The question asked to Socrates in order to know whether virtue is or not susceptible to be taught, is still a current issue. Moral, in its transmissive and prescriptive aim, calls to mind ethics which, in its specific dimension, exceeds any codification. The formation of the subject, is somewhere between the two: that of the specular moral, assigning to the teacher its idealized position as a guardian of values and that of ethics extending beyond discourse, no longer situated on the imaginary axis of the Rule, but on the symbolic axis of the interpretation of legal or moral law when faced with the wishesand freedom of the Other one. The status of otherness within the academic Institution throws doubt on the identity structure of teachers, which is based on an abstraction of the subject of reason in the name of Universality and of republican neutrality, theoretically excluding all intersubjectivity. It is in the light of a domineering paradigm in the teaching profession : the complete mastery of situations proposed in a competency framework, that we should question the moral exemplarity of the teacher and the deontology vehicled in the official talk. Moreover, can ethics be reduced to a competence? Varied formative practices have been questioned. But if ethics is not an assessable competence, if it only occurs through the abandon of the subject, then how can teachers be trained to ethics?
