Education Commons^™

The essay asks whether contemporary Western empirical studies of moral education, as exemplified in the distinctive research programs of Lawrence Kohlberg and Martin Hoffman, can enter into productive dialogue with the Neo-Confucian theories of Zhu Xi (1130-1200). The proposed dialogue proceeds in two stages. I begin with Zhu’s notion of “lesser learning” and the role therein of ritual, and consider their relations to Kohlberg’s ideas about the construction of moral rules and Hoffman’s findings concerning parental discipline (and particularly “induction”). The second stage turns to Zhu’s “greater learning” and its central concept of reverence, which I explain is best understood …

The essay asks whether contemporary Western empirical studies of moral education, as exemplified in the distinctive research programs of Lawrence Kohlberg and Martin Hoffman, can enter into productive dialogue with the Neo-Confucian theories of Zhu Xi (1130-1200). The proposed dialogue proceeds in two stages. I begin with Zhu’s notion of “lesser learning” and the role therein of ritual, and consider their relations to Kohlberg’s ideas about the construction of moral rules and Hoffman’s findings concerning parental discipline (and particularly “induction”). The second stage turns to Zhu’s “greater learning” and its central concept of reverence, which I explain is best understood …