The development of conscience: Concepts and theoretical and empirical approaches. An introduction

It is not always realized that from the very beginnings of the fields of developmental psychology and education the core questions asked were predominantly about morality. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile (Rousseau, 1763) is above all a book that resulted from Rousseau’s quest for morality. That was the reason for Immanuel Kant’s admiration for Rousseau (Koops, 2008). Where Rousseau’s great work laid the foundation for developmental and pedagogical thinking (Koops, 2008) one could maintain that the entire field is basically about moral development and education.