Virtue Ethics and Education from Late Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century ed. by Andreas Hellerstedt (review)

This rich, often engaging, collection of studies demonstrates both the rigours and vagaries of interdisciplinary research. The book comprises nine studies that track Scandinavian cultural, political, and educational dynamics in "virtue ethics," variously defined, from the ancients to the eighteenth century. The Introduction and Conclusion, both by Andreas Hellerstedt, are very helpful.

Many of the contributions are focused on Scandinavian themes broadly enough rendered to remind readers of more general European expressions of "virtue ethics" education. However, I hankered for a glimpse of Hamlet or even Shakespeare—neither appears in the Index, although Jennie Nell does draw, indirectly, on Shakespearean issues via her consideration of Stephen Greenblatt's work (208–209). Some orienting anticipation of Hume and/or Kant might also have been helpful, especially in Michaela Vance's study, but Hume is not mentioned at all and Kant just once. Erasmus' name and influence appear more frequently.

Historical accounts of pedagogical processes grind the book's primary lenses, but philosophers (e.g., Foucault) and certain cultural studies do balance perspectives somewhat.

Hellerstedt's Introduction invokes Plato's question in the Meno, "Can virtue be taught?" to set the book's theme. But the book does not really address that question, certainly not directly. It is expressly raised only occasionally (cf. Biorn Tjallin's paper at 59 and 75). But Plato's ghost hangs over the whole book's explorations of governing cultural educational institutions. They are treated as experiments in teaching virtue, but end up as experiments in teaching.

The "mirrors for princes" literary/dramatic genre features in many of these studies. It does invite, even incite, us to reflect on "reflection" itself, but nowhere does so explicitly. Hellerstedt addresses this spectral dynamic in his conclusion, "Cracks in the Mirror." He suggests that the book may help define the historical–cultural experience of virtue education as "a slow shift from ends to means": from "politics as the means of achieving virtue" to "virtue as a means for preserving the state or even the personal interest of the ruler."

I think he is right. The "slow shift" in "changing conceptions of virtue" represented in "mirrors for princes" from "scholastic scholasticism" to "later, secular natural law" (281) maps the book's theological plot. But regretfully, in my view, the book ends up missing a core philosophical issue that Plato's "virtue" (arete) raises in virtually all pedagogical political controversies, then and now. Is virtue (arete) a "skill" (techne)—as Protagoras and his ilk teach and practise? Or is virtue an urgently problematic capacity (hexis) for living human development and growth, as Plato did? The book reveals, in my view, that a lot turns on what Hellerstedt sees as this plot-"shift" from ends to means in a comprehensive topical treatment of "virtue ethics and education." The book resembles a catalogue of pedagogical techniques rather than as an exploration of various attempts to grasp pedagogical issues in behaviour or its improvement. It does not try to explain or justify, or even model, what behaviours the various techniques aim to produce. What virtue(s) do "mirrors" reflect, or reveal, or promise for lives lived? The core question "Can virtue be taught?" lurks, like King Hamlet's ghost, over this scholarly project. Appropriately perhaps, it lurks as a fleeting spectre. Despite my complaint, however, I think this book offers a valuable and timely model of attention to life lived prereflectively in front of a lot of mirrors.

Erik Eliasson's opening study presents Eustratius, not only Macrobius, as a likely "source" for Neoplatonist views of progressive acquisition of the cardinal virtues in the Latin commentators on the Nicomachean Ethics. This introduces theological considerations that do make for an organic and engaging book. Eliasson, in effect (51–52), encourages a sort...