ABSTRACT
During the last 2 decades of his life, Lawrence Kohlberg increasingly revealed a strong interest in faith, that is, in how men or women find meaning or purpose in their lives, often within the context of a religious tradition. Kohlberg was im pressed with the fact that people who have exemplified mature (Stage 6) moral reasoning and behavior, such as Socrates, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Theresa, have usually been people of “ deeply religious” faith (Kohlberg, 1974, p. 11). In writing about Socrates and Martin Luther King as two great moral exemplars, for instance, Kohlberg (1981) comments:
Kohlberg maintained that though both men saw the principles of justice as the only equitable way to resolve conflicts in civil society, they also saw the prin ciples of justice as a reflection of and supported by a transcendent or cosmic order. Without this connection of moral reasoning to the larger order, to their construction of the ultimate purpose of life, it is doubtful that King or Socrates would have acted, solely on rational and logical principles of justice, to the extent of sacrificing their lives.
