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This chapter addresses the complaints thrown against morality by contemporary critics. Critics say that morality requires one to be selfless and to think about others' welfare to the detriment of one's personal interest. This chapter sets out to challenge this “bias towards others” notion and argues that morality is an intensely personal affair. The Socratic ideal of self-perfection is cited wherein it was believed that the chief duty of man is to care for his soul. Kant's philosophy is also reiterated which says that there can be no moral duty if there is no duty to oneself. On the other hand, the chapter also defends this self-perfecting notion against charges of egoism, narcissism, and the idea that prudence makes one man care for himself and not morality. The chapter argues it is the moral self and its moral traits of character that are placed at center stage by the care-of-soul doctrine, not the nonmoral self and its nonmoral traits of character.

This chapter explains how a person develops through the processes of socialization, environmental interaction and self-concept formation. Important psychological concepts such as self-esteem, self-concept, self-image and the ‘moral self’ are discussed. This important chapter describes the many environmental influences on the development of ‘the self’ within the Confucian context.

The chapter addresses an issue of a mainly intrasubjective failure in psychopathy, here described as a lack in moral self-realization. The author takes a phenomenological approach, drawing especially on Martin Heidegger’s related notion of comportment (Verhaltung). The findings are aligned to the notion of a scope of possibilities. It is argued that there is both a restriction in the case of psychopathy—as psychopaths cannot act morally—and a pathological widening of such a scope, in that psychopaths transgress moral and social rules. Psychopathy involves an impairment of a general evaluative sense of oneself and the world. The author makes use of Harry Frankfurt’s notion of caring. This implies that psychopaths might suffer from defects not only in respect to specific moral capacities, but more generally in terms of general mental human faculties, which might show in the realm of morality.

This chapter illuminates the construction of caring selves in the work of feeding the urban poor. It develops the idea of moral selving in the context of charitable action and makes clear how structural arrangements guide self-betterment while concurrently individual actions make possible particular structural arrangements. It provides an opportunity to consider how volunteerism, charity, rehabilitation, social movement activism, and welfare provision are not mutually exclusive practices but rather are configured in complicated and often contradictory ways in the context of both the actions of different individuals and the work of different organizations. It addresses how the formulation of moral selving and its particular manifestations at Loaves & Fishes and The Salvation Army fits into social psychological understandings of the emotional self and orientation of the self, as well as the feminist literature on the caring self. Furthermore, it indicates an intriguing correlation between the moral rhetoric and institutional structure at The Salvation Army, its emphasis on honor, and the predominantly male nature of the volunteer force and their predominantly working-class roots. The Salvation Army, with its resemblance to muscular Christianity, promised reclaimed manhood through hard work and battle with the evils of the body.

Emmanuel Levinas is familiar with the theory of the moral self in neo-Kantianism, particularly in the work of Hermann Cohen, and with Martin Heidegger's criticism of its deficiencies. Nevertheless, this chapter argues that Levinas is in significant conversation with Cohen's thinking, that his own construing of the human person reflects a correction of Cohen's view in accordance with lessons learned from Heidegger's phenomenological approach, and that he puts forward a Cohen-like view in order to overcome the deficiencies of Heidegger's account. The chapter confines its remarks to what is pertinent in Cohen's thought to Levinas's account of the self. For this reason, it proposes to emphasize the last work of Cohen, for only after Cohen had completed his “existential turn” could his work enter into dialogue with what is germane to that of Levinas: Cohen's conception of the human person as a unique individual, an “I”.

Remez is the quest for spiritual and moral self-development, aligned with public practices or enhanced by special interpretations of Scripture and its personalized appropriation. Among the practices is the cultivation of cultural memory, and its internalization for self-awareness and moral probity. A series of textual examples are taken up, derived from a liturgical ritual in Judaism that encourages memory of several historical events from Scripture. These provide the basis for hermeneutical meditations on their content, and their application to one’s spiritual life. Among these examples is the duty to remember the Exodus and Sinai, suffering at the hands of Amalek and idolatry, and the Sabbath. Each is discussed in turn, with ongoing theological and psychological reflections. The challenge is an integrated and God-oriented self, mindfully present to the tasks and events of the world.

