Emotional Example in Aristotle: A Way of Teaching the Worth of Things

Abstract

Aristotle’s insight that refined feelings generate motivations for action has profoundly influenced psychology, yet the role of refined emotional example to teach virtue has remained largely unnoticed by his commentators. This paper offers a reappraisal of emotional example as integral to the formation of virtue, and attributable to Aristotelian insights. I note that Aristotle establishes preconditions for a role for emotional example: a focus on children in the earliest years, the role of imitation in learning, and refined emotional responses as appraisals or judgements. I offer a reading of two texts offering an appreciation of refined emotional example as a way teaching virtue and foundations of moral judgement. I note the presence of emotional example in childhood studies and suggest that this paper serves to inform childhood studies more precisely in the light of Aristotelian principles, and to correct omissions in Aristotelian commentaries.