Lawrence Blum

Friendship, Altruism, and Morality

1. Altruistic Emotions and the Kantian View 2. Altruistic Emotions as Moral Motivation 3. Friendship, Beneficience, and Impartiality 4. Friendship as a Moral Phenomenon 5. Direct Altruism, Universalizability, and Consistency 6. Altruistic Emotion, Reason, and Perception 7. The Intrinsic Value of Altruistic Emotions 8. Will, Emotion, and the self.

Stereotypes And Stereotyping: A Moral Analysis

Abstract Stereotypes are false or misleading generalizations about groups held in a manner that renders them largely, though not entirely, immune to counterevidence. In doing so, stereotypes powerfully shape the stereotypers perception of stereotyped groups, seeing the stereotypic characteristics when they are not present, failing to see the contrary of those characteristics when they are, and generally homogenizing the group. A stereotyper associates a certain characteristic with the stereotyped group—for example Blacks with being athletic—but may do so with a form of cognitive investment in that association that does not rise to the level of a belief in the generalization that Blacks are athletic.

Race, Community and Moral Education: Kohlberg and Spielberg as civic educators

Literature on moral education has contributed surprisingly little to our understanding of issues of race and education. The creation of inter-racial communities in schools is a particularly vital antiracist educational goal, one for which public support in the United States has weakened since the 1970s. As contexts for antiracist moral education, such communities should involve racially plural groups of students learning about, and engaging in, common aims, some of which must be distinctly antiracist: an explicit concern to institute racially just norms within the community (reflecting, yet going beyond, Kohlbergs own communitarian justice focus in his Just Community schools) and to foster social justice in society generally; and an appreciation of distinct cultural and racial identities within a community. Popular culture has an important role to play in providing salient cultural imagery of inter-racial co-operation and antiracist activity. In this regard, several films of Stephen Spielberg, a film-mak...

The Poles, the Jews and the holocaust: reflections on an AME trip to Auschwitz

Two trips to Auschwitz (in 1989 and 2003) provide a context for reflection on fundamental issues in civic and moral education. Custodians of the Auschwitz historical site are currently aware of its responsibility to humanity to educate about the genocide against the Jews, as a morally distinct element in its presentation of Nazi crimes at Auschwitz. Prior to the fall of Communism in 1989, the sites message was dominated by a misleading civic narrative about Polish victimization by, and resistance to, Naziism. In this article, I discuss the attempts of many Polish intellectuals during the past twenty‐five years to engage in an honest and difficult civic project of facing up to their history, as it is entwined with anti‐Semitism, with the centuries‐long presence of Jews in Poland, and with their current absence. An interaction with a tour guide who took me to be criticizing Poles for their failure to help Jews during the Holocaust prompts further reflections on the difficulties of grasping the moral enormity of genocide, on the dangers of stereotyping, on the conditions under which it is appropriate to proffer and to withhold well‐founded moral judgements, and on the moral importance of appropriate feelings and attitudes when moral action is extraordinarily risky or dangerous.Two trips to Auschwitz (in 1989 and 2003) provide a context for reflection on fundamental issues in civic and moral education. Custodians of the Auschwitz historical site are currently aware of its responsibility to humanity to educate about the genocide against the Jews, as a morally distinct element in its presentation of Nazi crimes at Auschwitz. Prior to the fall of Communism in 1989, the sites message was dominated by a misleading civic narrative about Polish victimization by, and resistance to, Naziism. In this article, I discuss the attempts of many Polish intellectuals during the past twenty‐five years to engage in an honest and difficult civic project of facing up to their history, as it is entwined with anti‐Semitism, with the centuries‐long presence of Jews in Poland, and with their current absence. An interaction with a tour guide who took me to be criticizing Poles for their failure to help Jews during the Holocaust prompts further reflections on the difficulties of grasping the moral enormi...

Secularism, multiculturalism and same‐sex marriage: a comment on Brenda Almond’s ‘Education for tolerance’

Although Almond argues that the contemporary West has lost touch with the value of tolerance, I argue that that value applied to those of different religions and sexual orientations is too minimal a standard for a pluralistic society. I suggest, in the spirit of the work of Charles Taylor and Tariq Modood, the more robust standard of respect and acceptance. In addition, I have criticised Almond’s privileging of parental values over school values, seeing in that privileging a failure to recognise both the civic function of schooling in a pluralistic society and the professional responsibilities of teachers to provide a safe and stigma‐free environment of learning (a goal both educational and civic in character). I argue that Almond’s briefly presented rejection of same‐sex marriage and privileging of ‘biological’ families is insufficiently defended. Moreover within the philosophical framework of her own concerns about the weakening of a commitment to marriage in Western society in the past several decades, I argue that she should be more supportive of same‐sex marriage. Finally, I argue that her account of the problems occasioned by new immigrant groups, especially Muslims, in the West is very sketchy and fails to connect with her critique of secularism.

