Final Discussion

Theory of Moral UnderstandingStudent’s name
Institutional affiliation
Date

Abstract
According to Kohlberg, morality starts during the early childhood years. In his research, he used dilemma stories as a technique for understanding the moral standing of children at different ages. In his theory, he established that there were distinct stages to moral development to establish how morally upright an individual is. He also determined that not everyone could go through all stages. In this paper, I will discuss his contributions towards the proper understanding regarding the approach used, the stages of the development and how each stage acts as a contributing factor. Kohlberg approached this concept as an expansion of Jean Piaget’s work which was a cognitive theory. The approach was unique as it adopted the element of a dilemma in moral issues stipulating how children in 10 – 16 years handled morality and values issues. The paper, therefore, addresses his results of moral reasoning as classified under various stages of pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional morality. Also, the essay discusses further classification in each stage.
 

The first level was the pre-conventional morality level that incorporates both punishment-obedience and instrumental relativist orientation as its classifications. He explained that people would be good to avoid punishment. In the latter stage, he states that the morality of an action depends on how it satisfies the needs of the doer, such as stealing medicine to treat a sick poor patient.

Here, he established that different people have differences of opinion on moral issues (Sincero, 2014).
Level two entailed conventional morality where adolescents and young adults begin to internalize moral standards of valued adults, and one views the role of society as a judge of the morality of an action. The healthy interpersonal relationship is where an individual appears as good so as to be viewed as being good and maintains the social order where he familiarizes with the wider rules of society and their duty to uphold the law.
In the third level which is post-conventional morality, Kohlberg established that individual judgment is on moral reasoning. Social contract and individual rights explained that one would familiarize with certain laws and decide on what moral stand to take. While the universal ethical-moral principles orientation bases on an individual’s consideration of universal ethical principles, therefore their actions would present high reliability on their ability to defend such principles such as breaking the law to preserve life (McLeod, 2013).
His theory was thus to show that proper and moral understanding on an individual developed over time to full development until when one went through the different stages. The assertions, however, receives various critiques. Such critics lingered in the comparison of men and women regarding moral reasoning abilities, execution of justice with excluded values and inconsistency in moral values.
References
McLeod, S. (2013). Kohlberg – Moral Development | Simply Psychology. Simplypsychology.org. Retrieved 13 December 2016, from http://www.simplypsychology.org/kohlberg.html
Sincero, S. (2014). Theory of Moral Development by Lawrence Kohlberg. Explorable.com. Retrieved 13 December 2016, from https://explorable.com/theory-of-moral-development