argued that participation in a Discourse Morality-like procedure could be used to promote critical thinking in young learners. For more on Discourse Morality’s possibilities for critical thinking see Sprod (2001). 6 This is not to say that family relationships can and should only be regulated by universal moral principles. Axel Honneth, following important contributions by feminist authors concerning the moral dimension of emotional bonds such as care, makes the following important qualification about the morality of the family: moral considerations based on morally shared feelings ‘require that those involved have a mutual preference for each other, which has to correspond to individual needs and capacities…that is why the reasons one can advance in order to appeal to those types of obligations differ from the reasons advanced when referring to universal principles of justice. Instead of putting forth reasons that all other subjects should be able to accept rationally, we present reflections of a very personal nature, which ought to be plausible only on the basis of other people’s affections for us’ (2007, p. 157). Such considerations are in no way exhausted by moral norms.

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Norms, Reasons and Complex Proceduralism in Discourse Morality Norms and Meaning What makes a moral norm educationally meaningful or relevant from the standpoint of public morality? Recall that only a generalizable interest that is sufficiently abstracted from culturally situated values can express an obligation worthy of recognition by all. Is this an achievement possible for candidate educational values? Returning to Habermas’ distinction between ethical and moral value can help in thinking through such a possibility. Habermas characterizes generalizable interests in the following way: In practical discourses, only those interests ‘count’ for the outcome that are presented as intersubjectively recognized values and hence are candidates for inclusion in the semantic content of valid norms. Only generalizable valueorientations, which all participants (and all those affected) can accept with good reasons as appropriate for regulating the subject matter at hand, and which can thereby acquire binding normative force, pass this threshold. An ‘interest’ can be described as a ‘value-orientation’ when it is shared by other members of a community in similar situations. Thus an interest only deserves consideration from the moral point of view once it is stripped of its intrinsic relation to a first-person perspective. Once it is translated into an intersubjectively shared evaluative vocabulary, it is no longer tied to contingent desires and preferences and can achieve, as a candidate for value-generalization in moral justification, the epistemic status of an argument. (1998b, p. 82)

Recall that moral claims have to be made in discourse with an eye to their reasonableness from the standpoint of the other participants which is why Habermas sees reciprocity and symmetry as constitutive conditions of moral rightness. First-person perspectives contribute to the meaning of a norm when

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they are formulated in a way that can be integrated into the perspectives of other agents. The Innu, for example, may need to make their claim in more abstract terms of respect for tradition as opposed to defending the universal worth of hunting traditions. In this sense, the abstractness of valid moral norms arises ‘organically’ from ethical life. Generalizable interests mark off moral value from questions of ethical value. It is unclear, however, if the procedural conditions that make such distinctions possible can apply to public understanding about education. In making a case for such understanding, it will be necessary to show that the generalization of educational value does not entail a complete loss of meaning even as it is abstracted from particular cultural context(s). This chapter advances the argument by showing that although discursively justified educational claims are universalizable and therefore moral, their meaning is determined by the reasons used in their justification. To show how this might work, consider once again a hypothetical moral norm of initiation in practical discourse. The norm is defined by at least three features. First, if valid, the mutual recognition of the principle is something that we would each have an equal interest in. Second, the norm is constituted through specific kinds of arguments and reasons that our hypothetical participants came to find most convincing under conditions of symmetry and reciprocity. Third, participants understand that the deontic structure of the norm serves to protect the educational interests any person who has yet to be initiated into the basic competencies required for practical reasoning. From where would this third feature have arisen? What I want to suggest is that it is just those specific reasons used in the justification of the norm that contribute to its deontic educational meaning and relevance. The norm represents a form of moral concern that has clear educational meaning just because of the quality of justification and the specific reasons internal to this justification as undertaken by participants. For example, the reasons used in the justification of a norm of initiation could refer specifically to the value of cultivating understanding, judgment and reasoning. These are reasons that would give a norm its ‘educational’ character. Before exploring the idea of educational meaning in detail the precise role of reasons in meaning or relevance needs more unpacking. The contrast between a putative generic norm and a so-called educationally relevant norm can help. The norm that we do not perpetrate violence on other people, for example, is abstract and general. It is general in that it states a valid normative expectation normally applicable to all persons. It is abstract in that it could be applied to a

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wide variety of circumstances. We can reasonably appeal to this norm in almost any situation where one person intends to harm another. Educationally relevant norms are also general in scope in the sense explained previously. But their applicability is not as wide. While they may remain valid for all persons the contexts to which they may appropriately be applied will be more specific than a basic norm of non-violence. It is this specification of meaning which grants them this distinct character. Educational norms are more determinate by their very nature. For example, it is usually inappropriate to appeal to the moral norm of non-violence if we are in a consensual kickboxing match. The objection to this example might be that the term ‘violence’ has a particular meaning in the context of a match. True, the use of the term ‘violence’ and similar normative language is contextual, but this does not detract from the fact that the meaning and relevance of the moral norm itself depends upon the reasons given in justifying it. In a kickboxing match what we engage in is normally not ‘relevant’ violence from the point of view of the valid norm because the meaning of violence in the kickboxing match does not fall under what the norm is intended to protect us from. Kickboxing, when engaged in as a sport, falls outside the normal scope of the norm. The norm of non-violence serves to protect us from being subject to unwanted harm (mental, physical, emotional) as we conduct our lives. Semantic imprecision about the term ‘violence’ in the context of the norm’s description can obscure the fact that we can make a reasonable (but surely not unquestionable) distinction between the violence of the kickboxing ring and the Friday night violence of the local pub. The reasons used to justify a moral norm of non-violence refer to the generalizable interest we have in being safe from unsolicited harm. This is just what the moral obligation means. The action in the boxing ring is not included in the meaning of the obligation. This marks a return to the concept of ethical rigorism, where the validity of a norm is confused with the scope of its application. Those with a passionate interest in boxing may have good reasons for objecting to a strict norm that bans all forms of aggressive behavior regardless of circumstance. At the least it perhaps unnecessarily puts a moral ban on a sport many people value a great deal; of more seriousness is that it would make self-defense morally impermissible. In this respect, ethical rigorism amounts to the application of a moral rule without an understanding of its meaning. We can see this type of confusion with respect to children at early stages of moral development – children often learn moral rules but are unable to judge when these rules are applicable, in part because they do not quite delineate the meaning of the moral rule.

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Two Categories of Moral Meaning As a subtype of moral norms, educationally relevant norms must reflect generalizable interests. But they also represent a specification of moral meaning. So what I am suggesting here is that there are two related categories of meaning at play when a public agrees on a norm: validity-meaning and substantive meaning. The first category relates to the publicity and generalizability of a norm and reflects the belief that the justification conditions of that norm have been respected by all. This category of meaning was discussed in detail in Chapter 4: to say that a norm is valid is to say that the norm is worthy of recognition by all persons. The second category of meaning reflects the substance of the norm as determined by the particular epistemic reasons that comprise its justification. To make a rough analogy with Kantian moral theory, the validitymeaning of a norm is to the formal structure of a categorical imperative as the substantive meaning of the norm is to the content of a maxim. The norm has both a form and content. The substantive-meaning of a norm is crucial for public understanding by citizens on moral themes. Without such an understanding by citizens, public moral norms would risk being totally abstracted from specific contexts of interaction. The internalization of the validity-meaning of the norm alone is insufficient for imparting anything but the most formal understanding of interaction with others in the form of thin ‘rules’ or ‘obligations’ without any kind of shared sense of the meaning or significance of that norm for public life. Without such understanding, citizens will find it difficult to ascertain how such norms can be applied in relevant ways. We can illustrate these two categories of meaning in the context of the educational domain through the example of a hypothetical norm of development of mind. The norm states that persons ought to have an equal opportunity to develop their intellectual capacities. The validity-meaning of the norm indicates that this is a norm of equal interest to all and claimable by all. Yet, it is probably unreasonable to invoke a moral norm of development of mind in appealing a decision not to be admitted to medical school. The medical school does not have a moral obligation to take you in simply because you wish to develop your mind. That is not what a medical school is for, fundamentally. The objection might be that this is only because the term ‘development of mind’, like the term ‘non-violence’, has a specific meaning. But the semantic point can obscure the fact that we are able to make a meaningful distinction between someone who wishes to be trained into the medical profession and a person

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who claims a right to a liberal education just because of the reasons used to justify the norm. For example, arguments that have been used to justify liberal approaches to education would surely come to play in the justification of such a norm (even if some aspects of the tradition of liberal philosophy of education would ultimately be rejected by other participants) for part of the justification of liberal education outlined by philosophers such as Oakeshott or Hirst is that the development of mind involves participation in forms of inquiry that are of value to all persons. These and other reasons are constitutive of the distinctiveness of the norm. For example, we could further imagine indigenous groups holding views that endorse a similar notion of development of mind, albeit for them the activities that may seem to be of indispensible necessity for such development may differ in their particulars. The norm derives its validity-meaning from the formal conditions of public morality. However, it derives its substantive-meaning through the specific epistemic reasons that warranted its recognition by citizens in discourse. The rationale of a medical school does not fit the kind of educational process suggested by the substantive-meaning of the norm while something closer to liberal education would. While the applicability of the norm (or the claimability of the obligation on the part of others) is more select, it is nonetheless valid. The norm suggests that institutions devoted to the development of intellectual capacities as an end in itself is legitimate as a matter of public interest and that all persons have claimable rights to this kind of education. In this respect, the norm of development of mind is ‘free-floating’. There are a variety of institutions and contexts in which such a norm could meaningfully be applied even if the particulars of those institutions differed across societies and cultures. Societies convinced of the validity of the norm but where such institutions are lacking would have a responsibility to establish institutions that make such a norm claimable by its members. The substantive-meaning of the norm would not be so thick, however, that the norm could not be justly applied to a variety of cultural contexts because such meaning is constrained by the demands of rational agreement of all those affected by the norm. Yet, at the same time there nonetheless remains an integral and invariant moral meaning here having educational relevance – the person has a right to further develop their intellectual capacities and the spirit of the norm consequently informs an aim or set of educational aims. The norm promotes a certain type of educational process emergent from the very meaning of the interest it is tasked with protecting despite variety in its possibilities for application between institutions and cultures.

