It is widely accepted that moral education is quintessential to facilitating and maintaining prosocial attitudes. What moral education should entail and how it can be effectively pursued remain hotly disputed questions. InConfucian Ritual and Moral Education, Colin J. Lewis examines these issues by appealing to two traditions that have until now escaped comparison: Vygotskys theory of learning and psychosocial development and ancient Confucianisms ritualized approach to moral education. Lewis argues first, that Vygotsky and the Confucians complement one another in a manner that enables a nuanced, empirically sound understanding of how the Confucian ritual education model should be construed and how it could be deployed; and second, just as ritual education in the Confucian tradition can be explicated in terms of modern developmental theory, this ancient notion of ritual can also serve as a viable resource for moral education in a contemporary, diverse world.

Colin J. Lewis is instructor of philosophy and director of the Asian studies minor at the University of Colorado.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Adaptation and Education: (Non)nativism and Moral Development

Chapter 2: Education and Moral Education: Vygotskys Incomplete Account

Chapter 3: Confucian Ritual: A Definition

Chapter 4: The Ritual Cultivation Model: A Nuanced Interpretation

Chapter 5: Ritual and Moral Education: How and Why it Works

Chapter 6: Is it New? Is it Needed? Rituals Place Alongside Other Tools

Chapter 7: Orthopraxy and Intuition: The Importance of a Ritual Framework

Chapter 8: Developing Promoral Classrooms: Adding Ritual to the Toolkit

Bibliography