The Good Life of Teaching extends the recent revival of virtue ethics to professional ethics and the philosophy of teaching. It connects long-standing philosophical questions about work and human growth to questions about teacher motivation, identity, and development.

Foreword by Richard Smith vii

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction: Why We Need a Virtue Ethics of Teaching 1

Saints and scoundrels 1

A brief for teacherly self-cultivation 2

From the terrain of teaching to the definition of professional ethics 9

Outline of the argument 10

Part I The Virtues of Vocation: From Moral Professionalism to Practical Ethics

1 Work and Flourishing: Williams’ Critique of Morality and its Implications for Professional Ethics 21

Retrieving Socrates’ question 22

Modern moral myopia 25

What do moral agents want? 31

From moral professionalism to professional ethics 35

2 Worlds of Practice: MacIntyre’s Challenge to Applied Ethics 47

The architecture of MacIntyre’s moral theory 48

A closer look at internal goods 55

The practicality of ethical reflection 61

What counts as a practice: The proof, the pudding, and the recipe 63

Boundary conditions: Practitioners, managers, interpreters, and fans 69

3 Labour, Work, and Action: Arendt’s Phenomenology of Practical Life 85

Arendt’s singular project 87

Defining the deed 92

Hierarchy and interdependence in the vita activa 99

Praxis in the professions 101

4 A Question of Experience: Dewey and Gadamer on Practical Wisdom 111

The constant gardener 113

The existential and aesthetic dimensions of vocation 119

Our dominant vocation 125

Practical wisdom and the circle of experience 130

The open question 134

Part II a Virtue Ethics for Teachers: Problems and Prospects

5 The Hunger Artist: Pedagogy and the Paradox of Self-Interest 145

A blind spot in the educational imagination 145

The hunger artist 154

The very idea of a helping profession 161

This ripeness of self 170

6 Working Conditions: The Practice of Teaching and the Institution of School 177

A prima facie case for teaching as a practice 178

MacIntyre’s objection 190

Schools as surroundings 198

7 The Classroom Drama: Teaching as Endless Rehearsal and Cultural Elaboration 205

Education as the drama of cultural renewal 208

A false lead 214

Teaching as labour, work, and action 217

Education, shelter, and mediation 223

Teaching as endless rehearsal 227

Teaching as cultural elaboration 233

8 Teaching as Experience: Toward a Hermeneutics of Teaching and Teacher Education 241

Teaching as vocational environment 241

Batch processing, kitsch culture, and other obstacles to teacher vocation 248

The syntax of educational claims 254

The shape of humanistic conversation 258

Horizons of educational inquiry 266

Teacher education for practical wisdom 273

References 283

Index 305

What sort of work is teaching, and how does teaching shape the teacher? And why exactly do these questions matter within a 'helping profession' where altruistic talk of service dominates? In addressing these questions, this book offers not only a new statement in the philosophy of teaching but also an important advance in professional ethics. Drawing on recent developments in virtue ethics, Higgins demonstrates why an ethics of teaching must prioritize the question of the teacher's own self-enactment and self-cultivation, considering how the practice of teaching presents opportunities and obstacles for the teacher's own growth. By examining the major theories of practical philosophy on the terrain of teaching, this book sheds light on long-standing philosophical problems about self-interest and altruism, personal freedom and social roles, and practical wisdom and personhood. With the use of close reconstructions and vivid illustrations, he offers a fresh appreciation of a variety of neo-praxis philosophers including Hannah Arendt, John Dewey, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Alasdair MacIntyre.

A rigorous and accessible work of practical ethics, The Good Life of Teaching connects questions about the nature of teaching, teacher motivation and teacher education with more general questions about the relation of work to human flourishing. It offers a compelling vision of what it means to be a teacher, an indictment of the forces that compromise the practice of teaching, and a valuable account of how teaching can become a sustainable and self-fulfilling vocation.

"The question of the ethical life of the teacher is as old as philosophy; but in the contemporary world this has been transformed into a question of professional ethics. In The Good Life of Teaching, Chris Higgins brings this newer question of professionalism back to its philosophical roots. Anyone who experiences teaching as a vocation - in the sense of a calling - but also wants to participate in the vocation of teaching - in the sense of a profession – will want to read this book."
—Jonathan Lear, The University of Chicago

‘This is an exemplary book in philosophy of education. It combines intellectual rigour, ethical seriousness and imaginative verve in a finely pitched exploration of the nature of teaching. Philosophers will applaud how its argument for the pertinence to education of a wisely chosen group of key thinkers creatively extends our understanding of their work. More important, teachers will be deeply confirmed or transformed by its sane vision of what can make their work both noble and sustainable.’
—Joseph Dunne, Cregan Professor Emeritus in philosophy of education, Dublin City University