Intuitionism and Rationalism in the Philosophy of Ethics and Ethical Education

One of the serious topics in theories of ethical education is about their philosophical basis about “ethical knowledge” that each one deals with interpretation of “ethical concepts and propositions” based on its own specific philosophy and makes relations between the nature of human ethical knowledge and philosophical nature of these concepts and propositions. Having a review on the ideas of David Ross and Lawrence Kohlberg¡ this paper has a comparative approach between principles of the philosophy of ethics in two intuitionism and ratiocination approaches and their implications in ethical education. Intuitionists believe that the ethical precepts are valid independent of each other and intuitive understanding would be enough to justify them. For ratiocination¡ ethical precepts are valid when their deduction from each other and their relations are proposed reasonably. Also¡ when explaining the human ethical recognition¡ the intuitionism approach believes that ethical concepts are naturally intuitive and the ethical propositions being independent of each other are valid either and consequently¡ human will understand ethical precepts by his own intuition not by the power of thought and reasoning. On the other hand¡ for ratiocination approach¡ the validity of ethical precepts is due to a reasonable relation between a precept and ethical common principles and consequently¡ the discursive thinking is the ethical recognition tool¡ not intuition. By adapting intuitionism and ratiocination¡ we can achieve “critical intuitionism” based on which we will intuitively come to a judgment in each ethical situation that we need to measure our information and emotions in relation to that situation. Acceptance of this philosophical principle leads to following two principles in ethical education: 1. By hearing¡ seeing and experiencing the ethical experiences the trainee will be noted. 2. The trainee should learn critical thinking in regard to ethical judgments.