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Modern theories of moral education question the truth of Socrates's belief which involves an idea of positive relationship between 'moral knowing' and 'doing'. As a result, such theories divide moral education between development of moral judgment and character training. However, the division of moral education invites a more puzzling philosophical perplexity such as the denial of a relationship between 'knowing' and 'doing'. The study proposes a theory of moral education which dissolves the philosophical perplexity, through a linguistic analysis of the words which constitute moral statements and relying on an educational examination of the meaning of 'moral knowing' which is seriously distorted by Socrates's inadequate definitions of the terms 'virtue' and `knowledge' in his proposition, 'Virtue is knowledge'. The meaning of the word 'X' in the form of moral statement such as 'X is good', which is primarily fact-denoting, extends for its accompanying meaning beyond that as delimited by Socrates and the realists. Accompanying meanings are moral notions but nondescriptive, though they may be in some cases symbolised roughly by such 'notional words' as 'benevolence' and 'justice'. Contrasting with the statement such as 'Benevolence is good', which constitutes itself with a notional word, the form of 'X is good' will be meaningless unless it is understood with moral notions. `Knowing' in moral education is not theoretical, having regard to the nature of moral notions. 'Moral notions' embrace both 'knowing' and 'doing'. Therefore, education for the development of 'moral mind' must not be confined to clarification of meanings of words and ratiocination of judgments; it should help pupils to perceive moral qualities in situations where such qualities are deeply embedded and to imagine the world as it should be from the world as it is.

I formulate what I believe to be a correct account of the normativity of rationality. I identify two opposing doctrines which I call instrumentalism and rationalism. Instrumentalism says there are no obligations to be rational intrinsic to rationality, but that being rational is instrumental to doing what ought to be done. Rationalism says there are intrinsically rational obligations. I give arguments for instrumentalism and show how a bifurcation in normativity undermines characteristic Aristotelian and Kantian arguments in support of rationalism. I concede that the confrontation between instrumentalism and rationalism cannot be settled in the thesis, since it depends in part on a fundamental dispute about the nature of rationality. However, the doctrine of instrumentalism gives a particularly clear picture of how obligation and rationality are related, and I believe I have shown instrumentalism to be a doctrine which must be taken seriously. Consequently, I believe my thesis to be a contribution to the Humean view of the relation of obligation and reason.

This is the study of the extent of the patternability of the reason-giving behaviour of morally relevant features in different ethical contexts. Whether or not the way in which a morally relevant feature contributes to the moral evaluation of different cases is generalis able is examined in this research. I argue in favour of a core and constitutive modest-generalistic theme, according to which there are general patterns of word use, to which the reason-giving behaviour of moral vocabulary in different contexts is answerable. To this end, I reject the constitutive particularistic claim which holds that the way in which a morally relevant feature behaves in different cases is fully context-dependent. An account drawn from Wittgenstein with regard to the nature of concepts which emphasises the key role of the concept 'practice' is presented to give an account of how the reason-giving behaviour of a morally relevant feature in different contexts is answerable to general patterns of word use. Ross's ethics is introduced as an example of the modest-generalistic position. To substantiate this modest-generalistic position, an apparent dilemma is presented for particularists, e.g. Dancy. In order to resolve the second horn of the dilemma, which is an example of a general problem with which any generalistic account is confronted, the account drawn from Wittgenstein with regard to the nature of concepts is again used. Finally, a distinction between the first order and the second order account of the concept 'practice' is presented to give a more plausible account of the concept 'practice' which has an indispensable role in the Wittgensteinian account.