Marginalized Knowledge: An Agenda for Indigenous Knowledge Development and Integration with Other Forms of Knowledge

Moral Formation

For Aristotle, virtue is something that is practiced and thereby learnt; it is habit. This clearly implies that for moral education, Aristotle obviously believes that one can teach people to be virtuous. Imagine oneself in dire financial stress one needs money, when all of a sudden one sees a wallet. One picks it up because there is no one around, after picking it up one open the wallet, the first thing one sees is that it is full of money. Obviously, the owner of the wallet just lost it soon after he cashed out from the bank. What does one do; does one count one’s luck, empty the wallet and throw the empty wallet away? This is an ethical question, one may not be aware that it is but indeed it is an ethical issue.

Let me go further, imagine that as one opens the wallet and then one realizes a picture or something that will give one a hint as to who does the wallet belong. Remember that one needs some cash. Will one then give the wallet to its rightful owner or will one’s decision be motivated by one’s personal relationship with the rightful owner of the lost wallet? But also remember that one’s character and moral integrity is put on the test here. Remember our decisions are expressions of our character. For me, virtue is much more than traits of personality; it is a moral excellent quality of character.

Aristotle’s philosophy about moral formation offers helpful insights. Following on the footsteps of Aristotle, a Dutch theologian Johannes van der Ven describes moral formation as the informal and formal education process that aims at developing people of character, who embody what Paul Ricoeur calls, ‘the good and the right and the wise.’

For Aristotle, virtue refers to a balance between two extremes or points of exaggerations namely Excess and Deficiency, which is arrived at through the wisdom of knowing what to do in a given situation.

Virtue is oriented toward one’s desires in one’s own situation within one’s own community, which indicates the ends being arrived for and the means to these ends. Virtue ethics is about personal dispositions and virtue ethics has to do with the person himself/herself.

In all ethical decisions, if one understands Aristotle correctly, then one requires the criterion of wisdom, which Aristotle refers to as practical-ethical wisdom (phronesis). For St. Thomas Aquinas this practical wisdom phronesis is referred to as the virtue of prudence; which is defined as “a true and reasoned state of capacity to act with regard to the things which are good and bad for [hu]man[kind], Wallie (1965:6). Prudence in this context then refers to a good sense in practical sense. This is the virtue which helps us to make the decision whether or not return the wallet one found and knows who it belongs to or to keep it and use the money and credit cards in it for oneself. Phronesis helps us to balance our interests with the interests of others.

The concept of moral regeneration is increasingly used as an encouragement for societal moral formation in South Africa. There is a reason for this; and the reason is obvious, all other ethical theories used to rebuild morality among South Africans have collapsed and never brought desired results; it is for this reason I suggest a return to the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of virtues. This supports MacIntyre’s (1981:1) position that modern ethical theories lost sight of its roots. In his book ‘After Virtue’ he strongly opinionates for the adoption of an aretaic approaches to ethics. He thinks that morality has suffered what he refers to as a catastrophe.

What Aristotle is suggesting in his account of virtue ethics is that by getting into a habit of using our rationality (reason) and repeatedly doing what is virtuous, living a life of virtue becomes second-nature. One can, therefore, without much effort get into the habit of doing the right thing given his/her character or disposition.