Abstract

This paper critically examines the contemporary educational discourse on critical thinking as one of the primary aims of education, its modernist defence and its postmodernist criticism, so as to explore a new way of conceptualizing critical thinking for moral education. What is at stake in this task is finding a plausible answer to the question of how the teaching of critical thinking in moral education can contribute to leading young people to avoid moral relativism while at the same time to develop a coherent way of responding to cultural pluralism. The paper takes Bernard Williams's concept of ‘ethical reflection’ as a possible candidate and explores this concept as a means of accommodating these concerns.