ERIC Number: EJ834804
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Feb
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0309-8249
EISSN: N/A
Passionate Utterance and Moral Education
Munday, Ian
Journal of Philosophy of Education, v43 n1 p57-74 Feb 2009
This paper explores Stanley Cavell's notion of "passionate utterance", which acts as an extension of/departure from (we might read it as both) J. L. Austin's theory of the performative. Cavell argues that Austin having made the revolutionary discovery that truth claims in language are bound up with how words perform, then gets bogged by convention when discussing what is done "by" words. In failing to account for the less predictable, unconventional aspects of language, the latter therefore washes his hands of the expressive passionate aspects of speech. To ignore such aspects is to ignore an important moral dimension of language. Finally, I bring Cavell's approach to bear on the epistemic criterion, which Michael Hand applies in his paper "Should We Teach Homosexuality as a Controversial Issue?". I suggest that Hand's approach, by failing to account for the linguistic dimension of truth and the expressive quality that accompanies this dimension, presents an overly narrow conception of moral education.
Descriptors: Ethical Instruction, Homosexuality, Rhetorical Theory, Moral Values, Discourse Analysis, Linguistic Theory, Language Role, Language Usage, Expressive Language, Sociolinguistics, Educational Philosophy, Controversial Issues (Course Content), Epistemology
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
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Language: English
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