Revisiting Kohlberg's account of moral maturity and moral development: The 2024 Kohlberg Memorial Lecture

Lawrence Kohlberg's 'Stage Six' moral reasoning expresses a critical component of moral maturity best characterized not as the application of Kantian principle, but as an expression of humane regard: combining respect for human agency with concern for the human capacity to suffer. However, Kohlberg's account of how moral maturity develops has three fundamental flaws. First, Kohlberg fails to show that the study of 'moral theory' is an essential prerequisite of moral maturity. Second, Kohlberg fails to appreciate the importance of sympathetic imagination to deepening moral understanding, strengthening moral affect, and engaging the will. Finally, Kohlberg provides no compelling evidence that the path to moral maturity is either linear or invariant, or that it involves progressing through increasingly 'hierarchical' stages of moral judgment. Yet despite these flaws, we should continue trying to learn from Kohlberg's account of moral maturity, and to encourage the development of moral exemplars who embody it.