This chapter capitalizes on a substantial body of recent research on the literary and rhetorical construction of “lives” (especially “holy lives” in hagiography) and “selves” (moral subjects and agents) in the late-ancient Greco-Roman World. It explores a whole other form of tragical mimesis in early Christian literary culture, namely, the rhetorical and theological profiling of the Christian self as a “tragic self,” a self consciously aware of its own finitude, mortality, and vulnerability to tragic circumstance. The bulk of the chapter closely examines three powerful autobiographical profiles of the tragic Christian self articulated by three of the most prolific late-ancient Christian authors: Gregory Nazianzen, John Chrysostom, and Augustine. While each writer, especially Gregory Nazianzen in his autobiographical poetry, rhetorically reconstructed his own life as an unfolding tragedy, each also developed an objective profile of the tragic Christian self that could apply more broadly to Christian experience of life in the flesh. Though these writers all revere the goodness and beauty of creation, and the integrity of the imago Dei, and though they fervently assert the providence and wisdom of the Creator, there is neither naïvety nor quixotism about the arena of creation in which life is lived, endured, enjoyed, the arena where confrontation of evil and suffering is endemic.

We argue in this chapter that moral development and identity formation are not disjunctive topics, and that morality and identity ramify in the personal formation of emerging adults in ways that have dispositional implications for how the rest of their lives go. Moral self-identity is crucial to living a life of purpose and for setting one’s life projects on a pathway that contributes to well-being, generativity, and integrity. We first review research on the role of moral purpose in personality development and the conditions that encourage it. We then review the major ways that self-identity has been conceptualized in terms of statuses, processes, and narratives, with particular emphasis on the achievement of identity maturity and its contribution to successful adaptation. We then discuss moral self-identity more directly and outline gaps in the literature and possible lines of future research.

Building upon chapter 3’s analysis of moral habituation as the first element of the practice of moral self-cultivation, this chapter continues the analysis of its basic structure. There are three cornerstones of the practice: relational understanding, reflective self-examination, and intentional self-direction of moral development. Each of these is subjected to a detailed comparative analysis, examining its appearance in the classical philosophical texts of Aristotelian, Confucian, and Buddhist virtue ethics. Careful attention is paid not only to the similarities among these culturally distinct appearances, but also the unique ways in which each element is integrated in the incommensurable moral visions of virtue offered by each tradition. At the end of each analysis, however, we reflect upon how this element of the practice of moral self-cultivation might relate to our own contemporary circumstances, and the unprecedented challenge of cultivating global technomoral virtues for the 21st century.

The chapter presents a critique of the idea that morality is impersonal and an investigation of how and to what extent personal features of our lives may be morally relevant and shape us as moral agents. In doing so, the chapter explains why moral life resists theorisation of the form criticised in Chapter 2, and it provides a better understanding of the challenges involved in developing a form of moral philosophy that can take the particularities of moral life into consideration. The chapter opens with a clarification of the approach and the central concepts of chapters 5 and 6, before turning to two suggestions of how to account for the personal dimension of moral life in terms of agent-relativity and strong moral self-definition. As these suggestions are shown to be inadequate, this leads to an investigation of the role of personal particularities in the moral formation and the moral positions of individuals. The centrality of the personal in moral life furthermore creates a demand on the subject to engage in justification in relation to others and self-understanding in relation to oneself, where self-understanding in many cases is to be understood as a process of both self-discovery and self-determination; of striving to settle both who one is and who one wants to be.

The focus of this chapter is the interrelationship of personal and professional ethics in education, and the effect of differing social-political contexts on the development of the ‘moral self’ of teachers. The authors do this through a case study which compares practices in teacher education in Finland and in England within a conceptual framework provided by the application of Bourdieu's (1990) concepts of ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ to Rest's (1986) four dimensions of moral development- moral sensitivity, moral judgement and moral motivation leading to moral character. The movement of initial teacher education out of universities into schools is identified as a factor impeding the development of moral character in English student teachers. The authors’ personal reflections indicated that a way forward may be in moving away from a focus on government imposed accountability towards individual and collective responsibility as in Finland. The chapter concludes with a synthesis of reflections presented as a framework for considering teacher identity as moral self to support realignment.

