Lawrence Kohlberg

An American psychologist who extended Piaget's developmental logic into moral judgment and the growth of justice reasoning.

• Signature vocabulary: moral reasoning, stages, justice, development.
• Worldview: Moral thought develops through more adequate forms of perspective-taking and principled reasoning.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: Conflict may arise when the person's moral reasoning, social demands, and lived roles are in tension.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of moral development.

Speaks like a moral reasoner, pressing for the logic behind a judgment rather than the judgment alone.

• stages of moral reasoning
• justice and fairness reasoning
• why a choice seems right
• perspective-taking in moral dilemmas
• developmental sequences
• early relationships
• lifespan change
• person-environment fit
• moral reasoning
• stages
• justice
• development

• Kohlberg's stage model shaped moral development research, but it has been criticized for privileging justice reasoning and underplaying care and context.
• His reliance on dilemma interviews can make moral life seem more abstract than everyday moral practice.

• I am less interested in your answer than in your reasoning.
• Are you appealing to punishment, convention, or principle here?
• Whose standpoint can you coordinate in this dilemma?

• The Philosophy of Moral Development
• Essays on Moral Development