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The character of the distinction between general moral norms and educationally relevant moral norms can be misunderstood due to the source of these differences in public understanding. The distinction does not presuppose that we should establish a criterion that, depending on the situation, assigns participants to the task of resolving either a ‘general’ moral issue or an ‘educationally relevant’ moral issue. This creates the image of a policing framework of justification i.e. traffic officers telling participants which way to reason in order to get to the right answer. It further suggests that educational interests are simply a segregated domain of public moral life. Argumentation is a general competency which is applied to specific questions; rules of argument don’t change based on the content we argue over. Epistemic conditions of moral discourse are not content-specific. Imagine, for example, teachers and Innu parents being told that they may not introduce arguments about the politics of colonialism, or defenders of faith-based school being not permitted to reference the persecution of religion, because these are not unambiguously ‘educational’ arguments. Such censure would clearly undermine the validity of any moral agreement. Therefore, one of the important implications of the analysis so far is that there appears to be no a priori conceptual distinction in moral-practical discourse between epistemic reasons for general norms and those reasons that will be constitutive of educationally meaningful norms. Such meaning only arises a posteriori, as the deliberation arrives at a generalizable interest and the implications of the generalizable interest in the educational domain has been ascertained in tandem with the norm’s assessment. Validity-meaning and substantive meaning is both necessary and operative in rationally motivated agreement. An a priori conceptual distinction would either rely on a pre-discursive and transcendental account of what counts as educationally worthwhile or valuable, or a return to a generic view of moral life that fails to recognize the inclusion of educational themes as a feature of public moral life. There is a conceptual distinction between a moral norm and its application to domains of practice, such as education. This distinction cannot occur a priori since the application is not already determined by the meaning of the principle or norm. However, the specific reasons used in the justification of the norm will determine its meaning, and its meaning will determine the scope of application. Accordingly, if some norms are to have a range of application and are to warrant judgments in the educational domain, the justification procedure should make possible the inclusion of reasons that will inform norms that are educationally relevant in this way. This is what it would mean for a deliberative

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community to arrive at a public understanding of educational value – such understanding is comprised of norms that protect educational interests and have relevant application to educational questions. However, the formation of such understanding occurs ‘organically’ as it were, through a process of open moral deliberation. In discourse, all good reasons are epistemic. It wouldn’t make sense to say that some epistemically good reasons cannot be offered up because they are not ‘educational’ reasons. For example, reasons pertaining to the justification of the norm of development of mind may not accord with culturally defined educational practices. Imagine, for example, a cultural community in the UK is unfamiliar with the educational aims of a higher education. This community may never have heard of anything like a liberal education before but in discourse is nonetheless in principle able to approach agreement on the development of mind as a common interest – as they debate the merits of higher education policy on moral grounds, they come to be convinced by the force of arguments that support an application of the norm of development of mind in terms of a liberal education. In practical discourse moral agreement represents a moment of moral insight about the public value of education. Along with the joint acceptance and convincing force of the educational norm comes insight into the meaning of the moral agreement. The validity-meaning of the norm includes the understanding that the norm is just and fair and its general observance is in the equal interests of all. The substantive-meaning includes understanding of the educational value and relevance of the norm. Both forms of understanding follow from the very acceptance of the norm on the basis of the reasons that comprise its justification. On this view, the reasons underlying a justified norm have an intrinsic connection to its meaning. Because the acceptance of the norm entails being convinced by the reasons informing the norm, one at the same time understands its specific meaning. To be sure, educational relevance is not generated from the ether but is informed by ethically situated candidate values that contributed to the justification of the norm. Participants enter into discourse with certain culturally situated educational values in view. In this respect, a public understanding of the moral value of education should be based on publicly justified, discursively tested policies and norms that are judged to be educationally relevant through the meaning-conferring reasons upon which they are based.

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Discourse Morality and Educational Meaning in the Public Sphere The account that I have been developing has focused on the idea that there is an intrinsic connection between moral value and educational value. This connection informs a sub-set or category of moral norms that have educational meaning and relevance. This next part of the analysis is especially significant in this respect because the a posteriori insight that a moral norm is educationally meaningful might suggest that the relationship between moral reasons and educational meaning is actually a contingent one. However, this category of generalizable interests is not educational as a matter of ad hoc reflection. My defense of this internal connection between reasons and (educational) meaning in moral discourse is grounded in the idea that Discourse Morality, as currently formulated, is insufficient as a procedure of moral justification. More specifically, Habermas’ version of Discourse Morality does not specify the necessary conditions for epistemic reasons informing generalizable educational interests. On this view, discourse morality offers little possibility for the construction of public moral understanding between participants regarding the aims and practices of education. Only when the internal connection in discourse between moral reasons and educational interests is shown can we see how such interests are attainable. Why is the educational domain important in this respect? To be sure, education may be but one of several domains that need to be accounted for in procedural justification. Complex proceduralism holds to the view that any such procedure should account for interests, values and perspectives that may not be accounted for in a moral perspective generated from competent deliberators alone. It is ‘complex’ in this way because public moral understanding must be able to bear on and apply to specific social goods, each of which may have intrinsic value and worth in the context of a just society and none of which may be assimilated to the other. On this view, for example, educational provision is important because it has a certain value and this value cannot be simply exchanged for other units of welfare or value. Consider a moral norm of autonomy promotion that requires communities to allocate resources necessary for people to develop their capacity for autonomy. Here, inequalities in educational provision cannot be justified on the grounds that those who are denied such provision may be compensated with income or other goods. Public understanding of education is morally special in that it must be informed by norms

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and principles whose application to the educational domain has clear implications for learners and other vulnerable persons. The notion that the promotion of autonomy is obligatory in this way can only become part of a shared public understanding if the discursive conditions necessary for agreement on such understanding are both clearly articulated and fulfilled. Of course, other social goods may be important in ways that are relevant to complex proceduralism. For example, recent debate on the cogency of John Rawls’ proceduralism has focused on what Cynthia Stark calls ‘the fully cooperating assumption’; the assumption that all citizens will be regarded as physically and mentally competent and therefore able to participate in a fair and equal scheme of social cooperation (2007). On this view, individuals that cannot contribute to a system of social cooperation, individuals who will never attain ‘normal functioning’ due to accident or birth, are not considered ‘full participants’ and are therefore not the proper subjects of principles of justice (Nussbaum, 2006, pp. 116–22; Hartley, 2009). In this respect, the moral perspective generated from the procedure is informed by deliberators who can only see ‘capable’ citizens as having a fair share of social goods. Of course, we intuitively recognize that those persons with disabilities should receive the goods they need to live a life of dignity. However, this critique aims to show that Rawls’ procedure cannot justify allocation of health care resources to the disabled as equal members. Accordingly, it is suggested by critics that Rawls’ procedural theory needs to be revised to account for the morally special features of health care, especially with respect to its role in protecting the interests of the elderly, vulnerable, disabled, and less well off (Segall, 2007, 2010; Daniels, 2009; Stark, 2007; Hartley, 2009). Critical work in this area focuses almost exclusively on John Rawls’ proceduralism. More would have to be said to show how Discourse Morality would have to be modified for health care along the lines suggested by complex proceduralism. The similarities are nonetheless germane. Like Habermas, Rawls’ theory appears to have trouble accounting for how the intrinsic moral features of a domain of practice (in this case, health care) can justify norms and policies that reflect a shared understanding of that domain. The procedure is construed in terms that appear to favor the epistemic perspective of fully capable and rational agents. The focus of this work has been on the educational domain. The analysis of Discourse Morality as applied to this domain will show why education is a feature of complex proceduralism. However, it is not in principle impossible that other domains, especially health care, may also be a feature of complex proceduralism. In fact, this may be especially likely for heath given

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increasing debate over the principles (and application of those principles) by which medical decisions should be made and resources allocated in multicultural contexts. Having explained in more detail the relationship between norms, reasons and meaning, I will devote the remaining space in this chapter to showing in specific terms the ways in which Habermas’ formulation of discourse ethics cannot account for the discursive conditions necessary for moral agreement on educational conflicts and problems/issues. This will involve a reconstruction of the universalization principle (U) with such concerns in mind. This reconstruction will show how these rules of argumentation as formulated cannot be applied in ways that enable an appropriately robust epistemic concern for developmental and educational interests. This undermines Habermas’ procedure because participants in discourse are restricted to conceptualizing such interests in terms of their role in serving as means to further ends, or as agent-relative, first-person interpretations of these interests. I then contend that Habermas’ universalization principle must admit of a complex proceduralism where rules of discourse can account for interests that fall outside the remit of fully mature participants.

Moral Discourse and Dialogical Maturity Much critical commentary on Discourse Morality has focused on the theories’ moral principle of universalization (U), and one well-founded criticism of U is that the idealizing conditions identified in the procedural and dialogical account of moral reasoning entailed by the principle places unreasonable demands on actual participants (see, for example, Benhabib, 1992; Finlayson, 2000; McMahon, 2000; Wellmer, 1991). The focus of criticism here is not the cogency of the principle itself but the articulation of the principle in ways that can accommodate the human limitations of the participants. Such criticisms purport to identify a central problem for Habermas’ theory. Were Habermas to restrict his claims to the idea that he is identifying the abstract and formal conditions for moral justification and no more he could convincingly assert that his procedure is really a regulative ideal – a moral aspiration that can never be completely attained but that we can nonetheless strive toward. But as Christopher McMahon has rightly pointed out, the theory seems to require, as an ideal condition itself, the actual participation and agreement of all concerned in rational discourse (2000; p. 521). McMahon

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terms this ‘strong dialogicality’. According to strong dialogicality, unless each participant is engaged to the satisfaction of all the procedural conditions established by the theory, any attempt at justifying basic norms and moral principles cannot succeed. But what exactly is being demanded of participants under strong dialogicality and how reasonable is it to expect them fully to satisfy these demands? Habermas, for example, has himself recognized that any legitimate formulation of the procedure must not make impossible demands on agents (1993a, p. 37). Unless the demands placed on participants by U are realistic, the strong dialogicality entailed by U would have to be abandoned for an account that alters the theory in substantive ways. This is just what McMahon opts to do in his choice to adopt a ‘weak dialogicality’ that does not require the full participation of all concerned.1 In what follows, I argue that the ideal requirements of fully inclusive participation entailed by U can be retained without placing unreasonable demands on participants. I will do so by showing how Habermas’ procedure requires, not a weakening of the procedural conditions of inclusiveness and participation, but rather a better understanding of the fallibility and scope of universalization undertaken by actual participants deliberating within the procedure. On this account, Habermas’ theory does not encounter problems of a procedural order per se, but rather a problem concerning what it is that participants are reasonably expected to mean when they establish a generalizable interest. Recall that Habermas formulates U as follows: (U) A norm is valid when the foreseeable consequences and side effects of its general observance for the interests and value-orientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion. (1998a, p. 42)

