Virtues, ethics and moral development: Using Icelandic sagas in character education

Abstract

One possible approach to character education is through literature. The teacher looks for virtues in stories with her students and then these virtues are discussed to improve the students’ understanding of virtue concepts and hopefully make them more aware of virtues in their own lives. In preparation for a research project where one of the Icelandic sagas, Laxdæla saga, was taught in this way to teenagers, some of the main conditions of the teaching had to be summarized. This article discusses the main themes that come into play here and puts the teaching of Icelandic sagas into the context of character education.

The article discusses the basic assumptions of character education that are important here; the connection between virtues and ethics, the concept of a virtue situation, research on ethics in the Icelandic sagas, whether ethics in the sagas means the same as in modernity, whether the sagas are suitable material for character education, whether the ethical reality found in them is different from ours, and, finally, what kind of moral thinking could be the aim of character education.

The kind of character education used as the foundation for the research project is Aristotelian in nature as interpreted by the members of The Jubilee Centre for Character & Virtues at the University of Birmingham (cf. Kristján Kristjánsson, 2015). The discussion of character education deals with the importance it places on virtue, its emphasis on moral virtue and the general connection of virtues and ethics. It is suggested that this kind of character education may embrace a broader understanding of moral virtue than is commonly accepted. It is, however, argued that this only has a minor, if any, effect on how character education is practised.

The concept of a virtue situation is introduced. This refers to a situation, in which a character in a story finds herself, which is well suited to evaluating the character’s virtues. This may be a relatively mundane situation or one which is charged with moral tension. It is argued, furthermore, that such situations are easily found in the Icelandic sagas, which makes it a relatively simple task to discuss virtuous action in the context of the sagas.

The main ideas scholars have had about ethics in the saga literature are introduced. This is important for two reasons. Firstly, virtues are strongly connected to ethical views. Since most of the virtues covered in character education are moral virtues, much can be learnt about a character’s opinions of virtues from her ethical stance. Secondly, it would appear that the kind of ethics that dominates the saga world differs from the ethics prevalent in the modern Western world. When discussing why the characters in the sagas behaved in the way they do it helps to have an understanding of the differences in values between them and us.

To throw light on the difference between saga ethics and modern ethics, Gilligan’s (1993) model of moral development is used. In this context some criticisms of Kohlberg and Gilligan are discussed and it is explained that neither the content of Gilligan’s nor Kohlberg’s model is used here, but rather the basic point of view that each stage of development entails. Thus we can gain a rough understanding of how characters in the sagas generally think differently about ethical matters than people today.

The developmental model further helps us answer the question as to whether the sagas are suitable material for character education, given that the ethical reality found in them is different from ours, as well as showing us what kind of moral thinking could be the aim of character education.