Ethics in the Light of Childhood

  • Top-down
    • Unruly nature of human beings
    • Childhood is humanity’s original natural state of moral disorder or corruption
    • Plato; 
      • Children enter world as irrational animals in need of ethical training
      • Only by educating children societies  have any hope of becoming rational
    • Augustine; 
      • No man is free from seen, not even a child who has lived only one day on earth.
      • Children want to harm, but since they are small and weak they lack the resources to do so. “IF BABIES ARE INNOCENT, IT IS NOT FOR LACK OF WİLL TO HARM, BUT FOR LACK OF STRENGTH”
    • Immanuel Kant: animals lacking raitonalism and captive to irrationalism and wants and desires. Children deserve to be treated as objects of dşgnşty anf resoect and parents’ can not regard them as their own property. Children are not property of parents (Unlike Locke). Should not be placed in a private sphere (Unlike Rousseau)
  • Bottom-up
    • Good and natural gift humanity’s original goodness
    • Children as saviours
    • Comenius
    • Rousseau: More child friendly account of Human Rights. Still excules children explicity. Childhood as  the origin of goodness in society and source of resistance to social corruption. So they must be carefully sheltered from public life. 
  • Developmental
    • Gradual and progressive realization of human ethical potention over the course of time
    • Humanity neigher pure nor unruly, fundamental ethical neutrality or blackness
    • Thomas Aquinas
    • Locke: White pages. Need to  be shaped over time toward enlightened social reason. Not reached to the age of reason to exercise social freedom. Human rights are for development capability for social reasoning(adults). Children only show potential for social right. 
  • Circular (John Wall)
    • (Like bees, circular, circling widely in diverse fields to create a rich honey for the hive.)
    • Childism is what Wall (2010) calls for the binds of self-critique. 
    • It is the effort to respond to the experiences of children by transforming, understanding and practices for all.
  • TOP-DOWN STORY ; ANTS
  • BOTTOM-UP STORY; SPIDERS
  • DEVELOPMENTAL STORY; FLIES
  • CIRCULAR; BEES