ABSTRACT
In this chapter, an initial step is taken toward an integration of Lawrence Kohlberg’s and Martin Hoffman’s theories of morality. The thesis of the chapter is that Kohlberg’s and Hoffman’s theories provide important and complementary contributions to our understanding of moral development and motivation. Kohlberg’s work emphasizes the individual’s construction of progressively mature moral meaning, and can account for moral motivation in terms of a decentration process which generates prescriptions of equality and reciprocity, i.e., justice. Hoffman’s work emphasizes society’s transmission of moral norms through internalization, and views empathic affect and related emotions as the basis for moral motivation. It is concluded that constructive and internalized aspects of “internal” morality commonly derive from social interaction, just as cognitive (justice) and affective (empathy) aspects of moral motivation commonly relate to dynamic organizations of experience. Finally, constructive and internalized aspects of internal morality are comparatively traced across cultural and historical contexts.
