R. S. Peters’ philosophy of moral education in relation to his Freudian psychology

Abstract

ABSTRACT One of R. S. Peters’ interests was psychoanalysis. In this paper, I explore the relation between Peters’ philosophy of moral education and his Freudian psychology. In section 2 of the paper, I introduce Peters’ Freudian supplementation of the Piaget-Kohlberg model of moral development. To clarify the way in which Peters deals with two unresolved issues of this model, I examine, in section 3, his account of Freud’s conceptions of mental health and illness, character and the emotions. In section 4, I bring to light the continuity between Freudian psychology and Peters’ levels of life theory. In section 5, I employ this Freud-inspired anthropological theory to elucidate Peters’ comprehensive analysis of the concept of education.