Moral Concepts In The Development Of Piaget's Moral Development

Moral development “focuses on the emergence, change, and understanding of morality from infancy through adulthood. In the field of moral development, morality is defined as principles for how individuals ought to treat one another, with respect to justice, others ' welfare, and rights.” (Citation) Essential to the success of every society is moral development. Lawrence Kohlberg cultivated and advanced the framework of Piaget’s life’s work in the area of moral development. He theorized that we formulate ways of thinking through our experiences. Such experiences included but weren’t limited to an understanding of the moral concepts of human welfare, rights, equality and justice. Through his research Kohlberg ascertained that we go through various

At the age of twenty-one Lawrence enrolled at the University of Chicago where he obtained his bachelors degree in a year. “Kohlberg asserted that children are moral philosophers whose ability to formulate their own moral decisions develops with experiences.” (Beauchamp, 2014) Anne Beachamp goes on to state, “Lawrence Kohlberg was a psychologist who drew on education, anthropology, and philosophy, to inform his work on the development of moral judgment and moral behavior.” (2014,

He or she approaches moral dilemmas with the perspective of a “member-of-society.” During this stage of moral development one begins to take into consideration the expectations of society and the requirements to adhere to certain social norms. Within this stage the person is chiefly concerned with, as Hersh, Paolitto, and Reimer put it, “striving not only to avoid punishment or censure [ship], but also to live up, in a positive way, to accepted definitions of a good member or role occupant.” (2014, p.63)
In the third level of moral reasoning, Kohlberg’s post-conventional level we approach moral dilemmas from the vantage point of seeing beyond the given laws are societal rules. This stage requires us to question authority to keep in mind what is best for the society at large. According to Lawrence Kohlberg (1984), “The postconventional perspective, then, is prior to society; it is the perspective of an individual who has made the moral commitments or holds the standards on which a good or just society is based.” (2014, p.178) During this level it is about the why’s of moral