Blurring the lines between imitation and emulation in moral development

Abstract

This article investigates the roles of imitation and emulation in the development of virtue by questioning the way these learning mechanisms are distinguished in the literature. Conventional views distinguish a deliberate kind of emulation, necessary for the acquisition of practical wisdom and virtue, from the unconscious and automatic imitation of virtuous actions. In this article, this binary is challenged through an analysis of two (autobiographical) novels by the French author Edouard Louis. Eddy, the main character in both novels, adopts behaviours from his friends and teachers on purpose, driven by personal goals rather than the models’ virtuous motives. The novels help us to imagine a new category of moral learning, called ‘deliberate imitation’: it is goal-driven but not fully aligned with the virtuous intentions of the role models. This type of imitation blurs the distinction between imitation and emulation and may serve as a transitional phase. The article ends with a discussion of the implications this type of imitation may have for moral education. It is suggested that teachers may have less control over which of their actions students take to be exemplary and which ones not.

Introduction

This article explores the roles of imitation and emulation in moral development, particularly from a neo-Aristotelian perspective, which views this process as the journey towards becoming virtuous. It challenges the common assumption that ‘imitation’ and ‘emulation’ are distinct mechanisms of moral learning, which can together explain how a moral learner can make moral progress. By examining several works by French novelist Edouard Louis, this article investigates the possibility of a new form of moral learning that blurs the line between imitation and emulation.

Aristotle famously posited that being virtuous is not just about performing virtuous actions but also about doing them in the right way, at the right time, for the right reasons and with the right emotions (Aristotle, 2002: NE 1120a20–25). According to Hursthouse and Pettigrove (2022), possessing a virtue involves ‘being a certain sort of person with a certain complex mindset’, which includes ‘wholeheartedly accepting a distinctive range of considerations as reasons for action’. For instance, giving money to a homeless person is only virtuous if the giver perceives the situation correctly, feels the appropriate emotions and gives for the right reasons, that is, because it is the noble thing to do.

Neo-Aristotelian proponents of moral education, an approach known as ‘character education’, have advocated several methods to help (young) people become virtuous. These methods include guiding habituation, fostering character friendships and engaging in dialogues (Brant et al., 2022; Kristjánsson, 2015; Sanderse, 2012). A fundamental strategy recommended by character education proponents is role modelling (Kristjánsson, 2006; Sanderse, 2013, 2024). The basic idea is that young people develop morally by interacting with teachers who possess virtues themselves. It is assumed that students somehow ‘pick up’ the particular and concrete instances of virtuous behaviour by observing, admiring, imitating or emulating teachers (Fenstermacher, 1990: 133). This raises the question of what role imitation and emulation can play in people becoming virtuous, understood as this multifaceted process including virtuous perception, feeling, thinking and action.

This depends partly on how ‘imitation’ and ‘emulation’ are understood, the topic of this article. These terms are often seen as related but distinct mechanisms of moral development. We will later discuss the two notions in more detail. For now, we will understand ‘imitation’ as the mostly unconscious reproduction of a model’s virtuous actions in similar situations, and ‘emulation’ is the more conscious reproduction of a model’s virtuous motives, potentially resulting in new behaviours in different situations (see Annas, 2011: Ch. 3). Based on this distinction, virtue ethicists generally believe that people cannot become fully virtuous through imitation alone, as it does not enable them to develop the right motives for acting virtuously. While learning from imitation is insufficient, it is still seen as a necessary first step in moral development. For example, Annas (2011) explains that children first ‘learn to act virtuously like an educator’, which involves copying an educator’s manners and style. Later, they may ‘learn about acting virtuously from the educator’, understanding the essence of the educator’s actions and applying it to their own.

This article aims to challenge the distinction between imitation and emulation in the field of moral development and education. First, the distinction raises ontological questions about when situations are ‘similar’ or ‘different’. How different must the situations be that learners act in for emulation to be the appropriate learning mechanism? Second, in moral development, imitation and emulation might exist on a continuum rather than as distinct conceptual categories. If children start by imitating adults’ moral behaviours and gradually develop the capacity for emulation, it can be hard to pinpoint when and how exactly imitation turns into emulation. Third, the criterion that emulation includes understanding while imitation involves mindlessly copying, raises the question of whether people cannot deliberately copy other people’s moral behaviour, for example, in order to appear virtuous without actually being so. This article explores this third possibility by examining two novels by Edouard Louis, in which the protagonist replicates his friends’ and mentors’ behaviour in ways that do not seem to fit neatly into the categories of imitation or emulation.

Before proceeding, it is important to clarify the article’s focus. First, it is situated within a neo-Aristotelian framework of morality, moral development, and moral education (see, e.g., Carr, 2011; Kristjánsson, 2015, 2020; Sanderse, 2012) This implies that conclusions about imitation and emulation in moral education may differ if viewed through a Platonic or Kantian lens (see, e.g., Jonas and Nakazawa, 2016; Louden, 1992). Second, this article focuses on imitation and emulation as learning mechanisms for (young) people striving to lead good lives. To paraphrase Ryle (1972), the focus is not on how virtue can be taught but on how it can be learned. In the last section of the article, several implications for modelling as a method for teachers to promote imitation and emulation in students will be discussed. Third, using novels raises questions about the role of fiction in examining philosophical assumptions or empirical research on imitation and emulation. This article does not use novels to justify or criticise conceptual or empirical claims but to illustrate possibilities. Novels depict what can happen, not what has happened, will necessarily happen, or is likely to happen. However, their detailed narratives can help bring concepts to life and reveal new insights about imitation and emulation.

