Challenges for Religious Education by Richard Pring;

Author:Richard Pring;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2019-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

The examined life: duty and conscience

By contrast with the above objection to addressing rationally the values to be pursued in life, it was the claim of Socrates at his trial before the court at Athens, and answering the charge that he ‘had corrupted the minds of the young’, that the ‘unexamined life is not worth living’ (Plato Apology). Getting the youth of Athens to examine their lives had been part of Socrates’ mission. But the ‘examined life’ requires the giving of reasons as to what is or is not worth living for. Therefore, it is to the distinctive type of reasoning in addressing the ‘examined life’ to which we must turn, starting with what, in the words of the American principal, ‘makes our children more human’.

The first aspect of what constitutes ‘more human’ concerns the manner in which one lives and relates to other people – the ‘dispositions’ through which one sees people or problems in a particular way and relates to them accordingly. Such dispositions or virtues (those, for example, of caring, compassion, patience, courage) have their contrary dispositions or vices (those of indifference, lack of sympathy, impatience, cowardice), and therefore the virtues are in need of nurturing so that one learns how to be virtuous and thereby how to see, and thus act towards, situations and people in a humane way. Learning to be ‘fully human’ would seem to require the development of such dispositions and virtues, often demanding a struggle against the temptations to pursue a self-centred and pleasure-seeking life.

The second, though connected, aspect of such an ‘examined life’ lies in the sense of duty, the ‘having a conscience’ about matters for which one can, and should, be held responsible and about the manner of conducting oneself as is reflected in the different virtues. Such conscience is shown in the use of the word ‘ought’. ‘Ought’ is used in two different, but related, senses. When one says, ‘If you want to get to London by 10 a.m., you ought to catch that bus’, one is using the word purely hypothetically – ‘catching the bus’ is a necessary means to achieving a specific goal, whether or not such a goal is worth pursuing. However, when one uses the word ‘ought’ categorically, as when one says, ‘You ought not to tell a lie’, then one is proclaiming an absolute value, one which is held neither as a means to some further end nor as a personal choice.

The question then concerns how far would it be possible to live with others in society, first, in a totally non-virtuous way (for even amongst thieves there must be a sense of loyalty) and, second, without any sense of duty – without submitting to an ‘unconditional ought’?

That would be extremely difficult because of the obligations which arise from the inevitable social relations with others in the community, as in the case, for example, of making promises. ‘To promise’ would not make sense unless it carried an obligation to do as one said one

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