ABSTRACT
Piaget’s Moral Judgment of the Child, published in 1932, is one of those foundational works that has achieved iconic status in its field. The influence of Piaget’s book is apparent in virtually every subarea of the field of moral judgment that has emerged since Piaget published his monograph (for reviews of research inspired by Piaget’s original studies, see Lapsley, 1996; Lickona, 1976; Turiel, 1983). Breathtaking in both scope and depth, Piaget’s book has served as a touchstone for several generations of moral development researchers and will no doubt continue to do so. It is no exaggeration to say that, whatever one’s interests in moral development, Piaget was in some important sense there already, and much is to be gained from an engagement with his thinking, no matter whether one ultimately agrees or disagrees with him. All the more impressive is that Piaget published his foray into moral development at a relatively early stage in his career, and apart from a few scattered papers brought together in the volume Sociological Studies (Piaget, 1995), did not revisit the topic in any systematic way, despite significant revisions to his general cognitive-developmental theory throughout his lifetime.