In the second section, we will start by exploring several reasons why virtue ethicists are interested in imitation and emulation in the first place. The thrid section will then examine in more detail how imitation and emulation are understood within several virtue ethical accounts of moral psychology. We will then turn to fiction to problematise the distinctions between imitation and emulation we have found in the literature. The fourth section first explains why novels can be a valuable source for philosophical reflection, after which the fifth section analyses two works by Edouard Louis (2014, 2021): En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule and Changer: méthode. This helps us to imagine a new type of imitation that blurs the line between imitation and emulation, which is the topic of the sixth section. The article ends with a section on the implications for moral education and a short conclusion.

Aristotle on learning from models

Before we examine how imitation and emulation are defined in the virtue ethical literature, I will provide several explanations for why authors interested in the development of virtue, in particular those inspired by an Aristotelian approach, became interested in these concepts. In my view, this interest stems from Aristotle’s writings about learning from models in several of his works, although these remarks are scarce and often require a lot of interpretation. Here, I will give an overview of three sources that have inspired contemporary philosophers (of education) to take the role of imitation and emulation in moral development and education seriously.

First, in the Poetics, Aristotle describes human nature as inherently imitative, an idea acknowledged in the philosophy of art but which has, according to Scaramuzzo (2016: 247), ‘not yet been well considered in educational theory and practice’. In a section on the origins of poetry, Aristotle (1987: 1448 b5–9) remarks that ‘it is an instinct of human beings, from childhood, to imitate’. While much of the Poetics is concerned with a more restricted notion of imitation related to poetry, the claim that humans have a natural desire to imitate is useful for understanding moral development. The noun Aristotle uses (mimesis) can be interpreted in various ways and has been translated as ‘impersonation’, ‘representation’, ‘reproduction’ and ‘image making’ (Hampson, 2017; Woodruff, 1992). Regarding human action, mimesis means that ‘one agent takes another as a model or a paradigm, and imitates or emulates her behavior’ (Hampson, 2017: 114). Applied to moral action, this implies that people have the natural capacity to become virtuous by imitating or emulating others. While some authors interpret this passage as suggesting that only children develop morally through mimesis, with adults continuing moral development through other means such as teaching (Fossheim, 2007), most commentators agree that, on an Aristotelian account, learning through imitation extends beyond childhood (Hampson, 2017).

Second, Aristotle (1991) offers a nuanced notion of an emotion called zelos, translated as ‘emulation’, in the Rhetoric (p. 161). There, Aristotle discusses emulation in the context of emotions that rhetoricians can evoke in their audience. Aristotle describes emulation as an overall painful emotion that is experienced when someone we identify with possesses advantages (such as virtues) that we lack but could potentially acquire. Three things should be pointed out here. On this Aristotelian account, emulation is overall painful because it draws attention to the learner’s current lack of virtues. For example, Zagzebski (2017: 52) has focused more on the possibility that learners acquire the exemplar’s virtues and therefore emphasised the pleasurable aspect of admiration. Moreover, Aristotle distinguishes emulation from envy by explaining that, while envious people wish to deprive a virtuous person of their virtues without good reason (which is a bad thing), those who emulate see exemplars as stimuli for moral self-improvement. Furthermore, Aristotle described emulation as an emotion, but it has recently been understood as an ‘emotional virtue’ (Kristjánsson, 2006) or as a virtue in its own right, enabling people to act optimally in the sphere of moral development (Henderson, 2023, 2024).

Third, several passages in chapter 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics highlight the importance of learning from models in moral development. Aristotle (2002: NE 1105b5–7) remarks that actions are only virtuous when they are performed by a just or temperate person. He adds that being just or temperate involves not only doing just and temperate things but also doing them in the manner of a just and temperate person. A few pages later, Aristotle’s (2002) definition of virtue can be interpreted as containing an imitative component too. He defines virtue as a ‘state that decides, consisting in a mean, the mean relative to us, which is defined by reference to reason, that is to say, to the reason by reference to which the prudent person would define it’ (NE 1107a1–4). Although Aristotle recognises that the mean is relative, he is not a relativist because his definition includes a criterion: the mean in a given situation is what a practically wise person would decide. The idea is that, even if we are not virtuous in all situations, we may recognise virtue in morally exemplary people and strive to imitate or emulate how they achieve the mean.

In summary, Aristotle offers those working on the development of virtue several important insights: the mimetic nature of humans, an ethical ideal of a virtuous life understood by reference to moral exemplars, and a psychological explanation of how, through emulation, humans can learn from these exemplars to improve their lives. That Aristotle has not written more about these notions, while many of his ideas seem to presuppose mimesis, can be explained if we realise that he may have taken this for granted, taking Plato’s more elaborate work on mimesis as a backdrop (Fossheim, 2007). Moving beyond exegesis, contemporary philosophers interested in moral development have reinterpreted, revised, and reconstructed Aristotle’s remarks to make Aristotelianism ‘more coherent, plausible and up-to-date’ (Kristjánsson, 2014: 469). With this understanding of the sources that have inspired contemporary authors interested in moral development to turn to Aristotle, we can now address a specific question that has occupied neo-Aristotelians and other philosophers interested in virtue: whether and how imitation and emulation enable moral learners to become virtuous.