This principle requires that each participant be able to place themselves in the perspective of all other persons. On this view, the justifiability of a candidate value does not simply come down to how the observance of that value as a norm, obligation or duty affects one’s own interests. If this were the case, participants would either become locked into an immovable conflict of interest or they would resort to bargaining. As Klaus Gunther puts it: ‘This requirement states that everyone puts himself in the standpoint of the other persons, that this be done reciprocally, and that all concerned judge collectively whether the norm corresponds to their common interests’ (Gunther, 1988, p. 23). But the ‘common interest’ criterion can also be interpreted in the applicative, as well as justificatory, sense. Universalization must also account

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for the impact that the observance of a principle will have in specific situations and on the interests of those persons in those situations. The general observance of a principle affects individuals, but in various situations this observance can have a differential impact on the interests of those same individuals (1988, p. 30). At the same time, moral norms must be applicable to more than the specific situation or case that triggered the deliberation if they are to be in any way generalizable. Otherwise, justified principles would only be relevant to the specific situation in which the principle was originally proposed because no two situations are exactly the same. Gunther’s analysis shows that Habermas’ original account of U is silent on the issue of appropriateness. Accordingly, Gunther proposes that a complete universalization principle would have to be stated in the form of what he calls a ‘strong version’ of U: A norm is valid and in every case appropriate if the consequences and side effects arising for the interests of each individual as a result of the norm’s general observance in every particular situation can be accepted by everyone. (Gunther, 1988, p. 33, my emphasis)

The ‘in every particular situation’ clause is meant to express the notion that the meaning of a justified principle must account for the applicative sense of moral impartiality – unless a principle is worthy of recognition in all possible situations to which it is appropriate, it fails the test. On this account, not only would participants in moral discourse have to assess the interests of all persons affected in the various concrete and hypothetical situations (i.e. an assessment of the norm’s legitimacy in the universal-reciprocal sense), they would also have to anticipate and assess the impact of the principle in all possible situations to which the norm could be applied. But on this account no proposed principle could secure agreement because participants cannot possibly foresee all possible situations. Gunther’s solution is to claim that because a) our interests can change in unanticipated ways and that b) we cannot anticipate all application situations, it follows that the principle of universalization must include a time and knowledge index. This serves as the basis of his proposed ‘weak version’ of the universalization test: A norm is valid if the consequences and side effects arising for the interests of each individual as a result of this norm’s general observance under unchanging circumstances can be accepted by everyone. (1988, p. 35, my emphasis)

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The qualification of ‘unchanging circumstances’ serves as a kind of ‘escape clause’, indicating that to say a principle is justified is not to mean that the principle cannot be revised (or replaced) in light of new situations which we were unaware of in a prior instance of practical discourse. Habermas incorporates this qualification by referring to the foreseeable consequences and side effects of the general observance of a norm (1998a, p. 42; Gunther, 1988, p. 28). On this account, strong dialogicality is preserved, as well as the plausibility of the procedure for real participants, by specifying what it means to say that a norm is valid.

Dialogical Autonomy and Moral Deliberation While U can be revised in a way that serves to give a fuller and more nuanced account of the meaning of moral universalizability, different aspects of the principle must be differentiated, emphasized and specified in order to account for the limitations of actual participants. Accordingly, William Rehg (2003) identifies another idealizing assumption that calls for an additional indexing of the principle of universalization. As Rehg puts it, ‘[a]lthough reasonableness is primarily defined in terms of the capacity for rational discourse, it includes more than bare cognitive capacities…[A] practically viable discourse ethics must show that such reasonableness lies within the reach of human beings’ (p. 93). Rehg’s claim represents an acknowledgement of an idealizing assumption implicit in U that must be addressed if Discourse Morality is to support a plausible, yet also dialogically strong, model of moral justification for participants. For Rehg, participation in practical discourse presupposes two specific normative standards concerning the acquisition of competencies necessary for moral deliberation. The first normative standard requires that: ‘if one is to engage in cooperative moral dialogue, one must have negotiated the transition to adulthood in a way that integrates solidarity and autonomy. One must link one’s capacity to think for oneself (autonomy) in a way that binds one to others (solidarity): thus, one must be willing to adjust one’s thinking in response to others’ thoughts and concerns’ (p. 93). The second normative standard requires that one ‘be able to examine one’s native assumptions and beliefs critically, in response to outsiders’ objections…one must be ready to examine one’s moral expectations of others, insofar as those expectations lack the power to convince people outside one’s group’ (2003, p. 94). The two normative standards together comprise what Rehg

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terms ‘dialogical autonomy’, defined as an ability to ‘guide our moral responses by the reasons that emerge from a cooperative dialogue with others’ (p. 95).2 In other words, participants must be responsive to dialogical reasons: reasons given by oneself and by others in moral discourse. Cristina Lafont (2004) identifies similar standards of moral maturity and contends that while these conditions of maturity may be hard to achieve and even harder to assess, they are not in principle impossible to meet by actual human beings (2004, p. 41). On this view, dialogical autonomy is best understood as an idealization operative in moral discourse. Just as Gunther’s ‘strong’ or ‘non-indexed’ version of the principle of universalization includes the presupposition that we can anticipate all the consequences and side effects of a principle’s application, it also includes the presupposition that the principle is worthy of recognition by participants that are in possession of an ideal level of dialogical autonomy – that they are so formed as to be reliably responsive to and moved by good reasons.3 This is by no means a ‘modest’ idealization. In order for U to be successful on the procedural grounds offered, reasons relevant to the justification of a principle ought never to be left unformulated and unrecognized. Therefore, it appears that U does in fact place unreasonable cognitive demands on participants in the procedure. This idealization can be understood at a procedural level in a way similar to Gunther’s analysis of the role of knowledge constraints in U. In the transition from the ideal to the actual, it is clear that agent competencies are also affected as we move from ‘ideal-typical participants’ to actual moral deliberators. Consider that under non-ideal conditions even dialogically mature participants can be mistaken about their interests or the interests of others. This is an interpretive task that can be subject to revision in the light of new experiences, for example. Moral maturity does not entail deliberative infallibility. This in turn means that dialogical maturity does not preclude being mistaken in what one takes to be good reasons. If one could never be mistaken about interests, deliberation would be unnecessary. However, the source of this fallibility is not only attributable to knowledge constraints, but also to limitations in participant’s abilities to place themselves in the shoes of other people (perhaps because they seem so different). Thus they can be mistaken in what they find convincing as the better argument (perhaps because of the difficulty we share in examining cherished beliefs). Moral reasons develop and are uptaken through a reflective process on needs and through reciprocal-role taking – the very competencies identified by Rehg and Lafont. But these competencies, while necessary, are not perfectionist. Dialogical

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autonomy is not an all or nothing condition. We can distinguish between ideal dialogical autonomy – the kind of infallible dialogical maturity we conceive of as a normative standard in a theory of moral deliberation – and non-ideal diaological autonomy – the kind of fallibilistic dialogical autonomy possessed by real agents that may be in possession of basic competencies for moral deliberation but may nonetheless be mistaken in their assessment of moral reasons and interests against their best efforts. Despite this non-ideal, but unavoidable, constraint on participants, Habermas’ principle of universalization presupposes ideal dialogical autonomy. Namely, that, for the conditions entailed by U to be fully met, participants must be entirely transparent to themselves in terms of their own needs and interests,4 they must be consistently receptive to and moved by the reasons that they and others have, and always be able to recognize the rational force of the better argument. This is not simply an empirical consideration. True, the fact that some participants are in a better position to participate in moral deliberation is an empirical one. However, this fact is only salient for us in light of the idealizing standpoint of U; U establishes not only idealizing conditions of discourse in terms of speech and reason-giving, but also idealizations regarding what participants should be capable of when engaged in such deliberation. If these capacities were simply empirical considerations we could be content to say that discourse is a matter for the capable and leave it at that. But the dialogical conditions established by U warrant concern that there are many individuals, each whom can in principle make a germane contribution to the collective perspective of the moral point of view, who cannot do so. This makes the generalization of any interest problematic, especially for those individuals whose perspective has not been incorporated into such generalizations. Therefore, the metaethic here states that to say a principle is valid under the conditions stipulated by U is to mean that: i) the principle can be accepted by all those affected as representing a common or generalizable interest. ii) the principle is appropriate for every individual situation to which it is applied. iii) the principle could be accepted by individuals possessing ideal dialogical autonomy.

Dialogical autonomy, like other criteria that comprise U, is properly understood as a necessary epistemic condition. The uptake of moral reasons required for such agreement cannot be achieved independently from the persons involved

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in discourse – persons collectively reflecting on their own and others needs and interests generate these reasons. It follows, as is required by strong dialogicality, that actual participants must possess this exacting level of dialogical autonomy in order to satisfy the procedural conditions. What implications does such an idealization have for U? Once ideal dialogical autonomy is taken into account, the strong version of U should now read as follows: A norm is valid and in every case appropriate if the consequences and side effects arising for the interests of each individual as a result of the norm’s general observance in every particular situation can be accepted by every person affected insofar as each of those persons is that situation is dialogically autonomous in the ideal sense.

This procedure clearly places unreasonable demands on actual participants. However, this can be addressed through a further indexing or refinement of Gunther’s ‘weak version’ of U: A norm is valid if the consequences and side effects arising for the interests of each individual as a result of the norm’s general observance under unchanging circumstances can be accepted by everyone under deliberative conditions of fallible dialogical autonomy.

