Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:35, 13 April 2006

Revision as of 20:55, 13 April 2006

Line 58:

* and view of the social and mental processes involved in moral reasoning.

The picture of human nature which Kohlberg begins with is the view that humans are inherantlyinherently communicative and capable of reason, and they posess a desire to understand others and the world around them. The stages of Kohlberg's model refer to the qualitative moral ''[[reasoning]]s'' that people adopt, and thus do not translate directly into praise or blame of the actions or characters of persons. In order to argue that his theory measures moral reasoning and not particular moral conclusions, Kohlberg insists that the ''form and structure'' of moral arguments is independent of the ''content'' of the arguments, a position he calls "formalism".

Kohlberg's theory revolves around the notion that justice is the essential feature of moral reasoning. By the same token, justice relies heavily upon the notion of sound reasoning upon principles. Despite being a justice-centered theory of morality, Kohlberg considered it to be compatible with plausible formulations of [[consequentialism]], [[deontology]], and [[eudaimonia]].