RACISM: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT ISN'T

Productive conversations about racial matters are too infrequent, both inside and outside classroom settings. Confusion about the meaning of “racism” contributes to the problem, and some guidelines will help. First, within a given category (actions, jokes, stereotypes, remarks, stereotypes, persons), we should confine “racism” to especially egregious wrongs in that category. Not every racial stereotype is racist. Not every racially insensitive action is a racist action. The distinct opprobrium attached to racism and racist can be retained and protected if we recognize that racism refers to racial inferiorization or racial antipathy, and that the different categorical forms of racism can all be related to either of those two definitions. Second, we should not confuse racism in one category with racism in another. A person who is prey to a racist stereotype is not necessarily “a racist”; nor does he or she necessarily operate from racist motives. Finally, racism by no means captures all of what can go wrong in the domain of race. There is a much larger terrain of moral ills in the racial domain than racism itself, and we should draw on our manifold linguistic resources — racial insensitivity, failure to recognize racial identity, racial ignorance, racial anxiety, racial injustice, racial homogenization, and so on — to express and describe moral disvalue in this domain.

Recognition and Multiculturalism in Education

Charles Taylor’s ‘Politics of Recognition’ has given philosophical substance to the idea of ‘recognition’ and has solidified a link between recognition and multiculturalism. I argue that Taylor oversimplifies the valuational basis of recognition; fails to appreciate the difference between recognition of individuals and of groups; fails to articulate the value of individuality; fails to appreciate the difference between race and ethnoculture as dimensions of identity; and fails to appreciate equality as a recognitional value. The value of recognition in education goes beyond multiculturalism, and the reasons for multiculturalism go far beyond recognitional concerns.

Three Educational Values for a Multicultural Society: Difference Recognition, National Cohesion and Equality.

Educational aims for societies comprising multiple ethnic, cultural and racial groups should involve three different values—recognizing difference, national cohesion and equality. Recognition of difference acknowledges and respects ethnocultural identities and in educational contexts also encourages mutual engagement across difference. National cohesion involves teaching a sense of civic attachment to a nation and to one’s fellow citizens of different groups and identities. ‘Multiculturalism’ has traditionally been understood to support the first value but not as much the second, a charge made by ‘interculturalism,’ a newer idea in Europe and francophone Canada. But Tariq Modood, this year’s Kohlberg Memorial Lecturer, has argued that national integration has always been a goal of multiculturalism. However, neither multiculturalism nor interculturalism has placed sufficient emphasis on equality as a social and educational ideal. Equality is a complex idea that involves both equal treatment by teachers of students from different groups, and also relative equal student outcomes among different groups.

Political identity and moral education: A response to Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind

In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt claims that liberals have a narrower moral outlook than conservatives—they are concerned with fairness and relief of suffering, which Haidt sees as individualistic values, while conservatives care about authority and loyalty too, values concerned with holding society together. I question Haidt’s methodology, which does not permit liberals to express concerns with social bonds that do not fit within an ‘authority’ or ‘loyalty’ framework and discounts people who support liberal positions but do not self-ascribe as liberals. I also argue that of the six ‘moral foundations’, fairness and relief of suffering are more fundamental values than authority and loyalty, which are virtues only if their objects are worthy. Moral education programs must also encourage students to recognize some values as more urgent than others, and permit inquiry into the actual reasons for political behavior other than professed value commitments.

Race and Class Categories and Subcategories in Educational Thought and Research.

Educational thought and research often operates with whole-race (‘Black’, ‘White’, and ‘Asian’) and whole-class (‘low-income’) categories. For both explaining disparities and assessing them normatively, it is essential to pay attention to subdivisions within those groups. Regarding affirmative action, on average African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants, and to some extent their offspring, have educational and motivational advantages over, and a distinct normative standing from, African Americans that is masked in the use of ‘Black’ as the operative category in affirmative action. With regard to assessing – both explanatorily and normatively – the performance of ‘high commitment’ charter schools, such as the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), that make substantial demands on parents of admitted students, compared to traditional public schools serving the same population, it is essential to internally differentiate the relevant race and class categories with respect to the degree of poverty, English language learner status, and parental capital.