In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, philosopher Immanuel Kant explored whether art can be learned, as well as the nature of aesthetic ideas that underpin the creative process of making art. Much the same way, teachers and professors still question whether artistic talent and creativity can be learned and how to foster students’ creativity in schools and universities. For example, some professors believe that students come into their classroom either possessing creativity or not possessing creativity,1 which resonates with (...) the misconception that creativity is not related to intelligence and that intelligence is fixed and static as opposed to fluid.2 Students, too, sometimes reject the notion that they.. (shrink)

Aristotle considered moral beauty to be the telos of the human virtues. Displays of moral beauty have been shown to elicit the moral emotion of elevation and cause a desire to become a better person and to engage in prosocial behavior. Study 1 (N = 5380) shows engagement with moral beauty is related to several psychological constructs relevant to moral education, and structural models reveal that the story of engagement with moral beauty may be considered a story of love and (...) connectedness; it is uniquely predictive of caring for, being empathic of, loving, and valuing benevolence toward others. Study 2 (N = 542) demonstrates that the personality trait of engaging with moral beauty moderates susceptibility to elevation. These studies suggest that encouraging students to engage with moral beauty might increase their desire to become better persons and to do good. Convergent with other research showing that moral emotions motivate moral behavior, we suggest that moral education programs increase their focus on developing engagement with moral beauty. (shrink)