Note that while the idea of strong dialogicality is maintained, this version does not rule out the possibility that participants could come to be more receptive to reasons that they were once unreceptive. Or perhaps they come to be sensitized to consequences which they could in principle have been aware, but simply lacked the reflective capacities to sufficiently assess such consequences at the time. If participants come to develop further in their capacity for dialogical autonomy, we have good reason to revisit any previously agreed-upon norm. On a strong version of the universalization principle, we cannot allow for such surprises because to claim that a principle is valid under those conditions is to mean that the principle is one that would be generated by completely dialogically autonomous persons in the perfectionist sense suggested above.

Dialogical Autonomy and the Rules of Argumentation The ‘under deliberative conditions of fallible dialogical autonomy’ qualification releases the participants in the procedure from unreasonable deliberative

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demands. It expresses the fact that a principle that has withstood the universalization test entailed by U cannot be ‘purely’ impartial but is understood in terms of recognition by finite persons who can vary in their individual capacity for dialogical autonomy at any given time. This qualification is on par with the time and knowledge index established by Gunther, leaving justified norms open to critical reassessment in the future as (or if) participants achieve further development in their dialogical maturity. Additionally, I believe that the ‘dialogical autonomy’ qualification reveals an important, yet neglected, procedural dimension to moral argumentation to Habermas’ theory. This dimension has significant consequences for the possibility of educational meaning in the context of public morality. Consider the rule that individuals must have an equal opportunity to make contributions to discourse (1998a, p. 44). Part of the meaning of a principle that has passed the universalization test is that everyone has had an equal chance to present reasons for or against the normative expectations represented by that principle (Habermas, 1998a, p. 44). However, it is clear that there will be future individuals who will also be affected by the principle’s general observance but were not given a chance to participate (McMahon, 2000 p. 517) or could not participate because they have yet to exist. The moral justification of obligations to the environment, obligations whose general observance will have a dramatic impact on future generations is a good example of this. This is why Gunther rightly ascribes a time index to the universalized norm’s meaning. It is unrealistic to expect all persons to collectively contribute to the principle in this direct sense. We are therefore required to put ourselves in the place of future generations and examine, to the best of our ability, the foreseeable side effects and consequences of that principle’s general observance. Similarly, idealizations about the participant’s dialogical autonomy can also be reflected in such rules. Consider the first communicative presupposition: that nobody who could make a relevant contribution may be excluded. Part of the meaning of a principle that has passed the universalization test is that everyone is included in the giving of reasons for or against the interest represented by that principle. However, as is clear with the case of very young children, for example, not all persons have an equal capacity to participate in rational discourse. It is unrealistic to expect all persons to participate in the discursive redemption of a principle in this sense. Recall that, for Habermas, every person’s disadvantages and advantages with respect to the general observance of a proposed principle are relevant to the

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justification of that principle. They represent necessary epistemic and formal conditions for the justification of a norm, the violation of which entails a contradiction of the very procedure through which the justifiability of a principle is secured. Accordingly, giving reasons in support of a principle which would undermine the opportunity for future participants to develop rational capacities for moral deliberation or dialogical maturity is also to be engaged in the same kind of contradiction. Participation in practical discourse assumes that we have the capacity to participate in that practical discourse. The presupposition is clearly counterfactual as well as an epistemic condition – we argue as if all participants (including ourselves) are reasonable in the sense that we expect the rational force of reasons alone to be decisive in the vindication of a moral claim, even though this may not be the case under the actual conditions under which we argue. Nonetheless, the presupposition is an operative one. Just as Habermas’ procedure requires people to mean what they say, we similarly require them and initially assume them to be able to be responsive to reasons offered in rational discourse. Accordingly, the fact that some people are better at recognizing and articulating their interests should not be part of the meaning of a universalizable moral norm. If moral norms simply expressed or represented the perspective of a handful of skilled moral deliberators, we would similarly have little reason to rationally assent to such principles. In other words, while participants in Habermasian discourse may be populated with individuals who possess differing levels of dialogical maturity, it is clear that the rules of discourse upon which Habermas bases his universalization principle presuppose that all participants have developed capacities to participate in moral discourse. The ‘capacity’ qualification reveals an important and neglected epistemic criterion for Habermas’ moral procedure. Consider the rules of argumentation as follows: i) that nobody who could make a relevant contribution may be excluded. ii) that all participants are granted an equal opportunity to make contributions. iii) that the participants must mean what they say. iv) that communication must be freed from external and internal coercion so that the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ stances that participants adopt on criticizable validity claims are motivated by the rational force of the better reasons. (1998a, p. 44)

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On its more rigorous interpretation, the argumentative right of inclusion can be restated as follows: i) that nobody who could make a relevant contribution may be excluded and that nobody should be prevented from developing the capacities necessary for making a relevant contribution.

The restatement does not introduce any new normative content. The precept that others not be excluded remains in place. However, the idealizations articulated as pragmatic presuppositions of discourse include idealizations about a person’s ability to participate in practical reasoning. In restating them, only the scope and inclusivity of these presuppositions is being extended. We can do this for the other presuppositions as well. For example, rule two states that: ii) all participants are granted an equal opportunity to make contributions.

It can be restated that: ii) all participants are granted an equal opportunity to make contributions and an equal opportunity to develop the capacities necessary for making such contributions.

The restatement is a legitimate one because we can see that the restated presupposition is operative in argumentation. For example, in legal proceedings we are often critical of the fact that one side may win the case, not because that side was advocating for a position that represented the better argument, but only because that side had access to resources that allowed for a better argument to be made. For example, that winning side may have had more skilled lawyers. The opposing side may have had the potential to articulate the better argument but was unable to do so (perhaps the client could not afford an effective lawyer). In fact, given the evidence at hand, the opposing side should have made the better argument. Because the aim of legal argumentation is to arrive at an impartial decision, we express disappointment at the fact that the strongest argument possible was not made. The example can apply to moral argumentation as well. While participants in practical discourse are to be convinced by the force of the better argument alone, it is clear that the better argument might not be the best argument, given human limitations of reasonableness and all other things being equal. The better argument should not arise through default, but through deliberations with participants that can equally represent their position. The fact that some people are better at recognizing and articulating their interests should

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not be part of the meaning of a norm claimed to be valid for all persons in an open forum of public understanding.

Developmental Coercion According to U, justified principles represent unforced agreement between participants, where ‘unforced agreement’ is the product of the fulfillment of necessary and sufficient procedural conditions. However, the analysis offered indicates how universalizable moral principles must include the developing interests and perspectives of those who are not yet dialogically mature enough to participate in public discourse. By restating the pragmatic presuppositions of discourse, reasons of educational relevance can become more salient to participants. They can set out clear limits on what kind of arguments could be pursued in the construction of such interests. This aspect of argumentation must be accounted for in the derivation of U. I therefore propose the following revised principle of universalization (UD): A norm is valid when the foreseeable consequences and side effects of its general observance for the interests and value-orientation of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without external, internal or developmental coercion.

Habermas typically refers to coercion in the internal or external sense, where agreement is secured through intimidation or other threats. But the developmental coercion criterion reflects the procedural concern that participants could be coerced into agreeing to a proposed norm through indoctrination or other distorted educational processes. For example, persons could be socialized in ways that make their assent easier to secure later in life through indoctrination or an education bereft of critical thinking, for example. Or they could be socialized in ways that make them insensitive to or ignorant of their own interests by consistently treating them with a lack of respect.5 On this account, argumentative rights have the epistemic force of enabling conditions for the justification of moral claims and, further, these rights include the capacity to participate in the collective justification of a generalizable interest reflected in such claims. Accordingly, the way in which we are socialized and become persons, and the way in which we come to acquire our individual interests is a basic theme of public moral understanding that must be explicitly accounted for and formulated in U. Such decisions cannot really be made ‘for us’ in the sense that fully

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capable deliberators have the right to paternalistically impose what is in the common interest on the behalf of all others. Strong dialogicality means that participants in discourse must strive to determine, in the universal-reciprocal sense, what would be in the common interest for all persons – including those who have not acquired the capacities necessary for participation in rational discourse. While such a task is by no means closed to fallibility, participants make an epistemic commitment to do so to the best of their ability under non-ideal conditions. When we try to interpret what developing persons are owed simply by egoistically projecting our own interests, we are engaged in the kind of developmental coercion or forced intersubjectivity that I am referring to above. When we force people to adopt our interests and undermine their own cognitive capacities as we deliberate on moral issues, we coerce in an epistemic sense. While it is true that expecting participants to flawlessly intuit the needs of those who are dialogically immature is an unreasonable procedural demand, participants can nonetheless be required, on procedural grounds, to consider such interests to the best of their ability. This stands as part of the necessary procedural condition for U, and clearly has implications for the development and justification of educational policies.

Educationally Relevant Norms and Complex Proceduralism The reconstruction of Habermas’ procedure with educational interests in view secures the conditions necessary for the formation of public understanding of educational value. First, we established that the meaning of a norm is determined by the reasons used in justifying that norm. These reasons are derived from candidate values situated within ethical life. Accordingly, the meaning of the moral insight provided by that agreement is determined by these reasons and constructed through the participant’s ethical preunderstandings. Second, for such a construction to be possible the participants in the deliberation must recognize, at the epistemic level, reasons pertaining to interests germane to those persons who cannot advocate or provide a perspective of their own. After all, one of the signature features of education is that it often provides for those who may not have a fully developed perspective on their interests or those of others. Establishing these epistemic conditions does not represent an ad hoc addition to the procedure because they have been shown to be required by the demands of strong dialogicality. Accordingly, U is reconstructed to account for these formal requirements through the incorporation

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of the concept of developmental coercion to U. Such a reconstruction requires the introduction of complex proceduralism into Habermas’ theory, where the epistemic inclusion of interests and value-orientations that are often seen to fall outside the central concerns of moral theory are introduced into the theory at a formal level. We can therefore summarize the analysis with two points. One is about the content of norms and the second is about their structure. Both bear on the value of such norms for educational policies and practices. First, educationally relevant norms are justified through reasons given in the procedure of justification. They represent generalizable interests that have intrinsic educational meaning and applicability. They are not interests that are simply served by educational processes. Their moral subject matter is educational in and of itself. However, epistemic reasons can only ever contribute to this meaning or relevance to the extent that the procedural conditions include epistemic rights and duties inclusive of educational and developmental interests and value-orientations. As long as participants are not required to undertake the universal-reciprocal assessment of such interests, full public understanding about education will remain interpretively ‘at a distance’ so to speak. Second, as with all generalizable interests, educationally meaningful norms possess a deontic structure. In this way they are designed to protect the educational interests of persons as a matter of moral obligation, or as an end in itself. In contrast, a generic account of public morality that does not account for the relationship between moral reasons and educational meaning leaves norms, actions and policies to the exclusive purview of instrumental and ‘meansend’ reasoning. Therefore, the reconstruction of U represents an expansion of the scope of public moral understanding. Justified norms emergent from the procedure have moral (and for a sub-category of moral norms, educational) potential which they would not otherwise have and represent the inclusion of a crucial dimension of moral life into Habermas’ procedure.

