ABSTRACT
Human interest in moral education probably has its source in a general concern with inducting the young into socially acceptable forms of conduct, which is as old as recorded history. But, of course, whilst any such process is ostensibly a practical matter, the smallest reflection upon it must give rise to awkward theoretical questions. How, for example, do we determine the extent of what is socially acceptable; must all agree, must most agree, must none disagree? Moreover, if all do not agree, what room is there for legitimate dissent from the majority view? More seriously, might not reflective dissent open the possibility that social consensus or obedience to custom does not necessarily determine what is right in some deeper moral sense? Indeed, it was arguably the greatest insight of the Greek philosopher Socrates — the effective founder of Western ethics — to have held against the pre-Socratic Sophists that a good human life is a matter neither of conformity to convention nor the pursuit of self-interest, but of obedience to a knowledge of the right or the good accessible only to the operations of reason. At all events, Socrates was probably the first to observe a clear distinction between what is socially acceptable and what is morally right which, whilst frequently blurred in subsequent thought, is nevertheless of the highest importance for clear thinking about moral education.