The role of imitation and emulation in the development of virtue

In previous sections, I mentioned imitation and emulation together, leaving it open which one is more appropriate for moral development. This section will analyse these concepts in more detail by examining how several authors distinguish between the two. I will first discuss the authoritative accounts of Julia Annas (2011) and Linda Zagzebski (2017), who both explore how emulation, virtue, and moral development are related, although they do not fit within a neo-Aristotelian framework. Annas seeks to understand the concept of ‘virtue’ and remains agnostic about the ethical theories or accounts that can be built upon it. In contrast, Zagzebski focuses on how exemplars can be the foundation of all ethics, which she applies particularly to virtue theory. Finally, I will discuss the more Aristotelian perspective on the role of emulation in moral development offered by Henderson (2023, 2024). At the close of this section, I will suggest that there may be something wrong with the criteria these authors use to distinguish between imitation and emulation.

Zagzebski (2017) views emulation as a subcategory of imitation. She describes imitation as a learning mechanism with wide application, extending beyond the field of morality, such as when we learn practical skills. In addition, imitation is a capacity shared by humans and other animals and is present throughout our lives, from infancy to adulthood. However, as individuals mature, they begin to form judgments about which people deserve to be imitated. When this occurs, imitation becomes more ‘conscious’, ‘discriminatory’ and ‘targeted’ (Zagzebski, 2017: 130), a process Zagzebski calls ‘emulation’. It involves perceiving an emulated person as a model in some respect. While imitation entails automatically reproducing someone’s moral behaviour, emulation allows learners to reflect on whether a model’s character traits are virtues and what it means for the learners to acquire these virtues. Consequently, emulation grants the learner more control. Zagzebski illustrates this distinction with the example of James Dean in the movie Rebel Without a Cause. When young people ‘imitate’ Dean, they mimic his behaviour, such as racing cars towards a cliff. When they ‘emulate’ him, they see his behaviour as an example of how to be a ‘daring teenager’. In moral development, imitation allows learners to repeat virtuous actions but it does not enable them to acquire the right motivation, which is crucial for being virtuous. Zagzebski (2017: 133–139) suggests that emulation involves admiration and the desire to ‘be like’ a virtuous person. In this way, learners can adopt a model’s moral outlook, including their perception of moral situations, feelings, and reasons for action.

The second author, Annas (2011), also addresses the roles of ‘imitation’ and ‘emulation’ in moral development, though she uses terms like ‘copying’, ‘repetition’ and ‘routine’ instead of ‘imitation’ and uses ‘aspiration’ instead of ‘emulation’. Annas (2011: 16) argues that developing virtues is analogous to developing skills, a point also made by Zagzebski. Part of learning skills involves observing and imitating more experienced individuals. Initially, learners may ‘do exactly what the teacher does’ resulting in ‘copy[ing] the teacher’s mannerism and style along with the teacher’s exact way of doing things’ (Annas, 2011: 17). However, Annas argues that mere copying is insufficient for acquiring skills. Eventually, learners must also ‘become able to acquire for herself the skill that the teacher has’ (Annas, 2011: 17). Being self-directed involves understanding the purpose of a skill, applying it in new contexts, and improving it beyond what the teacher taught. Annas illustrates this with piano playing: learners may start by ‘playing like Brendel’ but must move towards ‘learning about playing from Brendel’, which involves understanding and applying central aspects of Brendel’s style. For example, the learner may understand Brendel’s style as ‘cerebral’ and try to apply celebreality to her own piano playing. In Annas’ view, this distinction applies to acquiring virtues too. Children can start to learn how to perform, for example honest and courageous actions through copying role models. However, the acquisition of full virtue requires understanding, self-direction, and continual improvement (Annas, 2011: 27). Being virtuous includes acting reliably ‘for certain reasons’, which parents can already provide children with from a very young age. Having access to these reasons enables the learners to judge what it means to act in different situations, also when a role model is not around, and to correct the teacher and the context and culture in which he has was raised.

The third account we discuss here, developed by Henderson (2023, 2024), offers a more Aristotelian perspective on emulation in moral education. In the second section, we saw that Aristotle viewed ‘emulation’ as an emotion. Henderson’s project aims to understand ‘emulation’ as an Aristotelian virtue instead and how learners may acquire it. She argues that emulation involves an emotional component (such as distress or admiration), the perception of an exemplar’s virtues, the practical wisdom to evaluate these virtues, and a behavioural suggestion to emulate them (Henderson, 2023: 269–270). Henderson distinguishes true emulation from two different types, or levels, of moral learning. On the one hand, those with full virtue and practical wisdom do not need emulation anymore. On the other hand, those with little or no practical wisdom cannot develop through emulation yet, as the virtue of emulation requires practical wisdom. This raises the question of how moral learners can acquire the virtue of emulation. Henderson’s (2024: 85) solution is that young moral learners can make progress through what she calls ‘habituated emulation’, which is predominantly a kind of behavioural conditioning. It is not yet informed by the agent’s own practical wisdom (phronesis) but by the guidance of a practically wise exemplar. Henderson introduces the term ‘entanglement’ to describe how the learner’s emulation depends on the model’s phronesis. As the learner’s phronesis develops further, it becomes less entangled with the more virtuous tutor. The difference between habituated and full emulation is the level of practical wisdom and virtue in the learner, which are absent in the case of habituated emulation and developing in the case of full emulation. So, emulation is an ‘educational virtue’ in the sense that it requires only developing, rather than fully developed phronesis (Henderson, 2024: 84). For the fully virtuous people, emulation is ‘superfluous’: they can practice virtues ‘autonomously’ or ‘independently’ (Henderson, 2024: 83, 85).

