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Moral Development as Self-Transcendence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Walter E. Conn
Walter E. Conn*
Affiliation:
Saint Patrick's Seminary
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Abstract

This essay explicates a contribution of developmental moral psychology to religious ethics in the task of interpreting the relationship between religion and morality. It argues that a criterion of self-transcendence is implicit in the developmental perspectives of major psychological theorists, and from this that the same drive for self-transcendence which grounds religious experience also constitutes the dynamic factor in moral consciousness—that both authentic morality and genuine religion are expressions of a single radical dynamism of the human spirit.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Fall 1977 , pp. 189 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1977

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References

1 Macquarrie, John, Three Issues in Ethics (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 97Google Scholar. For a valuable collection of essays on various aspects of this relationship, see Outka, Gene and Reeder, John P. Jr. (eds.), Religion and Morality (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1973)Google Scholar. Also see the discussion in Nelson, Larry K., “The Independence of Moral from Religious Discourse in the Believer's Use of Language,” Harvard Theological Review 68/2 (April, 1975), pp. 167–195CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am indebted to John Egenolf for carefully reading an earlier draft of this paper, and for making many valuable suggestions throughout.

2 Macquarrie, , Three Issues in Ethics, p. 97Google Scholar.

3 See May's, William E. study of the “The Natural Law, Conscience, and Developmental Psychology” in Communio 2 (1975), pp. 3–31Google Scholar. Whereas May focuses much of his attention on the meanings of conscience and natural law, with only brief suggestions about how Kohlberg's developmental analysis can help us to understand these realities, my purpose here is to concentrate explicitly on the way developmental psychology has clarified in concrete terms the drive for self-transcendence that constitutes the subjective pole of natural law (correlative to basic human values at the objective pole). For an interpretation of how this drive, as conscious in the personal human subject, constitutes the fundamental meaning of conscience in its full, dynamic sense, see my Conscience and Self-Transcendence (Ann Arbor, MI: Xerox University Microfilms, 1973)Google Scholar.

4 See Farrelly, John O.S.B., “Religious Reflection and Man's Transcendence,” The Thomist 37/1 (January, 1973), pp. 1–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Farrelly concludes his philosophical essay by suggesting that the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson can help us in our attempt to understand the possibility of human transcendence. But, he specifies, “since the transcendence that religion … supposes is man's personal transcendence and not only one in knowledge or values taken somewhat separately, an adequate reflection upon man's transcendence calls for an attempt at integration of the two forms of man's transcendence …” analyzed by Piaget and Erikson (pp. 67-68).

5 Lonergan, Bernard, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), p. 104Google Scholar.

6 Lonergan's analysis of the structure of personal consciousness is by now too well known to require a detailed exposition here; I will simply present in broad outline form the way Lonergan differentiates the drive for self-transcendence in terms of basic questions and operations, as this notion of self-transcendence will function as the primary definition in this essay.

7 Lonergan, , Method in Theology, p. 104Google Scholar.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Lonergan, Bernard, A Second Collection, ed. by Ryan, William F. J. and Tyrell, Bernard J. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974), p. 169Google Scholar. Also see my “Bernard Lonergan on Value,” The Thomist 40/2 (April, 1976), pp. 243–257CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Lonergan, , Method in Theology, pp. 30–31Google Scholar.

12 Ibid., p. 105.

13 Ibid., pp. 105-106.

14 Erikson, Erik, “Life Cycle” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1968, IX, p. 288Google Scholar. For a general consideration of Erikson's ethical viewpoint, see my forthcoming “Erik Erikson: The Ethical Orientation, Conscience, and the Golden Rule,” The Journal of Religious Ethics, probably 5 (1977)Google Scholar.