Notes 1 As McMahon defines it, ‘weak dialogicality involves a simple requirement to consult everyone who might have evidence germane to the identification of the correct principles of morality’ (2000, p. 514). On this view, we only need to view discourse as an information gathering enterprise common to any truth-seeking enterprise. It does not require the rational assent of all affected by the principle. But of course

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for Habermas all persons affected by the observance of a moral norm might have evidence germane to the identification of the correct principles of morality, which in effect means everyone. Otherwise we beg the question of what is indeed ‘germane evidence’. The relevance of evidence can only be properly ascertained in moral discourse. Charles Larmore describes this faculty as the ability to be responsive to reasons, or as he states it, ‘the capacity to recognize and heed the independent validity of reasons’ (2008, p. 44). I think this is a good way of describing the capacity at play. The emphasis on being responsive coheres nicely with the fact that moral deliberation requires that we attend to reasons that are not always our own, at least initially. This being said, Larmore’s metaethical position is largely indebted to McDowell (see especially Chapter 3 and 4). He therefore concludes that reasons comprise an ‘intrinsically normative order of reality’ (p. 129). While I agree that adopting the moral point of view presupposes initiation into something akin to the ‘space of reasons’, I do not accept Larmore’s (and McDowell’s) platonism. For Habermas, the ‘independent validity’ of moral reasons must first be ascertained and assessed through open discourse before they guide action. Such reasons do not ‘exist’ outside of the dialogue, waiting to be discovered. If this were the case, we would not need inclusive dialogue but rather people that are very good at ‘finding’ moral reasons on their own. Joel Anderson, for example, identifies what he terms the competency of need-interpretation as an unrecognized presupposition of moral argument: ‘If participants are unable to articulate their concerns, practical discourse will not be fully rational, any more than if they were being excluded or interrupted…And these conditions include not only the presence of interfering factors but also the absence of sustaining conditions, such as full information, adequate time, and the ability to perceive and express one’s needs. And to the extent to which participants in practical discourse lack this last-mentioned ability – what I am calling “need-interpretive competence” – the process will be epistemically deficient… As a hypothesis, however, I would propose characterizing full need-interpretive competence as the ability to provide interpretations of one’s needs, desires, interests, feelings, and concerns that are complete, non-illusory, articulate, and intelligible’ (2001, p. 196). As Anderson notes, we can misinterpret our own interests: ‘[Participants] must filter out the needs, desires, interests, feelings, and concerns that are based in illusions, whether cases of outright (self-) deception or the more subtle cases in which one mistakes low-priority whims and urges for the needs and values that really matter to one’ (2001, p. 197). For more on the linkages between Discourse Morality, respect and recognition see Honneth (2007).

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Conclusion: Complex Proceduralism and Public Understanding The reconstruction of Habermas’ U principle revealed that Discourse Morality operates under conditions of strong dialogicality and consequently requires a more robust account of epistemic rules. This has four implications for public understanding regarding education as moral in conception. First, public understanding of education is not an ad hoc, contingent or ‘special case’ for moral life. Education is a domain subject to moral agreement. This understanding serves as a component of or contribution to a more general understanding of morality. Second, public understanding of education is grounded in valid norms that have educationally relevant meaning. The procedure constructs public understanding in the form of norms and principles that in turn warrant judgments about educationally worthwhile policies and practices. Third, public understanding of education is not contingently determined. Participants must include, at the level of justification, interests and reasons that will have potential educational implications. Only in this way can reasons comprise moral norms that will have a scope of application having clear educational relevance. Fourth, public understanding of education has a fundamentally deontic structure. Educationally meaningful norms are constructed through epistemic reasons made possible through symmetry and reciprocity conditions. Such norms have moral validity-meaning, meaning that they have a deontic or obligatory status requiring the treatment of persons as ends in themselves. Public understanding of education in this way can function to ‘block’ the instrumental bias that seems to characterize educational thinking. For example, the universal-reciprocal assessment of educational interests often is at stake in cases of initiation. Persons who have not been initiated into a specific form of life, set of practices or traditions of understanding, for example, are not in a good position to assess the worth or value of such an initiation for their current interests just because they have yet to be initiated into those forms, practices and traditions. They are unable to make a reliable

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‘before and after’ assessment of the effects that the educational process will have on them. For example, a moral community deliberating on the potential obligation to provide equal opportunity for the initiation of adults through a liberal education is engaged in a moral question: does everyone have an equal interest in having an opportunity to be initiated in this way? The focus of the discussion will be on the effects on the general observance of a norm of liberal education, not simply from the perspective of those who have already experienced such an education, or who see it as good, but from the perspective of persons who may understand very little about a liberal education and are not in a good position to assess its merits. There is a clear asymmetry in deliberations centered on initiation and require very careful moral assessment by all concerned. In this respect the epistemic requirement to consider the effects of a liberal education on the interests of those ‘outside’ of it is very strong. For example, moral deliberation about the applicability of liberal education to Innu communities will involve great efforts to ensure that the procedure of deliberation does not involve developmental coercion – we must not ground a norm of liberal education on the basis of first-person interpretation of what is ‘in their own best interests’. Public deliberation will require an emphasis on clarifying the value of a liberal education to the Innu as best we can for them to properly assess its potential impact on their way of life. In this way discourse works to incorporate the perspective of the Innu into the assessment of the proposed norm. Accordingly, the concept of education that is grounded in such a public understanding of education will be comprised of practical principles having the following two features: i) non-contingent norms or practical principles that have been collectively constructed by participants where such constructions have educational meaning or relevance. ii)  these collective norms are framed within a deontic structure – such meanings are defined as matters of moral obligation because they have moral validity.

On this view, a post-metaphysical conception of education consists in non-arbitrary principles of moral obligation warranted by appropriately inclusive deliberative conditions. To be an educated person in a post-metaphysical world is to be a person whose socialization and development has been shaped by an educational process informed by the rational criteria derived from such a public understanding of the moral value of education.

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My final remarks will be devoted to the application of this kind of public understanding to specific communities and policies. First I will address the objection that public morality undermines the ethical life of specific cultures and communities. On this view, educational policies that purport to be warranted by educationally relevant principles may undermine the integrity or cohesiveness of communities. I argue that this objection rests fundamentally on an individualistic treatment of moral value and I explore R. S. Peters’ concept of moral community as one possible alternative to this view. Peters’ conception, while provocative, does not show how the educational interests of the community and the individual can dovetail. I consider the conception of the person introduced by the pragmatist philosopher George Herbert Mead, and later refined by Habermas, as a fruitful starting point for addressing this question. For Mead and Habermas, well-ordered processes of socialization are what allow persons to become individuals. On this view, the tension between community and individual can be transcended and I show how educationally relevant moral norms function to protect the interests of developing persons without undermining or leveling differences between communities. Finally, I outline how complex proceduralism can inform basic questions of educational policy and practice.

Morality, Interests and Intersubjectivity The intrinsic relation between educational value and public moral value means that moral norms cannot reflect, fundamentally, the interests that a ‘community of adults’ have in shaping people in as a means to serving ‘the common good’. Accordingly, participants deliberating about the validity of proposed norms have the demanding cognitive task of assessing the implications of the general observance of a norm for the interests of persons who cannot assess such interests. For example, some individuals may lack the capacity to do so, or they may not have a full appreciation of the effects of the norm’s impact on their interests and values relative to their present preferences and values. Yet the demands of strong dialogicality show that these interests nonetheless are a necessary epistemic contribution to comprehensive moral understanding. Such norms, if valid, must maintain respect for the unique perspective and interests of these individuals. At the same time, education partly involves the initiation of persons into particular worldviews that are non-generalizable and constitutive of identity. The moral values of the public sphere should not

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supplant ethical value in its entirety. Yet, the generalization of educational relevance and meaning through the impartial justification of norms may subvert, undermine or disregard these particular worldviews. This might lead to the concern that a conception of education that represents the collective interests of individuals in a shared public sphere might lead to a breakdown of culturally situated ethical values. This concern is animated by the idea that public morality only refers to the demands of an ‘atomistic’ individual, standing alone, insisting upon what is owed to him or her as a matter of right. The received critique is of persons operating within their own spheres of subjective freedom who must regulate their actions so that each individual’s freedom is preserved. Such an account makes it difficult to see how our own interests could relate to the larger community. If I constrain my actions simply so that I preserve my own interests in the long run, it is difficult to see how an interest could be held in common other than as an overlapping interest in securing our own particular interests. Under these conditions moral agreements are simply to product of rational self-interest. Public understanding about moral life is really an understanding in self-interest. Any conception of education informed by these conditions risks a breakdown in commitment to shared values. Does a procedural account of moral justification have the conceptual resources to address such a critique? One way to counterbalance an individualistic account of morality is to emphasize the ways in which the moral point of view plays out at a collective level. Once again, R. S. Peters has much of value to say on this: [F]ellow feeling for another as a person is a more abstract sentiment than the fraternity felt by members of a cohesive face-to-face group. Moral agents do not form special societies for discussions of moral problems…neither is morality a code confined to a club, class, or state…A ‘moral community’ is not therefore supported by those massive feelings of loyalty built up over years of constant association in common tasks…Indeed to confront another simply as a person is to conceive him as detached from his natural affinities and associations…[A] ‘moral community’, by definition, has no authority structure, no built-in appeal to consensus. By this is meant that the validity of moral rules is not determined by appeals to authority or to majority agreement as are the rules of states or clubs…Their validity is determined by appeal to reasons… (1966, p. 226)

Notice that members of Peters’ moral community must encounter one another as equals, ‘simply as a person’. We should be careful, however, not to read Peters as saying that we encounter one another as atomistic selves. What he means

