Cultivating imagination: Ethics, education and literature

The purpose of this paper is to first critique approaches to ethics education based on the application of frameworks and models for ethical decision making. We argue that underlying such approaches is a number of assumptions which fail to fully capture the nature of ethics and the nature of the individual and suggest that when applied in the classroom such would only offer limited possibilities for developing students’ moral and imaginative capacities. The paper then offers an alternative perspective of the nature of the individual and the link between the self and the ethical. Rather than regarding the individual as an autonomous decision maker who sporadically interacts with the ethical domain we, following Dewey, J. (1983, 1987 [Dewey J. Human nature and conduct. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press; 1983; Dewey J. Art as experience. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press; 1987]) conceive of the individual as a self in the making and suggest a closer nexus between the individual and the ethical. In this paper ethics is seen as permeating all aspects of our lives and always being relevant. For Dewey, imagination is at the core or moral inquiry and based on this perspective we make a case for using literature and stories for ethics education. We discuss the role of fiction in cultivating the moral imagination (Dewey, 1983, 1987; Fesmire, 2003 [Fesmire S. John Dewey and moral imagination: pragmatism in ethics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press; 2003]), and show why teaching ethics through literature is likely to yield more fruitful results than approaches based solely on frameworks and models.