There are notable similarities and differences between these three accounts. In terms of terminology, Zagzebski distinguishes between ‘imitation’ and ‘emulation’, Henderson differentiates between ‘habituated’ and ‘full’ emulation, and Annas contrasts ‘copying’ a teacher with the ‘drive to aspire’, which includes the desire to improve the teachers’ example. Despite these terminological differences, they all distinguish between two fundamental ways to reproduce behaviour. The first type (called ‘imitation’, ‘habituated emulation’ or ‘copying’) is largely automatic and helps people from a young age onwards to learn how to do virtuous things. By copying a model’s actions, learners develop virtuous routines, which are useful when in similar situations as the model. The second type (called ‘emulation’ in the case of Zagzebski and Henderson, or ‘aspiration’ in the case of Annas) is deliberate. In this case, learners do not focus on the models’ immediate actions, but on acting in line with virtue, the ultimate target represented by the model’s actions (Henderson, 2023: 8). Thinking about whether a model’s character traits are virtuous and figuring out what the model’s virtues mean for one’s own situation requires the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom. In this way, emulation enables learners to acquire reasons for virtuous action.

In the rest of the article, I will scrutinise an important assumption made by the authors discussed in this section: they all distinguish a deliberate and focused kind of emulation, necessary for the acquisition of practical wisdom and virtue, from the unconscious and automatic imitation of virtuous actions. In other words, they distinguish between imitation and emulation in moral development based on whether a process is consciousness and deliberative or not. In the rest of the article, I will examine whether it makes sense to make a distinction on this ground.

Turning to fiction

In the following sections, this question will be explored through examples found in two novels by the French writer and sociologist Edouard Louis (2014, 2021): his debut, En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule and his latest, Changer: méthode. ¹ Louis has written four other books in which social exclusion, domination, and poverty are also central themes. In The End, Louis depicts the childhood of Eddy Bellegueule, a boy growing up in an impoverished village in northern France. In Change, we follow Eddy’s adolescence as he transforms into Edouard, attends an elite university in Paris, and becomes a writer.

Before we can analyse these novels, the question has to be answered as to why we could use novels to illustrate the role of emulation in a child’s life. First, novels provide subtle and rich descriptions of people’s characters and their choices in complex situations (Vasalou, 2020). This is crucial because the philosophical accounts discussed earlier were rather general and abstract. For example, the term ‘virtue’ was discussed with hardly any references to specific virtues like honesty or courage, and without examples of concrete situations that require these virtues. Besides brief mentions of Alfred Brendel and James Dean, there were no examples illustrating how (young) people learn from others through imitation or emulation. In short, the philosophical debate lacked consideration for people’s actual moral lives. Novels, however, do contain concrete and complex examples of imitation and emulation. Louis’s novels, for instance, contain many passages in which the main character, Eddy (or Edouard, after his name change), imitates or emulates his family, friends, and other role models. By following the main character from infancy to adulthood, we read who he imitates and emulates, the reasons for his choices, how identifying with others affects his development, and whether this turns out successfully.

Another reason for using novels is that, compared to philosophical texts, novels are more open-ended. Nussbaum (1990: 46) acknowledges that philosophers can and do invent complex examples, but she argues that they ‘almost always lack the particularity, the motive appeal, the absorbing plottedness, the variety and indeterminacy’ of good fiction. Philosophical examples (e.g. Foot’s (2002) use of runaway trains to illustrate the doctrine of double effect) often direct readers on what to focus on and how to interpret these examples, typically illustrating points already established on other grounds. In Nussbaum’s (1990: 47) words, the result is already ‘cooked’. In contrast, novels are more open-ended. Gross (1966: 362) explains that literary works often include a ‘major unresolved conflict’: they lack a clear message or happy ending, inviting readers to interpret and discover what matters. This openness can surprise us and offer new perspectives. In this way, Nussbaum (1990: 35) asserts that examining novels can also contribute to philosophical theorising, revealing insights ‘about human life, knowledge, personality, and how to live’. Following this idea, we will explore what Louis’s novels reveal about the role of imitation and emulation in moral development.

