Three great resources for jump-starting ethical conversations in SL are Plato’sMeno, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in theRepublic, and Aristotle’s thoughts on friendship. While these may sound like dense philosophical sources, they are quite readable and create a classroom drama that engages students in self-reflection and ethical thinking.
Plato’s Meno
In this dialogue, Plato’s Socrates attempts to teach Meno to think and reason, but Meno is stuck in a traditional model of education. He really only wants clear answers to complex questions. He’s like a student trained to think that education is nothing more than memorizing and regurgitating information on a standardized test. Socrates, like a Service Learning professor, tries to shake Meno out of his traditional model of education to see that there aren’t easy answers and Meno needs to take a more active role in seeking out understanding. Using this dialogue in the Service Learning classroom helps students overhear their educational defaults and how they can be overcome.
For a full text of the Meno,click here.
Plato’s Cave
By reading just this section of theRepublic,螺柱ents can be given an allegory that helps them think about their own education, what it means to be educated, how we become educated, and it helps them ask questions about their relationship to the community partners.
对书的七世Republic,click here.
For an image of the cave,click here.
Consider asking students to reflect on questions like:
- Where are you in the cave?
- What do the walls around the campus signify?
- Where is Meno in the Cave?
- How do you emerge from the cave? Help others emerge?
Aristotle on Friendship
Part of Aristotle’sNichomachean Ethicspresents an interesting breakdown of the kinds of friendship, which can help students raise ethical questions about themselves and their relationship to the course’s community partners.
We recommend reading Book VIII, Chapters 1-3,click here for the text.
According to Aristotle, friends must:
- have good will for one another…
- …on the basis of one of three motives [usefulness, pleasure, or the good]
- be aware of one another’s good will [reciprocity, equality: about giving and receiving affection, but primarilygiving]
- be equals: the equality might refer both to the relative social standing of each (a pauper would not expect to be friends with a king) as well as the reciprocity (the gifts or affection exchanged must be roughly equal for the friendship to work.) Contemporaries would reject the aristocratic presuppositions of the former (given our egalitarian and democratic prejudices in favor of regarding all as equal in their humanity), but perhaps intuitively understand the latter.
Friendship also takes time:the desire to be friends can come about quickly, becoming friends cannot
| Type | Basis/motive | Who? | Duration (time) | Number | Examples from college life? |
| Use | Affection based on utility/benefit received | Elderly(require assistance securing the needs of life) | Short-lived(lasts only as long as the benefit) | Many | Study/lab partner |
| Pleasure | Affection based on enjoyment or pleasure of the other’s company | Young | Short-lived(lasts only as long as the pleasure on which it is based) | Many | Social circle, people fun to “hang” with |
| Good(“complete” because good people are both pleasant & useful) | Affection based on the person’s good or virtuous character | Good people alike in virtue | Long-lasting(based on who they are, something long-lasting and intrinsic) | Few | Friends with whom you serve or pursue common ideals |
我们可以“妈p” the service relationship onto this typology? How does it resemble a friendship? How is it dissimilar? How do issues of basis/motive, duration/time, equality and reciprocity compare? Are there agencies where friendship would be inappropriate? Does it make a difference if we are examining the relationship with other volunteers or the clients? (Thanks to Prof. Thaddeus Ostrowski for this).