ABSTRACT

Under the powerful influence first of Jean Piaget and then of Lawrence

Kohlberg, developmental psychology has paid relatively less attention to issues

of moral motivation than of moral cognition. For Kohlberg, motivation was

practically subsumed under cognition. AsKohlberg (1970) reported in his essay

“Education for Justice: A Modern Statement of the Platonic View,” “as I have

tried to trace the stages of development of morality and to use these stages as the

basis of amoral education program, I have realizedmore andmore that its impli-

cationwas the reassertion of the Platonic faith in the power of the rational good”

(p. 57). Although he qualified this philosophical perspective-“In speaking of a

Platonic view, I amnot discardingmybasicDeweyism” (p. 59)—manypsychol-

ogists (andmoral philosophers) have objected to what they consider Kohlberg’s

excessive rationalism (for a summary of “Psychological and Philosophical

Challenges to Kohlberg’s Approach,” see Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau, & Thomas,

1999, chap. 2). Some developmentalists have sought to shift the focus or

broaden the purview of psychological research and theory beyond moral cogni-

tion to include issues not only of moral motivation but also of moral identity.

This chapter approaches this literature from Piaget to the neo-or post-

Kohlbergians with the belief that these theories can be illuminated by exploring

how they implicitly or explicitly answer the question: Why be moral?