While novels provide concrete and complex examples that stimulate readers to imagine the relationship between imitation, emulation, and moral development, critics may argue that novels are fictional and not bound to truth. This raises the question: what insights can we derive from novels about imitation and emulation, considering that all events, characters, and plots may be invented? This touches on a broader debate about the distinction between fact and fiction, and the roles of representation, realism, and imagination in literature (see Currie, 2020; Walton, 1993). For brevity, I will offer only two responses here. First, Louis’s novels will not be used to confirm or falsify empirical claims, such as that young children do not emulate and only imitate, or that adults do not only emulate but still imitate as well. Novels serve a different purpose: they help us explore possibilities through cases or events that may have happened, or might happen, but can at least be imagined. In this article, using novels helps us to imagine that there are forms of reproducing behaviour that blur the line between imitation and emulation. Second, Louis’s novels are autobiographical, a genre with a complex relationship to truth. It is simplistic to say that autobiographies are fictional and unrelated to reality, or that they distort rather than accurately describe reality (Freeman, 2003). In (auto)biography, authors acknowledge certain facts about themselves and the world, while trying to give meaning to life within literary and cultural conventions. For example, Louis enhances the authenticity of his books by including pictures from his youth. In addition, in Change, Louis admits in a footnote to having altered an anecdote by substituting one friend for another in order to improve narrative coherence. We must also consider that Louis studied sociology and admires Bourdieu (see Louis, 2016), using this framework to understand his past and that of his family.

In short, we turn to Louis’s novels as a counterbalance to the abstract philosophical theories discussed earlier. The novels offer rich descriptions of situations where a boy transforms himself by imitating and emulating others. Whether these situations are fictional is irrelevant; they help us imagine the roles that imitation and emulation could play in a person’s life. The novels’ detail brings the concepts of ‘imitation’ and ‘emulation’ to life. Moreover, compared to philosophers’ clearly defined examples, the open-ended nature of novels may surprise us, and offer new insights into the nature of emulation and imitation and their relevance for moral development.

Imitation and emulation in Louis’s novels

In this section, I will describe the role imitation and emulation play in Eddy’s developmental process, as depicted in Louis’s novels The End and Change. I will stay close to the text before adding a layer of interpretation in the next section.

The story of Eddy’s early childhood contains few explicit passages about imitation and emulation. For example, The End includes an instance of how Eddy imitates his parents: ‘I spent the evening with them, smiling like a child copying the state of mind it sees its parents in, without knowing exactly why (the days when my mother cried, I also imitated her without understanding why; I cried)’ (p. 18). Louis uses the terms ‘copying’ and ‘imitation’ to describe a process where Eddy reproduces his mother’s smiling and crying without understanding the reasons for her behaviour. However, around the age of six, Eddy realises he is different from his parents and most people in the village. They equate ‘being a man’ with ‘being a fighter’, but Eddy’s voice has female intonations, his hands move in all directions, and he loves secretly wearing his sister’s dresses. His parents ask him to stop what they see as ‘posturing’, but Eddy knows he has not chosen his mannerisms and is ‘dominated’ and ‘subjected’ by them (p. 21). Although Eddy realises he is different, his mother is proud of him, and his life remains relatively unencumbered.

This changes when Eddy attends primary school, where other pupils bully him severely. Although Eddy feels that he is ‘attached to himself’ (p. 28), he develops a ‘compulsive desire’ to identify with the masculine traits prevalent in the village school (p. 113). To survive, he starts to ‘imitate’ and ‘mimic’ heterosexual behaviour, such as playing football, watching television programmes, and drinking with friends in a bus shelter. He chooses a girl, Laura, to date and kiss in the hope that she will arouse him and that others will see him as a ‘normal’ heterosexual boy. Furthermore, Eddy distances himself from anything remotely gay and even warns his little brother Rudy against becoming gay. Eventually, Eddy realises that his project to become ‘like the others’ fails. The ‘will of his body’ (p. 180), i.e. his gay feelings, turns out to be too strong. He decides to flee and manages to get a scholarship to attend a boarding school specialising in drama in the city of Amiens.

Eddy’s arrival in Amiens marks the starting point of the ‘reversal’ of his values (p. 197). At his new school, he is impressed by Elena, a girl who reads books, attends concerts, and has travelled abroad. They develop a close friendship, and Eddy is more or less adopted by Elena’s family, who have different mores than his parents. For example, Eddy was used to eating in front of the television, but here, the family talks calmly about their day during meals. Eddy realises that his friendship with Elena can give him access to a ‘universe’ or ‘world’ in which he fits (p. 49), and he tries to gain access by imitating her. For example, he deliberately talks like Elena, tries to know as much as her, writes like her, and walks and eats like her. His initial attempts are not highly successful. When he hears a student talk about the composer Wagner, Eddy spends a night reading about Wagner and bluffs the next day, claiming he finds Tristan and Isolde beautiful, without having listened to the music. Eddy confesses, ‘I talked about books that I hadn’t read and about movies and plays that I hadn’t seen’ (p. 73). The English expression ‘fake it until you make it’ aptly describes Eddy’s conviction that his imitations will eventually become second nature to him.

At a certain point, Eddy realises his transformation remains superficial. Instead of giving up, he invests extra time and effort into his change. He decides to ‘eradicate all signs of what I had been’ and change ‘everything’ about himself (p. 77). He extends his transformations to other domains, including his body, by exercising more, wearing glasses (even though he does not need them), dyeing his hair and buying smarter clothes. Elena’s mother starts to call him ‘Edouard’, a name which he adopts. Edouard’s attempts to change become more intense as well. At this stage, he practices almost day and night to laugh differently, which is very demanding because he has to control his laughter even during the funniest moments. Edouard reports that ‘little by little, the artificial, mimicked laughter became my own’ (p. 80), but Louis adds that when he later listened to recordings of his laughter, it still sounded artificial. Has his transformation been successful? It seems that his attempts at imitating Elena allow Edouard to break away from and take revenge on his past, but he does not genuinely want to become a ‘cultivated’ or ‘intellectual’ person (p. 169).

