Philosophy,casuistry,and moral development

Moral educators have little to learn from the moral theories in which philosophers routinely trade. These theories — including those by Slote, Hume, and Kant — leave behind the concrete world in which the moral educator labors. As interesting as they may be, they merely devise alternative routes to the same destination — to the main general features of morality as we know it. It is not so much these general features but the particular forms of moral life under which children and their tutors live that give specificity to duties and rights, content to virtues, and shape to purpose. To navigate successfully through this stuff of moral life, the developing youth needs not only a good heart but a casuistical temper.