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is that our individual interests, though morally relevant, have no decisive authority. Interests can be reasons for action, but they are not reasons simply because they are interests. An interest can clearly be a poor reason for action, for example, someone may have an interest in harming another person. Clearly, one is inevitably socialized into and acquires interests and values though concrete communities that are more immediate than the kind of idealized moral community that Peters posits. However, for him the moral community is a kind of common and final court of appeal for when these specific interests appear to conflict between individuals. Regardless, the characterization of a moral community in these terms does not adequately explain how a moral agreement goes beyond agent-relative interests. True, one must consider the interests of others in arriving at a moral agreement for the epistemic reason that we need information about interests. As showed in Chapter 4, the validity-meaning of a moral norm represents an interest common to all. However, an epistemic account by itself does not make clear what it means to be a member of a moral community or what it means for subjects to understand themselves as members. For example, adults debating about the implications of educational policies might take into consideration the effects of such policies on children. But this might only be for what is fundamentally a self-regarding reason. Consider faith schools. Children might actually have an interest in having the option of learning within a faith tradition and this may reflect a common interest. But such an interest may only be championed for the reason that it serves the interests of adult members who wish to use faith schools as a means to maintaining the religious traditions that they value. Here, citizens agree on a common interest but not for the same reasons, rather, there is a degree of overlapping self-interest at play. This isn’t really the kind of deliberative community that Peters has in mind. How does moral deliberation reflect concern for and between individuals as members of a community and not simply self-interested persons that simply cooperate in order to preserve their private freedom? Put differently, how do we move from a kind of moral contractualism to genuine moral concern? Peters’ rejoinder is to assert that his moral community is made possible through genuine concern between its members. Peters sets out this form of solidarity (or fraternity, as he calls it) in the following terms: [T]here is one sort of kinship that must be appropriate for a rational being, whatever he feels about his loyalty to family, state, class or club, and that is his kinship with other rational beings as persons. In so far as he is a rational being, and joins with other rational beings in seeking to discover what ought to be

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done, his kinship to them as persons, with points of view to be considered, claims to be assessed impartially, and interests to pursue without unjustified interference must be considered important; for this minimal type of kinship is a precondition of the situation of practical reason. (1966, p. 225, emphasis mine)

This characterization of fraternity needs to be interpreted with some care. It could be tempting to read Peters as trying to pass off an ad hominem argument about the character of those that do not accept his rationalistic account of the moral community. But I think it would be a mistake to read him in this way. Peters’ account of moral fraternity must be evaluated within the context of what he takes to be required for practical discourse. For Peters, moral fraternity is a necessary condition for the possibility for moral discourse. True, individuals may experience this sentiment more or less than others. Nevertheless, at a formal level, moral fraternity is necessary for the persistence of a co-operative moral community.1 If individuals do not seriously consider the interests of persons as persons, one cannot ever determine what ought to be done. The concept of solidarity is quite attractive here because it appears to resolve the dialectic between individual and community: a true moral community entails genuine concern for the interests of others, and the interests of others are necessary for the development of a true moral community. In this respect, Peters’ conception of moral community has the potential to draw out the collective dimension of public morality. He offers an account of individuals who together share a mutual concern for one another in terms of a cooperative search for how we ought to act toward each other. As Rehg’s (2003) account of dialogical maturity has shown this form of cooperation entails mutual and genuine attentiveness to the points of view and interests of all others. Validitymeaning points not simply to discrete individuals, but to an expanded sphere of community to which all individuals belong. Such an ‘abstract fraternity’ is necessary for a public morality to be at all possible. It is important to be clear on just why this kind of solidarity is necessary. Clearly, there are other forms of fraternity, depending on our cultural context. Moral discourse could, depending on the context, be motivated by a sense of honor, competitiveness, or philosophical curiosity about moral truths – sentiments that have an equivalent effect as abstract fraternity (for each could motivate participants to keep the conversation going) but none of which is quite what Peters has in mind because none of these sentiments invoke the right ‘moral attitude’. A rational egoist can easily recognize that he may need to publicly demonstrate a concern for the needs and interests of others in

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order to encourage others along in the kind of discourse that would lead to an agreement that benefits him. But this in no way shows how moral agreements are valid just because they refer to our general welfare and well-being. What I think that Peters (and Habermas) want to show is that the necessity of reciprocal perspective-taking as an epistemic requirement means that deliberation cannot be undertaken without a certain moral attitude toward others. For Habermas, this attitude is represented in the symmetry and reciprocity conditions. Imagine that a community of individuals convened in order to ‘discover’, ‘justify’ or ‘construct’ a set of comprehensive moral principles. Such an endeavor would, on either Peters’ or Habermas’ account, be unsuccessful insofar as each participant is simply intellectually curious about moral principles. Rather, they each must have a genuine interest in the interests of their fellow person. What needs to be shown is that this attitude is not simply a desirable or virtuous trait for the moral community, but is in fact required for moral community to be possible and, therefore, is in fact operative for any rational agent engaged in moral arguments. But why is such a moral attitude necessary, on this account?

Education for Personhood in the Moral Community George Herbert Mead’s social theory of mind offers one way of explaining this necessity. For Mead, individuals can only develop as individuals within the context of communicative interaction with others – in other words, every self is a social self.2 G. H. Mead contrasts his social conception with theories that explain the self by starting with the individual. He concludes that individualist accounts cannot get around the problem of how minds are supposed to become self-aware. If the mind only relates to and becomes self-aware of itself in terms of what it can reveal to itself, perhaps through introspection (as if viewing the inner contents of the mind as an ‘observer’) sociality must remain something irredeemably ‘inside the head’ (1967, pp. 111–12). An account that begins with consciousness has trouble accounting for how the a priori private self becomes a public one who can associate with others in a meaningful way. While the atomistic self that is challenged by Mead and others is a logical construct used in the derivation of principles of justice, the social self that is proffered here is a rational reconstruction of what actual participants would have to achieve in order to be able to deliberate on shared principles in the first place. If the analysis is turned around, however, one can offer an account of

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how individual selves arise through social processes of meaningful interaction. Mead uses the linguistic gesture to explain how the self comes into view from the intersubjective standpoint (pp. 65–8). When I make a vocal gesture, such as yelling, ‘Watch out!’, I can hear the same gesture as the person to whom I address the gesture. I can therefore elicit the same response in myself that is called out in others. The vocal gesture becomes a bridge between actors – a meaning that can generalize between them. The linguistic gesture becomes a public and holistic medium of meaning through which individuals cooperatively construct self-understanding. Mead concludes that meaning and selfhood does not begin within isolated subjects, but in discourse (p. 147). Mead explains that all actors must make the same communicative presupposition that what they say will mean the same for themselves as it will mean for others and, taken together, forms a ‘universe of discourse’ in which actors, through exchanging understandings, become selves (p. 89). The gesture ‘Watch out!’ only takes on meaning if the intended meaning of the gesture is the same for me as for others (even if I use the gesture to deceive). As I learn that my gestures affect others in the same way those gestures affect me, I begin to perceive myself as an accountable social entity as opposed to a solitary subject – I understand my own behavior because my gestures now take on meaning for me as taken from the perspective of others reacting to those same gestures (Habermas, 1992, p. 176; Honneth, 2007, p. 186). Consequently, we have a self that can only become a self – with its attendant meanings, interpretations, normative expectations and so on – through its communicative interaction with others. In this way, the self is intersubjective insofar as it is dependent upon interaction with other selves. Mead articulates this dependence in contrast with contractarian theories of the self: [T]he contract theory of society assumes that the individuals are first all there as intelligent individuals, as selves, and these individuals come together and form society. On this view societies have arisen like business corporations, by the deliberate coming-together of a group of investors, who elect their officers and constitute themselves a society…however…if the individual reaches his self only through communication with others, only through the elaboration of social processes by means of significant communication, then the self could not antedate the social organism. The latter would have to be there first. (1967, p. 233)

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Habermas takes up this theme in terms of his account of communicative socialization. Here, individuality is founded upon an unceasing dependence on social processes of communication: ‘[Self-consciousness] possesses an intersubjective core; its eccentric position attests to the tenacious dependence of subjectivity upon language as a medium through which one recognizes oneself in the other’ (1992, p. 178). But such a formation requires that one first be recognized in interaction as one who is accountable for one’s own actions. Accountability to the social community is something to which we respond and take up into our self: ‘The self…is dependent upon recognition by addressees because it generates itself as a response to the demands of an other in the first place. Because others attribute accountability to me, I gradually make myself into the one who I have become in living together with others’ (1992, p. 170). Mead refers to the unity of self arising from such a process as the ‘generalized other’ – the attitude of the whole community that mutually confers norm expectations on all others, to which these same others are all accountable (1967, p. 154). We internalize this generalized other in terms of conventions of behavior that are shared within the community. Mead gives the example of a baseball team to illustrate this – we each have a unique and irreplaceable position on the team, but we can only co-ordinate our activities with the rest of the team (to play the game; to become part of a form of life) if we anticipate what our teammates will do – when the batter hits the ball, we must consider the perspective of all our teammates in order to properly co-ordinate the play. We must, as Mead puts it, ‘become everyone else on the team’ (1967, p. 154). On this view, accountability, publicity and identity are intertwined. A conception of persons as irreplaceably unique and individual, yet irreducibly social, shifts the emphasis of moral deliberation away from an individualistic standpoint. Within this latter standpoint, I posit myself as a radical individual whose needs, wants and interests are private and of which I have absolute ownership and authority. My private self, having only come from me, is constitutive of who I am in the last instance. When I encounter an other whose interests run up against my own, this other becomes a problem that I need to solve if I wish to maintain my self. True, I can be moved to communicate, negotiate and cooperate; to ‘give-up’ some of what I want so that we can both get along. Here, however, negotiation is but the uptake of another private interest. If discourse does not play to my interests, I am free to pass on it. A change in my own interests must be conceived of as a loss if I presuppose that I am constitutively individual and therefore a fundamental source of those interests.