At the end of secondary school, Edouard realises that ‘I no longer wanted to just be like the others, but to get further than them’ (p. 101). Edouard develops a desire to take revenge on the whole world and to distinguish himself from everyone. This desire is aroused in him by meeting Didier Eburon, a professor of philosophy who is also gay and raised in a poor working-class family. Didier moved to Paris, where he became a writer and an intellectual. Edouard thinks, ‘Why did I not do the same as him? Why was I not like him? Why did I never move to Paris – like him?’. Suddenly, Edouard realises: ‘I would like to be like him, I would like to be him’ (p. 158). At first, Edouard feels envy, resentment, and anger towards Didier, but later, he comes to admire Didier deeply. He moves to Paris and also plans to write a book – ‘to basically imitate what he [Didier] had done when he was about the same age as me’ (p. 181). Edouard imitates Didier’s vocal inflections, his glances, and his smile. When the occasion arises, Edouard orders the same drink as Didier, a coffee and a glass of water, which Edouard sees as a ‘sign of distinction’ (p. 198). At this point, Edouard starts to read and write, learning from Didier and others. For example, from reading De Beauvoir, Edouard learns what it means to live the life of an intellectual, and from Sartre, he adopts the (assumed) habit of reading a book per day, which requires Edouard to read during the night. Again, Louis is not sure about the success of this method. He concludes that Edouard is merely acting as a writer (p. 237), resulting in his writings seeming like ‘failed plagiarism’ of writers he admired (p. 277).

When his book project fails, Edouard contacts wealthy and powerful people, hoping that, in exchange for sexual services, they will introduce him into their milieu, helping him distance himself from his childhood. Again, Edouard tries to imitate the life of the people he meets. For example, when spending time with a rich French industrialist, Edouard envies his speech accent: ‘I would have given everything to be him and change my life for his’ (p. 254). Although he does not love the man, he stays with him and forces himself to imitate him to ‘save my skin’ (p. 254). During fancy dinners, Edouard learns to talk about operas and travels, but at the same time, he notices that the sentences come ‘rolling out of my mouth’ as if they are not truly his own, and he hides his aversion to the food being served. In short, he experiences himself as an ‘intruder’ (p. 271). When a waiter drops cutlery and the host talks about her clumsiness in the third person, as if the woman is not there, Edouard wants to get up and tell the lady ‘that I was different than them, that I wasn’t one of them’ (p. 271). But he remains silent. Finally, Edouard reconnects with Didier and starts to write again, this time with more success. He realises that by remembering and describing the youth he wanted to eradicate, he finds peace. The book is published and becomes a success. Gradually, Edouard notes, ‘I began to genuinely love art and literature, not just writing to get ahead, but for literature itself, no longer writing to save my ass, but to try to help others who are in a similar situation as myself’ (p. 296).

Deliberate imitation in moral development

The previous section provided insight into Eddy/Edouard’s development through his interactions with Elena, Didier, and others. We closely followed the narrative by quoting extensively from the novels. Now, we will evaluate how these examples relate to the notions of imitation and emulation described in the third section, while keeping an open eye to the possibility that the novels show us something new about these phenomena.

In the previous section, we saw that during early childhood, Eddy unconsciously imitates his parents. For example, he cries and smiles like his mother without understanding why. During his time at primary school, Eddy hides his budding same-gender attraction by trying to be the same as the boys and men in his surroundings. Eddy does not have specific role models but imitates the activities of other boys his age. It is not a form of emulation, as Eddy copies people’s behaviour, but not their reasons or motivations. He wants to look like a fighter without being one. However, his body protests and Eddy concludes that his attempts to adopt to the dominant culture fail. At the boarding school in Amiens, Eddy tries to become a different person by deliberately imitating Elena’s behaviour, but again, his desire to transform does not result in lasting change. By the end of secondary school, Edouard wants to prove he is not just different but also better than others. He copies Didier’s reading and writing style but fails to develop his own. He also imitates the rich and famous but does not feel at home in their milieu. In the end, Edouard faces his past and turns his memories into a novel, finding his voice and a love for literature and art. It is only during this phase that Edouard truly emulates Didier, seeing in him what it means to be a writer, caring about this goal, and developing his own style.

Although the novels contain examples of both imitation and emulation, Eddy/Edouard seems to learn differently in most phases of his life: he imitates others, particularly Elena and Didier, deliberately. This makes us wonder: is there a deliberate kind of imitation, and if so, how does it relate to the distinction between imitation and emulation made before? In the third section, we defined ‘imitation’ as an unconscious activity where a learner reproduces a model’s actions in similar situations and ‘emulation’ as conscious imitation involving an understanding of what the model represents, applied in different situations. Learners either repeat actions without understanding the model’s goals (imitation) or reproduce the model’s goals through similar or different actions (emulation). However, the deliberate way Eddy imitates Elena, Didier, and others suggests a third option: a learner may reproduce a model’s actions consciously but without sharing the model’s goals. For example, Eddy engages in various cultural and intellectual activities, not because he cares about them as his models do, but because he wants to take revenge on his past.

