Levels of Moral Development
Levels of moral development are most commonly associated with the work of American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, who was a professor both at the University of Chicago and Harvard. Kohlberg saw levels of moral development created through the normal maturation process of children into teenagers and into adults. There are six stages, subdivided into three levels.
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Features
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As a child grows, the main feature of moral development is the level of abstraction. The three levels of moral development are preconventional, conventional and postconventional. They are typified by the level of intellectual sophistication. Preconventional morality is the level for young children where fear of punishment predominates. Conventional morality is centered around maintaining good interpersonal relationships that are embedded in society. Postconventional is the most abstract, where talk of rights and universal ideas such as equality predominate.
Function
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These levels of moral development are meant to show how children develop mentally relative to other people. The moral and the political are, to an extent, mixed. Preconventional morality is based on the needs of the child, avoiding punishment and, eventually, seeing punishment as different from right and wrong. For Kohlberg, very young children believe that punishment is the very definition of a right or wrong action, but older children realize that punishments can be misplaced and that people can be wrong about their judgments.
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Types
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Further types of moral levels go beyond the age of 10 and into the teenage years. This is introduced by the second stage, that of simple conventional morality. In this case, maturing children begin to see moral norms as based on real principles that should be lived up to. These go toward creating and maintaining a social order. Laws and principles are seen, at the least, as serving the interests of individuals and their pursuit of their desires. Finally, postconventional morality concerns the development of universal moral principles and the rights that derive from them. Society is not seen as an end in itself but as something that must be based on the moral good.
Significance
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One part of the final stage of moral development is the concept of civil disobedience. The fact that his work was written in the 1960s should not be surprising. Civil disobedience is the final level of moral development in that universal ideas such as fairness are seen as independent of society and, in a sense, legitimizing society. The fact that a society can be seen as legitimate or illegitimate based on universal principles is the final (and presumably highest) level of personal moral development.
Speculation
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Kohlberg basically holds that the modern history of the western world is recapitulated in the growth of children. The development of capitalism and political democracy are concomitant with the development of universal ideas of democracy, the social contract and rights. He seems to be building a view of childhood development that is meant to justify the sort of society into which the western world has developed.
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