ABSTRACT
Moral sanctions are necessarily cognitive, that is, they are involved in the striving and forward-reaching activity of the human personality. Moral judgment on the other hand is presumably cognitive in form, that is, it is an aspect of intellectual activity. This chapter is primarily concerned to show that the process of moral maturation can be understood in terms of the evolution of moral judgment. Almost every reputable developmental psychologist would agree with J. Piaget’s general proposition that as a child matures the basis of his moral judgments change. The slow evolution of moral concepts which thereby change the basis of moral judgment can also be looked upon as a sequence of different moralities. The reference to moral autonomy leads naturally to another method of analysing the research data reported by Piaget. The moral life of children at authoritarian stage is characterized by an almost total submission to authority.