This type of imitation can be better understood through Bryan Warnick’s (2008) distinctions between mimicry, imitation and emulation, which are built around a framework of the means and ends of action. Warnick explains that learners may copy a model’s behaviour without adopting the model’s goals (mimicry), adopt the model’s goals but reach them through different means (emulation), or reproduce both the behaviour and goals of the model (imitation). However, Warnick critiques a strict end-means distinction, noting that learners can also engage in goal-driven imitative actions without sharing the model’s goals. When we relate these distinctions to the discussion in the third section, we see that the authors discussed there make what Warnick calls ‘mimicry’ and ‘emulation’ an either-or question. In their views, learners either mimic virtuous actions or emulate practical wisdom, but not both, because if learners have access to the model’s practical wisdom, they judge for themselves what it means to act virtuously in the (new) circumstances they are in. Warnick’s means-ends distinction shows that learners can also reproduce both the action and the ends of the model. Learners may do exactly the same as the model did, not as a kind of mimicry, but because they judge this to be the wise thing for them to do too.

However, the most relevant point for the current discussion appears in Warnick’s critique of the whole end-means distinction. He explains that there is also a category of ‘imitative actions that are goal driven but occur even though the imitator does not share the same goals of the model’ (Warnick, 2008: 6). For example, somebody may join a football club and imitate the footballers’ style and manners because he wants to make friends, while the club members behave the way they do because they only care about winning. In this case, learners still know that they have different ends than models do, but learners may, in fact, also imitate a model deliberately without even knowing the goals of the model (Huang et al., 2002). Eddy’s behaviour seems to illustrate this possibility: he imitates the members of another social class, not necessarily because he wants to accomplish the group’s goals (e.g. being erudite) but because he wants to escape the class he grew up in. To summarise, the prominent kind of imitation that Eddy exhibits in the novels calls into question a strict distinction between imitation and emulation.

Now, even if one agrees with all of this, one may object that the novels we examined are not about the role of imitation and emulation in Eddy’s moral development. Admittedly, the book is more about the development of Eddy’s identity, understood as a social and dynamic process during which Eddy experiments with certain identity positions that are available (or not) and valued (or not) by others. We read how Eddy is dominated by others, faces violence, becomes conscious of his sexuality and social class, moves up the social ladder, and finds his own place in the world. His identity development has many dimensions, including his gender identity, his class identity, his identity as a student at school, and his identity as a reader and writer. Still, this process has also moral undertones. For example, Eddy witnesses and experiences immorality in the form of child neglect and abuse, rape, prostitution and racism. Moreover, readers get to know the moral emotions that Eddy experiences in such situations, such as shame, envy, jealousy, guilt and pride. Nevertheless, the story of Eddy’s life is not primarily about his moral development in the virtue ethical sense that we read about how he struggles to acquire certain virtues, like honesty or courage. So, what implications may deliberate imitation have for our understanding of moral development?

In the first section, we saw that in an Aristotelian reading, virtuous persons do not only do virtuous things but also perceive the situations they are in right, feel appropriate emotions, and act for the right reason, that is, for the sake of the nobility. If acting for the right reasons is an important ingredient of being virtuous, deliberate imitation will not result in full virtue, because the learner will not know or care about the model’s virtuous motives. But does this disqualify deliberate imitation as a strategy for young people to develop themselves morally? Distinguishing between different levels of moral development (see, e.g., Croce, 2020; Sanderse, 2015) enables us to see that there may be a place for deliberate imitation, in particular for people who are ‘morally indifferent’, that is, those who do not understand happiness in terms of flourishing but in terms of, for example, money of fame. This level should be distinguished from people who lack self-control because this latter group has at least chosen to lead a virtuous life, even though they often do wrong things.

For the morally indifferent, moral progress may consist of deliberately imitating another person’s virtuous behaviour, even though learners at this stage do not yet know or share the virtuous person’s motives. An example may illustrate what this may look like. Imagine that you are inspired by a tiktoker called ‘Robin Hood’, who gives money to people who appear to be homeless. You decide to give money to homeless people too, record your donations on video, and put them online. However, unlike Robin Hood, you do not give out of kindness; you want the videos to go viral and become famous yourself. This kind of deliberate imitation will not make you fully virtuous, but the conversations you are having with homeless people may change your mind. You may become aware of their plight, and decide to continue giving, this time for reasons of kindness. In this case, (deliberate) imitation is not sufficient for becoming virtuous. However, the example illustrates that this does not mean that those who cannot emulate have to rely on unconscious imitation alone. There is another learning mechanism with which they can make moral progress.

Implications for moral education

After having examined imitation and emulation from moral psychological and developmental perspectives, we now explore the implications of a more porous relationship between imitation and emulation for moral education.