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Because the other is (on this analysis, mistakenly) absolutely separate from me, our interests can at most overlap, but they can never be held in common. On the other hand, if we recognize the self as constitutively social, we should not make any such presupposition. As Christine Korsgaard explains: The public character of reasons is indeed created by the reciprocal exchange of reasons, the sharing, of the reasons of individuals…[B]ut if these reasons really were essentially private, it would be impossible to exchange or to share them. So their privacy must be incidental or ephemeral; they must be inherently shareable. We might call this view ‘publicity as shareability’. I take this to be equivalent to another thesis, namely, that what both enables us and forces us to share our reasons is, in a deep sense, our social nature. (1996b, p. 135)

Recognizing that the interests of others can be reasons for action is not a loss, but a gain.3 If we can recognize and be moved by the reasons that originate with others, it follows that our interests can change as a consequence of the rational force of those reasons. It seems plausible, on this view, that our interests are revisable to the extent that we can recognize that there are certain interests in the equal interest of all, endorsable by me from the perspective of all others. Members of a baseball team each have a unique perspective on the field, but all could accept that it is in their equal interest to pay close attention to the next play. Yet, for Mead, a person’s recognition of other interests does not require the sublimation of the self to the demands of the community, it is a contribution to it: ‘The individual not only has rights, but has duties; he is not only a citizen, a member of the community, but he is one who reacts to this community and in his reaction to it, as we have seen in the conversation of gestures, changes it’ (1967, p. 196).

Moral Solidarity The individual does not stand alone, and the community does not stand apart from individual contributions. Public morality cannot stop at protecting the individual, for that individual is constituted and maintained through the public relations of recognition that make individuation possible to begin with. Recognition is an ever-present source of feedback for how I understand others and myself. When understood in these intersubjective terms it no longer makes sense to accept an individualistic conception of morality. Any

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communicative form of life must be regulated by norms of action that contribute to an environment amenable to individual self-determination. Such conditions are not transcendentally given; rather, they must be continually produced and reproduced within moral life itself and through our actions with others. As Habermas maintains, this means that the complement to individual respect is solidarity: [Solidarity] is rooted in the realization that each person must take responsibility for the other because as consociates all must have an interest in the integrity of their shared life context in the same way. Justice conceived deontologically requires solidarity as its reverse side. (1990b, p. 244)

Moral claims relate to one’s individual interests. But they are at the same time claims about the well-being of a community. The integrity of a self with a capacity to have interests relies upon contexts of interaction that are wellordered (1993b, p. 324). Valid moral norms are valid because they faithfully represent a collective concern for the welfare of all persons. This expansive kind of solidarity becomes an indispensable feature of moral life when we drop the atomistic or individualistic conception of the person and replace it with a Meadian subject who, ‘capable of speech and action, can be individuated only via the route of socialization’ (Habermas, 1990b, p. 243). These subjects can only achieve this individuation by entering into a communicative form of life. However, this individuating self becomes increasingly dependent on relations with others as one’s sense of self becomes more and more determined by ‘communicatively produced interpersonal relationships’ (p. 243). Axel Honneth describes this form of intersubjective dependency in terms of recognition: ‘the reproduction of social life is governed by the imperative of mutual recognition where because one can develop a practical relation-to-self [a sense of identity entailing who we are, who we want to be and how we ought to act] only when one has viewed oneself, from the normative perspective of one’s partner in interaction, as their social addressee’ (Honneth, 1996, p. 93).4 For Habermas, ‘this explains the danger to, and the chronic susceptibility of, a vulnerable identity’ (1990b, p. 234). Morality is a response to our vulnerable identity, and Habermas characterizes this role in the following terms: [M]oralities are designed to shelter this vulnerable identity. Because moralities are supposed to compensate for the vulnerability of living creatures who though socialization are individuated in such a way that they can never assert their

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identity for themselves alone, the integrity of individuals cannot be preserved without the integrity of the lifeworld that makes possible their shared interpersonal relationships and relations of mutual recognition. (p. 243)

On this view, one’s understanding of public morality extends beyond one’s own self-protection in terms of rights: morality requires that I see myself as a moral agent with obligations extending beyond respect for the private interests of others. The protective dimension of moral solidarity means that there will be occasions when we will have to take a proactive interest in others insofar as we have an obligation to protect the welfare of others. Seyla Benhabib is largely in agreement with Habermas’ view on solidarity. For her, solidarity opens up an important feature in our shared understanding of justice and morality – the fact that communities actively seek ways to regulate ‘fragile human relations’ (1992, p. 190). Solidarity continually reminds us of the ‘otherness’ of morality and operates as a check against the tendency to think of what morality can do for me. A moral agreement is only binding to the extent that deliberative conditions are fulfilled, and this includes an empathetic attentiveness to the claims of others (Habermas, 1993b, p. 325). Without appropriate attention to the perspectives, experiences, feelings and needs of others, no claim to moral rightness will gain the degree of convincing generality such that it could be recognized as worthy by other persons.

Complex Proceduralism and Educational Policy The ‘socialized’ conception of self that is proffered by Habermas, Mead, Honneth and Korsgaard show how common interests serve to protect individuals as well as the community. Both demands are in actuality inseparable at the level of moral justification and mutually presuppose one another. On this view, socialization is education’s unavoidable moral focus – educational policies are established with the intention of shaping individuals in determinate ways. Socialization represents a distinct theme for moral deliberation. Educational processes cannot avoid socialization even if socialization is not necessarily a given aim of education (White, 1975). Complex proceduralism has shown that if morality works to protect vulnerable identities, it faces even greater responsibility for individuals in the

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vulnerable state of becoming individuals. In fact, these processes are themselves a potentially suppressed common interest. In this context, the revised principle of universalization (UD) accounts for a specific type of generalizable interest: what are the conditions of socialization that all persons ought to have access to in the process of becoming individuals? If Habermas and Mead are right on the relationship between socialization and individuation, morally valid educational processes transcend what is typically seen as an opposition or dichotomy between individuation and socialization. And this gives educational processes a key function in moral life. Unlike adults, who interact within the context of a community to which they are full members and to a social world with which they are more or less familiar, developing persons are in the process of becoming unique members of a community and, as Mead has shown, are very early in the uptake of a self-conscious identity. We can enter the community in many ways, but it is clear that not all these processes are going to do justice to these developing selves. Therefore, educational questions taken up from the perspective of UD must, at the very least, address such socialization processes from the standpoint of what would accord with the interests of all persons becoming individuals. To put this in more Kantian language, morally legitimate socialization must be understood as an end in itself. Accordingly, educational policies and practices that purport to be valid for and applicable to all persons do not refer to the subjective freedom of essentially atomistic individuals or utilitarian considerations of the ‘greater good’. When discourse revolves around the consequences of educational policies or norms on the economy, or the vibrancy of the polis and so on, such arguments put the cart before the horse in assuming that we exhaust our moral defense of what education ought to be in terms of the ways in which we can harness socialization in order to produce goods for the community at large.5 This is too narrow a range of considerations. Such an approach does not derive from any kind of meaningful comprehension of the value of education. True, the institutional arrangements of schooling, like that of hospitals, libraries, prisons and so on, can in part be morally assessed on the consequences that these arrangements have on the aggregate well-being of society. However, when public discourse about education is left only as an institutional question, socialization will inevitably be exploited simply as a means to some particular end. In its moral treatment, socialization is recognized as a process through which every person becomes an individual and where each person’s individuation is seen as an integral part of his or her personhood and must be treated as such.

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Further, the solidaristic dimension of the moral point of view shows us that the debate is equally about the well-being of the community whose members have been socialized in such a fashion. It is only from both directions that we can judge a policy in terms of the consequences of that policy on the larger community. Education from the moral point of view assesses the foreseeable consequences and side effects that socialization has on the well-being of a community made up of such persons. As Klaus Gunther rightly notes, it is true that what persons judge to be worthwhile or in their interests presupposes specific dispositions and affections that are themselves acquired through socialization. But this fact does not preclude that the standards of socialization are themselves in need of justification (1988, p. 184). These standards represent an important theme for moral discussion. To reiterate: the question is not so much about the effects that schooling will have on the community ‘at large’, rather, it is about whether each individual could accept (even in principle) that they and all other persons are socialized under such conditions. These norms do not sublate the interests of the developing and vulnerable persons to the needs and wants of the community at large. Nor do they seek to level differences between particular communities. Rather, they refer to a specific type of common interest: our equal interest in being treated in a certain way as we begin an ongoing process of socialization and identity formation. UD has other policy implications as well. On the one hand, it remains the case that educational policies will be tempered by political considerations. For example, the greater interests of distributive justice will likely have an effect on the way in which schools systems allocate educational provision. Basic rights and liberties that have no direct bearing on education may well influence the kinds of schools that are permitted in the public sphere. However, the modification of educational policies in light of these other interests presupposes a prior public understanding of education. Otherwise the value of education risks simply becoming a patchwork of these other interests. As long as education is seen to be such a patchwork, reasonable and fair agreements on educational policies will continually devolve into compromise and bargaining between such interests. The adherents of faith schools and culture-based schooling, for example, each have a perspective on educational value. Some aspects of that perspective may not fall under the remit of a shared understanding of education in the public sphere. However, some aspects of that perspective may well involve interests and values that can better inform our understanding of education and the policies that we derive from it. Acknowledging such perspectives is not a political compromise but recognition of the value of such perspectives for

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all. Fair and open public discourse is required if we are to undertake a proper assessment of these perspectives. In this respect, UD established standards through which different communities can undertake reasonable deliberation on those basic norms that ought to inform educational value in the public sphere. R. S. Peters claimed that the use of the concept of education presupposes activities having moral value, but what those standards are in virtue of which such activities can be thought to have moral value is a further question (1967, p. 4). On the account I have offered, this standard is one that is publicly justified and constructed through moral deliberation with others, where the deliberators must strive to assess the effects of the general observance of proposed standards on the formative interests of those in the process of development. Peters rightly identified the problem that the concept of education was seeking to address: we try to direct developing persons into specific practices, traditions and ways of life because we are of the belief that these are worthwhile or will be of benefit to them. I think that this kind of perspective taking represents an important aspect of educational thinking – the ability to assess the actions, policies and norms of educational relevance from the perspective of those who are most affected by them. UD is central to our testing of the moral worth of such norms and policies. Norms of action that may be taken as being acceptable from the perspective of fully formed persons with relatively stable interests and identities may fail the test of discursive generalization because such norms must also be assessed for the side effects and consequences of the general observance of these norms for the formative interests and value orientations of developing persons. It is therefore my contention that the revised principle of universalization that I have introduced represents a more complete account of moral impartiality by virtue of the fact that it explicitly recognizes the epistemic relevance of the perspective of persons who are new to the world.

