ABSTRACT
This chapter offers some exploratory considerations of a phenomenon which, using Rainer Dobert and Gertrud Nunner-Winkler's term known as "moral segmentation". Its characteristic feature is that people who have to solve conflicts in various social settings tend to reason at correspondingly different moral stages. The concept of moral segmentation is based on the assumption that the structures of various societal "life-worlds" influence the application of moral competencies, and thus that moral judgment varies systematically from one life-world to the other. The chapter outlines the societal conditions of moral judgment within a sociological frame of reference. It discusses some theoretical aspects of segmentation. The chapter concludes with an approach such as C. Levine's, which attempts to conceptualize segmentation within the framework of a cumulative model, leads to considerable difficulties. It focuses on the possibilities within Kohlberg's theory which allow a theoretical integration of the segmentation phenomenon.