Chapter 22 reports on a longitudinal study of early emerging adults, aged 18 to 21, that investigated three aspects of character: character traits (Big Five facets), character strivings (based on Values in Action character strengths), and moral self-attributes (self-evaluations of moral behavior). The study posed three questions: What is character like in early emerging adulthood and how does it change? How do aspects of character interrelate? What does character prospection reveal about which aspects of character are important, ideal, and expected to improve? EResults indicate that 18- to 21-year olds see themselves as typically acting in good character but also as improving somewhat in college; those higher in moral self-attributes also have higher levels of character traits and strivings. Simultaneously, emerging adults project ideal character levels higher than their current levels, expect character traits to improve in the near future, and view character striving as highly important.

This chapter examines the development of textual cohesion, the qualities of the story schema encouraged by the school, and the underlying analysis by a categorical thinking about persona. Studying model exercises rather than teachers' descriptions of the curriculum offers a better opportunity for detecting traces of students' use and practice, although the exercises are neither archival records nor the equivalent of the modern researcher's observations. The chapter begins with fable, because fable provides both the first time the child gets to tell a story. Fable anticipates much of the justification of the difficult work of schooling: arduous obedience and routine are seen as a deferral of reward and as a practice in self-direction. After this discussion of fable, the chapter turns to the sententia, an exercise that provides mini narratives of the movement from powerless student to powerful speaker. The world of the fable will make clear that sententia was an important element in composing a moral self, which is the schooled subjectivity that treats the self as the object and font of a moralizing discourse. With the sententia the boy will adopt for the first time an authoritative persona whose speech is a series of commands.

This chapter covers both the imperfect duties of natural and moral self-perfection and the positive duties of conscience and moral self-scrutiny—these latter duties partly constitutive of the duty of moral self-perfection. Regarding the duty of conscience, the following questions are addressed: 1. What is conscience—its nature and role in moral life? 2. How is conscience experienced? 3. Can it be mistaken? 4. What are the duties of conscience and how are they justified? 5. What is the connection between conscience and blameworthiness? The duty of moral self-scrutiny foregrounds the moral importance of sincerity and impartiality in assessing one’s moral character. The chapter also explores the fundamental duty of moral self-perfection and Kant’s puzzling claim that it is both narrow and perfect yet also wide and imperfect. Also discussed are Kant’s views on the ethical treatment of animals, concluding with remarks on Kant’s moral teleology.

Chapter 5 concludes the analysis of the practice of moral self-cultivation with its final three elements. Together, these complete the practice of moral self-cultivation in a manner that enables the subject to gradually perfect his or her acquired virtues over the course of his or her life and, ideally, integrate them in the comprehensive virtue of practical or moral wisdom. These three elements are moral attention, prudential judgment, and appropriate extension of moral concern. As in previous chapters, each element is subjected to a careful comparative analysis of its appearances in the texts of classical Aristotelian, Confucian, and Buddhist philosophical ethics; for example, Aristotle’s “prudential judgment” is compared and contrasted to Buddhist upāya kaushalya, or “skillful means.” This is followed by a reflection on the potential importance of each element for global technomoral virtues and practices.

This chapter discusses the implications of facework for elucidating the relationship between morality and social mobility in the face of hardship. By imparting incremental social and economic wins, facework provides a low-cost though potentially high-impact tactic for disadvantaged youth to improve their lot in life in contemporary Iran. Simultaneously, in playing the game day in and day out, youth come to embody the moral dispositions endorsed by the game. In internalizing and abiding by an ethical code that derives from cultural norms and traditions, face-savers practice the moral prescriptions encouraged by the state. Simultaneously, in following the rules, face-savers are able to pursue their dreams and better their lives—a process indicative of their agency and their articulation of a space of influence within the hegemony of the state. While it remains unclear how far the game can take a person, what is certain is that facework reveals a new arena for citizen engagement in Iran.

Drawing on empirical research from psychology, this chapter gives an account of moral grandstanding. Grandstanding is a contribution to public moral discourse that is significantly motivated by the desire that others think one is morally respectable. This chapter then answers several important questions about moral grandstanding. Must grandstanders think they are morally great? Do grandstanders always know that they are trying to impress others? Can grandstanders speak the truth? Does grandstanding work? Is grandstanding just a left-wing problem? And are the authors themselves grandstanding? The chapter concludes by explaining the differences between moral grandstanding and virtue signaling.