15 Erikson, , “Life Cycle,” p. 288Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., pp. 288-289.

17 Piaget, Jean, The Origins of Intelligence in Children, tr. Cook, Margaret (New York: Norton Library, 1963; original French edition, 1936)Google Scholar and The Construction of Reality in the Child, tr. Cook, Margaret (New York: Ballantine, 1971; original French edition, 1937)Google Scholar. For a more extensive analysis of Piaget's genetic epistemology, see my “Objectivity—a Developmental and Structural Analysis: The Epistemologies of Jean Piaget and Bernard Lonergan,” Dialectica 30 (1976), pp. 197–221CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and my forthcoming “Piaget as Critical Realist,” International Philosophical Quarterly, probably 17 (1977)Google Scholar.

18 Piaget, Jean and Inhelder, Bärbel, The Psychology of the Child, tr. by Weaver, Helen (New York: Basic Books, 1969; original French edition, 1966), p. 13Google Scholar.

19 Ibid.

20 Piaget, Jean, The Moral Judgment of the Child, tr. Gabain, Marjorie (New York: Free Press, 1965; original French edition, 1929)Google Scholar.

21 Piaget, Jean, Six Psychological Studies, tr. Tenzer, Anita and ed. Elkind, David (New York: Vintage Books, 1968; original French edition, 1964), p. 22Google Scholar.

22 Ibid., p. 29.

23 Kohlberg, Lawrence, “Moral Development,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1968, X, p. 489Google Scholar. For critical assessment of Kohlberg's theory, see Philibert, Paul J. O.P., “Lawrence Kohlberg's Use of Virtue in His Theory of Moral Development,” International Philosophical Quarterly 15 (December, 1975), pp. 455–497CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and my “Post-conventional Morality: An Exposition and Critique of Lawrence Kohlberg's Analysis of Moral Development in the Adolescent and Adult,” Lumen Vitae 30 (1975), pp. 213–230Google Scholar.

24 Kohlberg, Lawrence and Gilligan, Carol, “The Adolescent as a Philosopher: The Discovery of the Self in a Postconventional World,” Daedalus 100 (Fall, 1971), p. 1066Google Scholar.

25 Kohlberg, , “Moral Development,” p. 488Google Scholar.

26 Kohlberg, and Gilligan, , “The Adolescent as a Philosopher,” p. 1066Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., p. 1067.

28 Ibid., pp. 1066-1067.

29 Piaget, , Six Psychological Studies, p. 61Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., pp. 61-62.

31 Ibid., pp. 62-63.

32 Ibid., p. 63.

33 Ibid., p. 64.

34 Ibid.

35 Erikson, Erik, “Identity, Psychosocial” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1968, VII, p. 61Google Scholar.

36 Ibid.

37 Erikson, , “Life Cycle,” p. 290Google Scholar.

38 Erikson, Erik, “Reflections on the Dissent of Contemporary Youth,” Daedalus 99 (Winter, 1970), p. 164Google Scholar.

39 Ibid.

40 Erikson, , “Life Cycle,” p. 290Google Scholar.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid., p. 291.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 Kohlberg, and Gilligan, , “The Adolescent as a Philosopher,” p. 1071Google Scholar.

46 Ibid., p. 1072.

47 Ibid., p. 1067.

48 Ibid., p. 1068. In recent writings Kohlberg has suggested the “purely metaphorical notion of a Stage 7 as pointing to some meaningful solutions” to the questions “Why be moral?”, “Why be just in a universe full of injustice?”, which ultimately entail the ontological or religious question “Why live?” See, for example, “Moral Development in Aging Human Beings,” The Gerontologist 13 (Winter, 1973), pp. 497–502Google Scholar. Directly connected with this aspect of Kohlberg's thought, and especially pertinent to the general concerns of the present essay on the relationship between morality and religion, is the Piaget/Kohlberg inspired research and theoretical work of James Fowler on religious development; see, for example, Fowler, James W., “Towards a Developmental Perspective on Faith,” Religious Education 69/2 (1974), pp. 207–219CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Kohlberg, and Gilligan, , “The Adolescent as a Philosopher,” p. 1071Google Scholar.

50 Kohlberg, , “Moral Development,” p. 491Google Scholar.