6 - Confirming Moral Agency

Summary

Chapter 6 considers a conception of the self that is especially conducive, if not essential, to becoming aware of and sensitive to one’s obligation to care for others. It argues that awareness of and sensitivity to the ethical imperative of caring for others requires the confirmation of an enriched version of oneself grounded in a personal sense of moral agency. This sense of agency entails the realisation that, within reasonable limits, one is free to choose a life path, understand the consequences of the path one has chosen, and adjust it as one sees fit. Such a deepened sense of self (and self-responsibility) is necessary in order to receive and attend to the needs and feelings of others. To pursue ethical education conceived in this way, both faith-based and common schools of those societies that initiate into particular traditions and those that educate believers and non-believers from a diversity of worldviews ought to nurture moral agency. Pedagogies of the sacred, which initiate students into intelligent spiritualties that give expression to particular identities, and pedagogies of difference, which teach and learn from and about a variety of worldviews, embody educational processes critical to that end.