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MORAL DEVELOPMENT: A COMPENDIUM
edited by Bill Puka.
New York: Garland, 1994. 7 volumes, 2,784 pp. $454.00.
Bill Puka, a professor at Rensselaer Institute, has compiled over one hundred articles and commentaries into a seven-volume compendium of moral development literature touching on a variety of approaches, but focusing centrally around the cognitive-developmental tradition of Lawrence Kohlberg. Although many different opinions are represented in the collection, including an entire volume on criticism, the central task of the compendium seems to be to trace the evolution of Kohlberg's conception of moral development and present a wide range of subsequent research and debate based on his theoretical approach and findings.
Editor Puka begins his introduction to this series by defining his vision of the field of moral development, saying the field "focuses most on how we think about these ethical issues (using our cognitive competencies) and how we act as a result" (vol. 1, p. vii). Puka's framing of the field of moral development in this way is telling, and characterizes both the vision that guides this compendium and the Kohlbergian approach that it sets out to illuminate. To situate this compendium within the history of the field of moral development, I will address both of Puka's assertions made in the statement above.
I agree with Puka's suggestion that the mainstream of the moral development field has been, and remains, largely dominated by Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental model. This model focuses on "cognitive competencies" to the exclusion of other aspects of moral experience, such as emotions and passions, empathy, self-knowledge, personal relationships, and various forms of identity. As this compendium attests, much of the energy of the moral development field in the last twenty-five years has been dedicated to Kohlberg's theory, either in support and refinement or in criticism and challenge.
Despite this, it is hardly fair to suggest, as Puka does, that Kohlberg's theoretical approach, in itself, constitutes "the field" of moral development. The non-Kohlbergian articles in this compendium deal with aspects of moral experience other than cognitive development, and even these articles do not adequately represent all the approaches and concerns within the moral development field. These critical essays speak clearly and forcefully of the need to transcend Kohlberg's narrow definition of morality as a particular form of...