ABSTRACT
There is at least one field of education, namely, moral education, in which analytic philosophy can still make a substantive contribution. For moral philosophers cannot be content to play merely the role of the philosopher of..., a role which Professor Scheffler rightly commended to philosophers of education. There is simply no flourishing non-philosophical first-level discipline, ethics, to which moral philosophy is related as philosophy of mathematics is related to mathematics, or philosophy of mind to psychology. All that is available, apart from simple conformity to the rules followed by members of one's peer group, are the more or less inspired 'teachings' of charismatic leaders whose life styles supplemented by their general pronouncements serve many people as guides to conduct. Philosophical theories in ethics, such as utilitarianism, do not purport to be philosophies of (or about) the morality of their authors' group or the morality of such leaders, but are offered as practical, first-level alternatives, by which anyone who believed in them, might attempt to solve the practical problems which confront him daily. However, the trouble with such philosophical theories is that they are too vague to give one clear directives, and that there are a great many different competing ones with little indication of how to choose between them.
