Kohlberg Vs Gilligan Essay

According to Pollock (2016), the work of Lawrence Kohlberg’s was motivated by the work of a Swiss psychologist. According to Crysdale (1994), the work of Carol Gilligan came about after Gilligan discovered that the work of Lawrence Kohlberg placed women on the lower level of the ethical ladder compared to men and all of Kohlberg’s subjects were all men. Although there are different views, however, there are some similarities between Kohlberg’s moral development and Gilligan’s “Ethics of Care.” Weber argued that one similarity is that both Kohlberg and Gilligan’s stated that people develop through series of stages that leads to “moral maturity” (1991).

According to Held (2014), Gilligan believe that there are three stages of moral development for progression. Gilligan argued that women’s sense of development played a greater role in women’s decision

making than their cognition. The first stage of the Gilligan’s “Ethics of Care,” is 1) Pre-conventional stage: at this stage a young woman’s morality is oriented towards herself and the person’s existence and decision made by the young woman is based on practicality and what is in her best interest. 2.) Conventional stage: Gilligan argued that women cultivates sense of responsibility to others and that morality is paralleled with goodness and selflessness; the person’s own wishes should be below the cares of others. 3.) Post-conventional stage: this is the highest level morality is developed because the woman apprehends that her needs are equal to others and shift her focus from being “good,” to knowing common truths.
Kohlberg’s moral stages involved the whole human personality matures and our thinking of knowing right from wrong starts at preconvention level, then progresses to conventional level and postconventional level (Weber, 1991). Pollock argued that, at the pre-conventional stages is where the person understands “good” and “bad.” The person approaches ethical issue that are inspired by individual interest. Conventional stage deals with morality where the person focus from self to others. Post-conventional stage is when the person moves away from the standards and rules of the society to determined general good, that is what is good for the betterment of the society (2016). A second similarity between Kohlberg and Gilligan is that, Gilligan’s model of moral development looks like Kohlberg because they both advance from a totally self-interested viewpoint to one ruled by a fundamental ethical principle. They both started with highlighting the superior authority or importance of someone else, but conclude in a personal imitating of one’s own ethics (Held, 2014). Although there are similarities between this two perspectives, however, there are differences.
According to Blum (1988), the central difference between Kohlberg and Gilligan is the argument Gilligan presented that female mindset and value including the way in which women define morality is quite different from men.

Pollock argued that most men examine ethical decision with rules and fairness while, many women see the same ethical issue from needs and relationship perspective which became known as the “ethics of care” (2016). Another difference between this two perspective is the discussion of the “moral self.” According to Blum (1988), “the moral agent does not attempt to abstract from this particularized self, to achieve, as Kohlberg advocates, a totally impersonal standpoint defining the “moral point of view” (Blum, p.474, 1988). Gilligan saw morality as a specific agent in which one is caring for and about a particular friend or child whom the person has a particular relationship (Blum, 1988). In respect to two this two perspectives, one can say that Gilligan’s theory is more correct than Kohlberg’s theory because Kohlberg develop a model in which women were inferior to men and Kohlberg’s model was male

centric.