Assimilating Kohlberg to Aquinas

ASSIMILATING KOHLBERG TO AQUINAS HE RESEARCH FINDINGS of Lawrence Kohlberg bviously invite attempts to assimilate them to philoophical theories of natural law. Here I propose to assimilate them, if only in rough outline form, to one such theory, that of Thomas Aquinas. Both parties, I think, can profit from such an integration. Two preliminary remarks, however, need to be made. First, I shall not be concerned with Aquinas's theory of natural law as a whole. My attention will be focused instead on one famous text: Summa Theologica, I-II, 94, art. 2. Whether this is reconcilable with other statements Aquinas makes on natural law, though an important and interesting question, is not strictly relevant to my present concerns. Second, I shall be liberal in my construction of that text. What I am interested in is not so much the letter of Aquinas's text as the spirit which, I believe, informs it; and when that spirit requires supplementing or correcting the ipsum verbum of the text, I shall not hesitate to do so. The findings of Kohlberg which are pertinent to our present purposes are these: (1) that the development of moral thinking in the individual is a process which passes through definite stages; (2) that this cognitive development has to do with the form of morality rather than the matter, the " why" of conduct rather than the "what;" (3) that the developmental process has three main stages or levels, called the pre-conventional, the conventional, and the post-conventional (or autonomous or principled) levels; (4) that the pre-conventional level is characterized by egocentric thinking, i.e., thinking which takes the actor's own pleasures and pains, desires and aversions, as the measure of what should or should not be done; (5) that the conventional level is characterized by ethnocentric or sociocentric thinking, i.e., thinking which takes the values of the IM ASSIMILATING KOIILBERG TO AQUINAS 125 actor's own group or society as the measure; (6) that the postconventional level is characterized by anthropocentric or universalistic thinking, i.e., thinking which takes as the measure standards having validity apart from the preferences of any individual or any group; (7) that the individual passes through these stages in a step-by-step way, not skipping any steps along the way; (8) that for the most part the steps are irreversible; (9) that a person who is at any one stage, though he does most of his thinking at that stage, does not necessarily do all of it at that stage; (10) that individuals move through the developmental process at different rates of speed; (11) that individuals often fail to complete the whole developmental process; (12) that certain cultures and societies have a greater propensity than others to retard and even to arrest, or conversely to promote and to accelerate, the developmental process in their members.1 Aquinas makes a distinction among fundamental precepts of morality between what may be called formal and material precepts . There is only one basic formal precept: Hence this is the first precept of law, that" good is to be done and promoted, and evil is to be avoided." All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this; so that all the things which the practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good belong to the precepts of the natural law under the form of things to be done or avoided.2 By itself, of course, this formal precept tells us nothing about the content of morality. That is provided by certain natural inclinations, which, when viewed, so to speak, through the lens of the do-good-avoid-evil precept, become the fundamental material precepts: Since, however, good has the nature of an end, and evil the nature of the contrary, hence it is that all those things to which man has a natural inclination are naturally apprehended by reason as being 1 Kohlberg, Lawrence, "The Cognitive-Developmental Approach to Moral Eduaction ," Phi Delta Kappan, June, 1975 (reprinted in Annual Editions: Readings in Human Development 78/79. Guilford, Ct., Dushkin Publishing Group, 156-163). 2 S. Theol., I-II, 94, art. 2. 126 DAVID R. CARLIN, JR. good, and consequently as...