Moral Education and the Ethics of Self-Cultivation

In Western philosophy, there has been strong interest in the ethical ideal of self-cultivation after a revival of virtue ethics that gave central importance to the development of moral character after the publication of G. E. M. AnscombeΓÇÖs (1958: 1) seminal article ΓÇ£Modern Moral PhilosophyΓÇ¥. Virtue ethics highlighting moral character is one of the three major approaches in normative ethics, the other two being deontology and consequentialism. This volume on the East-West dialogues in philosophy of education analyzes of all three classical traditions ΓÇô Aristotelian, Confucian, and Buddhist ΓÇô revealing that although each provides its own distinct figure of the virtuous person, they are remarkably similar in their conception and emphasis on moral self-cultivation as a practical answer to how humans become virtuous.