The Philosophical Foundations of Character Virtue Development

This chapter introduces and examines some of the philosophical foundations of character virtue development. While noting the existence of other models, the chapter focuses specifically on the philosophical principles central to a neo-Aristotelian model. For the identified models of character education, it is the neo-Aristotelian one that is most clearly and systematically grounded in explicit philosophical assumptions. The chapter covers core aspects of the neo-Aristotelian model, including the general philosophical foundations, the conceptual repertoire, categories of virtue, components and subcomponents of virtue, the special role of phronesis, virtue development, and stimulating virtue development. While the chapter concentrates squarely on the philosophical foundations of the neo-Aristotelian model, some attention is also paid to psychological and educational research that sheds further light on the conceptualizations of character and virtue development.