Developing Character at the Frontier of Human Knowledge

Abstract

The US military service academies have both a mission and a mandate to develop character in the future officers they train and educate. This paper uses a real-world case (in which names, dates and locations have been changed) to re-frame character development in terms of character’s function during ethical dilemmas. We propose that the character that will be required in the professional lives of future officers is necessarily a combination of virtue cultivation and ethics education. Further, we propose a novel pedagogical concept for motivating students to pursue the rigors of character education, offering the concept of “awe” as a means of instilling the internal drive necessary to develop character. Ethics education, indeed all forms of education, then are propelled by a sense of “awe” at the frontier of knowledge, the threshold between that which we know and that which we do not. Approaching character in this way is of particular importance for military members because war creates the space in which ethical dilemmas are more frequent, and often more consequential, than in civilian life. It is because military officers are likely to face unscripted ethical circumstances that their character development must include training in navigating frontiers of ethics knowledge.