Looking to the development of ethics, I’m pleased to share some of Dr. Bill Robinson’s writing on how Kaplan works within the system of Aristotelian virtue ethics.

What makes the virtue ethics approach particularly sympatico with Kaplan (and with Dewey for that matter) is four-fold. First, it’s communal aspect. It accepts that different communities (or civilizations) will have a different set of values to guide their conduct. Second… it is an approach that had become traditional within Judaism going back at least to Maimonides, which in more recent times can be found within Mussar. Third, it aligns with Dewey’s belief in the innate capacity of children to develop their moral character and the ability of education to nurture this process. Finally, it contains the same basic categories as Kaplan – institutional communal life, moral traditions (language and literature), practices (patterns of conduct), virtues (values) and creativity, but links them together very differently. 

In After Virtue, the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre describes the integral relation of these categories:

As educators and as parents, do we want our children just to know what to do according to the prescribed traditions? Or do we want them to be creative participants in the Jewish project of co-creating a just and caring world and, in so doing, renewing our traditions? Do we want their compliance or commitment? Do we want their conformity or creativity, as the future of this world lies increasingly in the balance and our traditions do not yet have all the answers? For me, the answer is clear; the challenge is making the journey together across a partially glimpsed landscape into an uncertain future.