How to Differentiate Among Various Theories of Moral Development
- 1). Consider the agent that is doing the acting. It can be an individual, a nation, an ethnic group or even God. Before anything else, make sure you are clear on what precisely is being developed. Do not take it for granted that it is the individual. Karl Marx believed in the social class, Immanuel Kant in individual social duty, St. Augustine in drawing nearer to the source of all good, or God.
- 2). Seek out the source of moral judgment. It could be experience, reason, usefulness, pleasure, an aristocracy, divine dispensation or national tradition. In this step, what you are doing is figuring out what a writer is appealing to in order to make a judgment. Judgments must come from somewhere. Baruch Spinoza held that Substance is the ultimate appeal. Plato, the rational forms, Augustine, God and the church he created.
- 3). Learn what the problems are in developing this theory. The roadblocks to the fulfillment of the theory might be arrogance, stubbornness, prejudice, sin, tradition, passion, unjust social systems or bad governments. All theories of moral development are about transforming something, a person or a social system. There are always roadblocks that seek to destroy this transformation, the "bad guys" in this narrative. For Marx, it is the capitalist, Adam Smith, it is the state. For Kant, it is personal prejudice and desires. For Edmund Burke, it was metaphysics and "abstraction." All of these are presented as roadblocks for the full flowering of moral development and a smoothly functioning society.
- 4). Figure out what the final goal ist. These can be complete equality, the fulness of grace, liberation for a certain group, a devotion to duty, money making, personal glory, or making yourself as useful as possible. The end goal will make sense of everything else in the theory. Make sure you see how the means lead to an end and contribute to achieving this end. For Smith, this was the maximization of production and innovation, for Burke it was the internal control over the passions. Aristotle held that the final goal was choosing the moral goal as if it were pleasurable, almost automatically, like a habit, even when it was painful to do so. For Romans like Cicero, it was the good of the empire and army.
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