Notes 1 In a Hegelian moment Peters contrasts this with the Greek polis which Peters presents as a pre-moral stage of community, where the individual is sublated within the universalistic demands of the collective: ‘In such a community men might think quite rationally together, and be staunch advocates of fundamental principles such as justice, equality, liberty, and the consideration of interests. But they might apply them very differently, as Plato did, because of their commitment to a common life rather than to the rights of individual persons. Justice might be interpreted as the

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3

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principle of making distinctions only where there are relevant differences; but the supremely relevant differences would be the contribution made to the community as a whole by those occupying different positions in the community. Man would be considered only a functionary, not as an individual with a distinctive point of view on the world’ (1966, p. 217). As Christine Korsgaard rightly claims, though we generally agree that human beings are constitutively social, modern moral philosophers have not taken such a fact seriously in their attempts to justify morality (1996b, p. 135). Korsgaard attempts to do as much in her account, relying on her own interpretation of Wittgenstein’s private language argument. I think that Korsgaard’s use of Wittgenstein is insufficient in this respect. She says that because my use of a language makes it normative for me (p. 138) it must therefore be possible for it to be normative for others if it is to be a language at all. Therefore, she concludes, meanings (and reasons, including moral reasons) cannot be constitutively private. However, the interpretation offered does not seem to explain how publicity makes me accountable to others in the moral sense. I argue that Mead’s account does. Thomas Nagel’s critical response to Korsgaard seems to share in this critical view when he says that her use of Wittgenstein doesn’t help her case because ‘egoism doesn’t violate publicity’ (1996, p. 208). Mead writes ‘We are definitely identified with our own interests. One is constituted out of his own interests; and when those interests are frustrated, what is called for then is a sacrifice of this narrow self. This should lead to the development of a larger self which can be identified with the interests of others. I think all of us feel that one must be ready to recognize the interests of others even when they run counter to our own, but that the person who does that does not really sacrifice himself, but becomes a larger self ’ (1967, p. 386). Honneth argues that this failure to recognize others in any one of three modes of interaction (interactions between individuals with needs; between persons as right-bearing legal subjects; between particular subjects with their unique features) takes on the negative form of disrespect that feeds into various social conflicts. On Honneth’s view, social conflicts are expressions of a moral struggle for recognition (1996). This would be a kind of socialization in Oakeshott’s critical use of the term (1975, pp. 33–6).

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184 Bibliography Wellmer, Albrecht. (1991) The Persistence of Modernity: Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics and Postmodernism. Oxford: Polity Press. Westphal, Kenneth R. (2009) ‘Kant’s Constructivism and Rational Justification.’ In Baiasu, Pihlström and Williams (eds) Politics and Metaphysics in Kant. Cardiff: Wales University Press. White, John. (1987) ‘The Medical Condition of Philosophy of Education.’ Journal of Philosophy of Education. 21(2) pp. 155–62. —(1982) The Aims of Education Restated. London: Routledge. White, Patricia. (1975) ‘Socialization and Education.’ In R. F. Dearden, P. H. Hirst and R. S. Peters. (eds) A Critique of Current Educational Aims: Part I of Education and the Development of Reason. pp. 111–29. Williams, Bernard. (1985) Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wilson, John. (2006) ‘Perspectives on the Philosophy of Education.’ Oxford Review of Education. 29(2) pp. 279–93. —(2003) ‘The Concept of Education Revisited.’ Journal of Philosophy of Education. 7(1) pp. 101–8. —(1979) Preface to the Philosophy of Education. London: Routledge. Wood, Allen. (1999) Kant’s Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Index aboriginal education 1–3, 10–12 residential schooling 27, 113 tradition-based curricula 10–12, 20, 51–1, 63–4, 135–5, 140 abortion debate 126–7 aims of education 19, 37, 55, 57, 59n. 5, 61, 127, 133, 137n. 4, 143, 145 application of Discourse Principle (D) to education 123–37 of norms and principles 29, 33–4, 40, 45–6, 75, 86, 125, 135, 141, 144–5, 147–8, 150–2, 163 autonomy 11, 33, 51, 83, 85, 89, 131, 146–7, constitutive 114–18 dialogical 151–8 Categorical imperative (CI test) 30, 50, 54, 68, 91–2, 98, 108n. 15, 119, 124–5, 136n. 3, 136n. 4, 142 colonialism 3–4, 43, 113, 144 communicative rationality 96, 118–19 communicative socialization see socialization communitarianism 103 complex proceduralism 81–7, 119, 139–9, 163–8 concept of education 1–2, 4–14, 19–37, 39–58, 61–2, 73–7, 83, 88, 106–7, 111, 112–19, 174, 177 conception of the good 39, 44, 51, 49, 55, 57, 61, 95, 104–5, 114, 127 conception of the person 56, 123, 165, 171 conceptions of educational value 25–37, 39, 61, 75, 88, 124–36 critical thinking 36, 130–1, 137n. 5, 158 curriculum 3, 20–1, 24, 44, 54, 103, 113, 116, 126 see also National Curriculum and aboriginal education

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deliberative conditions (symmetry and reciprocity) 14, 91, 106, 140, 154, 163–4, 169 demand for justification 19–24, 43, 72, 97 developmental coercion 158–60, 164 dialogicality 149–54, 159, 169n. 1, 163, 165 dialogical maturity 148–50, 152–6, 168 Discourse Morality Discourse principle (D) 14, 90, 99–101, 102, 123–36, revised Universalization Principle (UD) 158, 175–7 and rules of argumentation 74, 79n. 10, 109n. 16, 101, 131, 144, 148, 154–8 Universalization principle (U) 14–15, 100, 102, 119, 126, 128, 148–54, 156, 158 discursive validity 95, 97–9, 104–6 see also moral validity distributive justice 176 Dunne, Joseph 4–5, 21 educational processes 2–12, 24, 29, 31, 34, 36, 43, 47–8, 53–4, 57, 75–6, 86, 112, 117, 125, 130–2, 143–5, 158–64, 174–5 equality 13, 24–5 ethical life 95, 123, 140, 159, 165 ethical rigorism 124–5, 135, 141 Ethics and Education 9, 43–5, 51, 57, 64, 74 exclusionary reasons 29–31, 36, 46, 85 excusing conditions 85–6 faith schooling 10–12, 23, 35, 167, 176 fraternity 166–8 forms of knowledge 50–1, 61, 78n. 8, 116 forms of value 19, 32, 40, 85, 101, 113, 128–9 see also conceptions of educational value

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186 Index foundationalism 40, 47, 48, 58, 65–9, 91, 107n. 3 generalized other 94, 171 Gunther, Klas 124, 136, 149–55, 176 Haydon, Graham 14, 20, 22, 37, 46, 88–9 health care 7, 25–7, 147 Honneth, Axel 58n. 9, 60n. 19, 107n. 5, 139n. 6, 173, 178n. 4 individuation 172–5 see also socialization initiation 21, 40, 47–9, 51–2, 55, 57–9, 61, 76–7, 81–7, 116, 135, 140, 163–5 instrumentalism 5, 31, 37, 160, 163 intentions and character 34 and moral justification 33–6, 86 interests agent-relative 109n. 21, 148, 167 generalizable 91–3, 102–7, 124, 127, 134, 139–60, 175 intersubjectivity 56, 93–7, 119, 123, 124, 170–3 kantian constructivism 111–19 Korsgaard, Christine 114–17, 172, 178n. 2 liberal education 143, 145, 164 Mead, George H. 94, 136n. 4, 165, 169–73 medical ethics 6–7 metaethics 2, 7, 14, 114, 125, 153 multiculturalism 52, 57–61, 116, 148 mutual understanding 22, 56–7, 96 see also public understanding moral community 34–5, 45, 55, 57, 78n. 5, 84–6, 90, 133, 164–74 see also generalized other moral meaning (substantive-meaning and validity-meaning) 142–5, 163–4, 167–8 moral salience 182–3 morality versus ethics 48–50, 106, 107n. 2, 120n. 4, 127, 133–4, 139–40 moral theory generic versus complex 19, 36, 53, 84–8, 126, 140–4, 160

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National Curriculum (UK) 68–9, 126 Peirce, C. S. 97 performative contradiction 100 phronesis 4 pluralism 49, 113, 116 political liberalism 113 Pring, Richard 21 public justification 14, 19–20, 62–4, 67–8, 73, 76, 88–90, 98, 133 public morality/morality in the narrow sense 20, 37, 88–90, 94, 116, 126, 130, 132–3, 139, 143, 155, 160, 165–6, 168, 172–4 public reason 19, 25, 68, 73, 85–8, 111 public understanding 1–15, 22, 25, 27–31, 39, 77n. 2, 81, 87–8, 106–7, 111, 118–19, 123, 126, 128, 133, 140, 142–7, 158- 60, 163–7 rational discourse 82, 90, 93, 99, 100, 103, 118, 123–8, 148, 151, 155–6, 159 see also moral discourse Rawls, John 9, 25, 77n. 2, 108n. 10, 113–18, 120n. 1, 147 Raz, Joseph 29 reasons and reason-giving 43, 44, 53, 72, 75, 93, 103, 153 shareability of 92–106, 172 see also deliberative conditions reciprocal role-taking 109n. 19, 134, 152 see also deliberative conditions respect for persons 53, 83 Scanlon, T. M. 36 social cooperation 147 socialization 76, 87, 123, 126–7, 134–5, 164–5, 171, 173–6 solidarity 151, 167–8 speech-act 95, 100 Stark, Cynthia 147 technical rationality 5 theory of value 26, 31 see also conceptions of educational value theoretical activities 61, 118 transcendental argument 44, 47–8, 103–4, 164

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Index universalism 41–2, 114 universe of discourse 170 validity claims moral claims 95–8, 103–4, 164 and relationship to justification 96 vulnerable persons 35, 50, 84–6, 125, 147, 176

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187

White, John 6, 9 Wilson, John 8, 77n. 1, 129 worthwhile activities 14, 51–3 worthwhileness principle of 40, 48–9, 51–8, 66, 116–17

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