The Moral Domain: Essays in the Ongoing Discussion Between Philosophy and the Social Sciences

These 13 essays by noted American and German scholars provide a focused discussion of many of the issues raised by the integration of philosophical and psychological theories of moral development.

The essays pivot around two key contributions, by Lawrence Kohlberg and his associates and by JA¼rgen Habermas. Kohlberg's major work was a description of the stages of development of moral understanding in children. This book contains the final formulation of his view of the end point of moral development (Stage 6). Habermas's insightful response to that formulation, which seeks to fit Kohlberg's perceptions into the framework of a communicative ethics, is an important extension of his own moral theory.

In three parts, the essays map out the relationship between philosophy and psychology in the study of the moral domain, explore the way the moral point of view is understood within Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental model, and discuss the place of moral development in terms of various models of personality and decision making.

The contributors are Augusto Blasi, Dwight R. Boyd, Rainer Dobert, Wolfgang Edelstein, JA¼rgen Habermas, Helen Haste, Monika Keller, Lawrence Kohlberg, Charles Levine, Mordecai Nisan, Gil G. Noam, Gertrud Nunner-Winkler, Bill Puka, Ernst Tugendhat, and Thomas E. Wren.

The Moral Domain is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.