Putting emotion into the self: A response to the 2008 Journal of Moral Education Special issue on moral functioning

This paper takes as its starting point the Journal of Moral Education Special Issue (September, 2008, 37[3]) 'Towards an integrated model of moral reasoning'. Although explicitly post-Kohlbergian, the authors in this Special Issue do not, I argue, depart far enough from Kohlberg's impoverished notion of the role of the affective in moral life-or when they do so depart, they incorporate emotions as mere intuitive thrusts in an essentially polarised two-system view of the moral self. Prior to that complaint, I sketch an account of two contrasting self-paradigms: a 'dominant' cognitive, anti-realist (constructivist) paradigm and an 'alternative' realist and emotion-based one. I explore the implications of the latter paradigm, which I endorse, for our understanding of the 'emotional self': a self imbued with and constituted by (potentially rationally grounded) emotions. I finally contrast that understanding with the one permeating the Special Issue and elicit some educational implications of the alternative paradigm.