Nearly two decades ago a friend of mine told me about a theory of moral development espoused by a guy named Lawrence Kohlberg. The idea is that people progress through stages of morality. I'm not sure of all the details, but the gist is that there is an orderly progression to things.

stage 1: I value only myself and what I want. I'm the only thing that's important. Infants are in this stage. Whatever I want is right.

stage 2: I value myself, and I value others to the extent they give me what I want or need. Whatever I want is right, and whatever my assistants want is right infosar as it doesn't interfere with what I want.

stage 3: I value the group. The group's opinion is paramount. They decide right and wrong. Adolescents (and a great many adults) are in this group.

stage 4: The law is everything. The law decides what is right and wrong and there is no arguing with the law.

stage 5: Constitution. The law is important, but if enough of us get together, we can change the law.

stage 6: Personal Ethics. I decide what's right and wrong based on some internal sense that I have of rightness.


Given a particular situation and a response to that situation, and people in various stages asked to evaluate the response to the situation, you can find that people in, say, stages 1,2,5,6 might all agree that X was wrong, while those in 4 would say it was right, and 5 would say it could be right or wrong depending. That is, the outcomes of the evaluations can produce some strange agreements, but agreements based on different reasons.


Kohlberg is not talking about what is right and wrong, but about how people develop their ideas about what is right and wrong and how they progress from one view of morality to another.


k