Introduction
Introduction
If a human has developed a moral character, the facility to act morally and ethically is in his or her hands. What are the stages of moral development that the human person as a moral agent undergoes?
The set of characteristics that guide a person's behavior and decision-making.
The development of one's moral character plays a vital role in the overall moral development of an individual. A person with a positively developed moral character would likely have a sound moral judgement and make good moral choices.
Moral development is the gradual development of an individual's concept of right and wrong - conscience, values, social attitudes, and other moral behavior.
Lawrence Kohlberg wrote what is now known as the Kohlberg's stages of moral development. He sought to describe the developmental stages of moral reasoning, the thinking process that occur when people consider something right or wrong. Kohlberg argued that people pass through six stages of moral thinking. He clustered these six stages into three basic levels: pre-conventional morality, conventional morality, and post-conventional morality.
Level One - Pre-conventional Morality (Below nine years old)
Level One - Pre-conventional Morality (Below nine years old)
This is the lowest of moral development in Kohlberg's theory. At this level, children don't have a personal code of morality. Instead, their moral code is controlled by the standards of adults and the consequences of breaking adult's rules. Authority is outside the individual and reasoning is based on the physical consequences of actions. There is no internalization of moral values.