ABSTRACT
Morality and personal freedom are often thought of as opposing poles in the affairs of human conduct. Freud (1923/1961), for example, saw the process of socialization as involving the formation of an intrapsychic moral control structure that functioned to harness or keep in check the passions and destructive impulses of individuals. Contemporary theorists also tend to portray freedom and morality in oppositional terms. Social constructionists and culture theorists, for example, tend to classify the morality of various societies on a continuum from the individualistic/permissive to the collectivistic/traditional in terms of the degrees of individual freedom and autonomy granted to members relative to the given cultural system of moral rules and obligations (Miller & Bersoff, 1992; Shweder, 1990). In this chapter I explore an alternative thesis: that morality and personal freedom are interdependent and that personal freedom is necessary both for the construction of moral understandings and engagement in moral action. In the process I want to revisit Piaget’s (1932) discussion of moral autonomy and offer an expanded interpretation that emphasizes the role of social autonomy in the child’s construction of morality.