For neo-Aristotelian proponents of moral education, ‘imitation’ often carries a negative connotation. While they sometimes acknowledge that the development of virtue begins with children imitating virtuous behaviour, most scholars agree that learners must eventually emulate models. For instance, Kristjánsson (2006: 40) reviewed literature on the use of role models in moral education and summarised the prevalent view: ‘you present a model for emulation, somehow lure students into finding it attractive, and lo and behold, they will emulate it by latching on to it and copying it’. Kristjánsson (2006: 40) critiqued this as an ‘unsophisticated, undemanding, and uncritical’ type of emulation, devoid of cognitive content, which he calls ‘mere imitation’. Building on Kristjánsson’s work, I also argued that imitation involves students learning to behave like the teacher, while emulation involves students becoming like what the teacher exemplifies (Sanderse, 2013: 36). I concluded that emulation enables students to forge their own way, ‘which really is what moral education is all about’ (p. 37). These two perspectives illustrate that neo-Aristotelians interested in moral education advocate for a ‘learning by emulation’ model and reject a ‘learning by imitation’ model, which Carr (2023: 73) dismissively labels as ‘doing as daddy does’.

A metaphor from Wittgenstein may be instructive to understand the position of these neo-Aristotelian moral educationists, including my own. At the end of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein (1922: 90) compares his propositions to elucidations that a reader can use as steps to climb beyond them: ‘He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it’. We can use this metaphor to understand that while character educators focus on emulation as the ideal learning mechanism, they seem to have forgotten that (deliberate) imitation is nevertheless important for learning how to take the first steps. It makes sense that they do not want to understand the whole moral developmental trajectory in terms of the automatic imitation that babies engage in. However, this has given the term ‘imitation’ such negative connotations beyond childhood that it prevents moral educationalists from seeing the potential of a more deliberate interpretation of imitation. Louis’s novels and Warnick’s framework help us to imagine a kind of ‘deliberate imitation’ that fills a gap between the unconscious imitation of virtuous behaviours and the deliberate emulation of virtuous ideals represented by the model.

What does this mean for moral educational theories that elevate emulation as the ideal moral learning mechanism at the expense of imitation? This can be illustrated through the moral educational literature on teacher modelling, which I mentioned in the Introduction (e.g. Carr, 2023; Croce and Vaccarezza, 2017; Sanderse, 2013, 2024; Sanger and Osguthorpe, 2013). Modelling often refers to teachers unconsciously expressing moral values and virtues in the classroom through their decisions and reactions (Fenstermacher et al., 2009). There is general agreement in the academic literature that modelling in this sense is inevitable and ubiquitous (Jackson et al., 1998). However, the moral educational literature views modelling primarily as a method to stimulate students to emulate their behaviour or attitudes. Although I agree with Henderson (2024: 74) that there is a lack of clarity about the relationship between emulation by students and modelling by teachers, steps have been made to connect the too, for example by drawing on literature on teacher education. As a method, modelling involves at least ‘congruent teaching’, where teachers ensure that the moral behaviour they expect aligns with their own (Swennen et al., 2008). Furthermore, modelling has been developed as a didactical approach in teacher education (Boyd, 2014). In this case, teachers make their modelling explicit, justify it, and encourage students to reflect on its relevance to their own lives. When this approach to modelling is used in moral education, it can enable students to understand what virtues the teacher tries to exemplify, how these virtues are related to human flourishing, and what students can do to acquire these virtues.

However, the analysis of Louis’s novels has taught us that in the case of deliberate imitation, students may not know or care about what teachers aim to model. They might imitate virtuous behaviour for reasons other than those intended by the teacher. This suggests that teachers have less control over modelling than moral educators assume. Warnick (2008: 28) calls this ‘the assumption of intentional selection’, which means that teachers would have control over which actions students take to be exemplary and which ones do not. I agree with Warnick that this assumption is problematic, as students’ interpretations will not always align with teachers’ intentions. This could be circumvented when teachers make their modelling explicit as part of a didactical approach. But even when teachers model explicitly, students might not share teachers’ moral framework. Instead, they may potentially imitate virtuous behaviour for certain advantages rather than adopting the teacher’s blueprint of the good life. Deliberate imitation can lead to ‘virtue signalling’, where students act virtuously to enhance their reputation rather than internalising those virtues (Tuckwell, 2022). At the same time, the tiktoker example showed that ‘faking virtue’ can potentially lead to ‘making virtue’. To address the possibility that students may deliberately imitate them, one suggestion is for teachers to focus less on themselves as role models and more on facilitating discussions that take students’ own role models seriously (Sanderse, 2024). In this case, teachers help students to derive moral criteria from their models and evaluate their own lives in light of them.

Conclusion

This article explored the roles of imitation and emulation in moral development through a neo-Aristotelian lens, challenging the conventional distinctions between these learning mechanisms. An examination of two novels by the French novelist Louis, particularly the character arc of Eddy/Edouard, revealed that the protagonist’s imitation of characters like Elena and Didier did not neatly fit into the binary of unconscious imitation and deliberate emulation. Instead, in the novels Eddy consciously adopts behaviours from these role models, not necessarily sharing their motives, but driven by his own goals, such as escaping his past or proving his worth. This suggests a third type of moral learning, which is deliberate and goal-driven but not fully aligned with the virtuous motives of the role models. By highlighting the potential of deliberate imitation as a nuanced, intermediate stage in how young people can make moral progress, this study contributed to moral psychology and moral education. Although learning through deliberate imitation is far from ideal, learners may, through experience and reflection, internalise virtuous motives and progress towards full virtue through emulation. If deliberate emulation does not only occur in novels, but in real life too, there will be students who do not automatically know or care about what teachers aim to model but imitate their virtuous behaviour anyway for different purposes. Although many teachers want to be role model, they may not have much control over which of their actions students take to be exemplary.