Great Throughts Treasury

"Moral thought seems to behave like all other kinds of thought. Progress through the moral levels and stages is characterized by increasing differentiation and increasing integration, and hence is the same kind of progress that scientific theory presents."

"The individual makes a clear effort to define moral values and principles that have validity and application apart from the authority of the groups of persons holding them and apart from the individual's own identification with the group. "

"At this level, the individual perceives the maintenance of the expectations of his family, group, or nation as valuable in its own right, regardless of immediate and obvious consequences."

"Morality is the ability to see an issue from points of view other than just your own."

"In summary, the nature of our sequence is not significantly affected by widely varying social, cultural or religious conditions. The only thing that is affected is the rate at which individuals progress through this sequence."

"Right action tends to be defined in terms of general individual rights and standards that have been critically examined and agreed upon by the whole society."

"The social worlds of all men seem to contain the same basic structures. All the societies we have studied have the same basic institutions ? family, economy, law, government. In addition, however, all societies are alike because they are societies ?systems of defined complementary roles. In order to play a social role in the family, school or society, the child must implicitly take the role of others toward himself and toward others in the group. These role-taking tendencies form the basis of social institutions. They represent various patternings of shared or complementary expectations."

"On the basis of their reasoning about these dilemmas at a given age, each boy's stage of thought could be determined for each of 25 basic moral concepts or aspects. One such aspect, for instance, is "Motive Given for Rule Obedience or Moral Action." In this instance, the six stages look like this: 1. Obey rules to avoid punishment. 2. Conform to obtain rewards, have favors returned, and so on. 3. Conform to avoid disapproval, dislike by others. 4. Conform to avoid censure by legitimate authorities and resultant guilt. 5. Conform to maintain the respect of the impartial spectator judging in terms of community welfare. 6. Conform to avoid self?condemnation. In another of these 25 moral aspects, the value of human life, the six stages can be defined thus: 1. The value of a human life is confused with the value of physical objects and is based on the social status or physical attributes of its possessor. 2. The value of a human life is seen as instrumental to the satisfaction of the needs of its possessor or of other persons. 3. The value of a human life is based on the empathy and affection of family members and others toward its possessor. 4. Life is conceived as sacred in terms of its place in a categorical moral or religious order of rights and duties. 5. Life is valued both in terms of its relation to community welfare and in terms of life being a universal human right. 6. Belief in the sacredness of human life as representing a universal human value of respect for the individual. I have called this scheme a typology. This is because about 50 per cent of most people's thinking will be at a single stage, regardless of the moral dilemma involved. We call our types stages because they seem to represent an invariant developmental sequence. "True" stages come one at a time and always in the same order."