From mimēsis to eros : Plato’s dilemma in moral education and the Philippine ethics debate

This paper revisits Plato’s developmental model of moral education—moving through mimēsis (imitation), ethismos (habituation), and eros (desire)—not merely to apply it to a contemporary policy debate, but to uncover a formative tension within Plato’s own thought. While Plato emphasizes the importance of early training in imitation and habit, he reserves the most profound ethical work—the reorientation of desire toward the Good—for a later, more reflective stage of life. I argue that this tension mirrors a live dilemma in Philippine higher education today: whether Ethics should be taught in Senior High School or remain in the college curriculum. Using the Philippine case as an illustration, I contend that removing Ethics from college would truncate the Platonic arc, leaving moral development stalled at the level of habit and imitation. The college years provide the freedom, cognitive maturity, and existential depth necessary for educating eros: a turning of the soul toward the Good that Plato regarded as essential to becoming like the divine. Ultimately, the question at stake is not merely curricular but philosophical: Can moral education fulfill its purpose without a space in which desire is examined and redirected?