Jean Piaget
Knowledge is neither innate nor copied from the world but built by the knower, through actions coordinated into ever more general structures; children pass through stages of thought, and obedience to adults’ rules gives way to a morality of cooperation and mutual respect.
Placement
Swiss psychologist and epistemologist in Geneva: children build knowledge actively, through stages from sensorimotor action to formal thought; his “genetic epistemology” asks how the categories of knowledge – object, number, causality, moral rule – arise in development and in the history of science.
Key ideas
- Genetic epistemology
- Stages of cognitive development
- Assimilation and accommodation
- The moral judgement of the child
Influence
Influenced by 2
Immanuel Kant
influenced by ✓
Piaget kept Kant’s necessary categories but held that they are constructed in development, not given, a position he described as a dynamic Kantianism (Introduction à l’épistémologie génétique, 1950). J. Piaget, Introduction à l’épistémologie génétique (1950); Sagesse et illusions de la philosophie (1965)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
Henri Bergson
influenced by
Piaget recalled that reading Bergson’s L’Évolution créatrice as a youth made him seek a biological explanation of knowledge, the programme of his genetic epistemology (Autobiography, 1952). J. Piaget, “Autobiography”, in E. G. Boring et al. (eds.), A History of Psychology in Autobiography, vol. IV (1952); H. Bergson, L’Évolution créatrice (1907)
Evidence: AI draft
Henri Bergson › 1859–1941
Influenced 2
Thomas S. Kuhn
influenced ✓
Kuhn named Piaget’s studies of the successive worlds of the growing child among the sources of his idea of scientific revolutions (Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962, preface). T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), preface; SEP “Thomas Kuhn”
Thomas S. Kuhn › 1922–1996
Jürgen Habermas
influenced ✓
Habermas modelled the development of moral consciousness, and in part social evolution, on Piaget’s developmental logic and Kohlberg’s stages (Moralbewußtsein und kommunikatives Handeln, 1983). J. Habermas, Moralbewußtsein und kommunikatives Handeln (1983); Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus (1976); J. Piaget, Le jugement moral chez l’enfant (1932)
Jürgen Habermas › 1929–2026
Criticism
Criticized by 2
Lev Vygotsky
criticised by
Vygotsky argued against Piaget that children’s egocentric speech does not fade away but turns into inner speech, so development runs from the social to the individual (1934). L. S. Vygotsky, Myshlenie i rech’ (Thinking and Speech, 1934), ch. 2; J. Piaget, Comments on Vygotsky’s Critical Remarks, 1962
Evidence: AI draft
Lev Vygotsky › 1896–1934
Carol Gilligan
criticised by
Gilligan objected that Piaget, noting that girls are less legalistic in games, took boys’ development as the norm and girls’ as a deficit (In a Different Voice, 1982). C. Gilligan, In a Different Voice (1982), ch. 1; J. Piaget, Le jugement moral chez l’enfant (1932)
Evidence: AI draft
Carol Gilligan › b. 1936
Works
Based on observations of children playing marbles and on interviews about lies and punishment: moral development leads from a morality of constraint, which treats rules as fixed by adults, to a morality of cooperation and mutual respect among equals.
Three volumes on mathematical, physical, biological, psychological and sociological thought: the categories of knowledge are neither innate nor copied from experience but constructed in development through the coordination of actions.
Position
Piaget is on the map as the founder of genetic epistemology: the attempt to answer questions of the theory of knowledge – how is knowledge of objects, number, space, time, causality or moral rules possible? – by studying how this knowledge develops in children and in the history of science. Knowledge, on his account, is neither innate nor a copy of the world; the knower constructs it through actions that are coordinated into ever more general structures. Each new experience is assimilated to existing schemes, which in turn accommodate to it, and the search for equilibrium drives development through stages: sensorimotor intelligence, pre-operational thought, concrete operations and formal operations. In “The Moral Judgment of the Child” (1932) he described a shift from a morality of constraint, in which rules come from adults and are held sacred, to a morality of cooperation and mutual respect among peers. He described his position as a kind of Kantianism in motion: the categories are necessary, but they are constructed, not given. His stage theory has been criticised – by Vygotsky for neglecting social and linguistic mediation, by later psychologists for underestimating young children, by Gilligan for taking boys’ development as the norm – but it shaped developmental psychology, education and the cognitive sciences, and Kohlberg and Habermas built on his account of moral development.
Life & context
Jean Piaget was born on 9 August 1896 in Neuchâtel. As a schoolboy he published papers on molluscs, and he took a doctorate in natural sciences at Neuchâtel in 1918. After studying psychology in Zurich and Paris, where he worked on intelligence tests in Théodore Simon’s laboratory, he became director of studies at the Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Geneva in 1921. He held chairs at Neuchâtel, Geneva, Lausanne and the Sorbonne, directed the International Bureau of Education in Geneva from 1929 to 1968, and in 1955 founded the International Centre for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva, where psychologists, logicians and scientists worked together. Many of his studies drew on observations of his own three children. He died in Geneva on 16 September 1980.
Further main works
- Le langage et la pensée chez l’enfant (1923)
- Le jugement moral chez l’enfant (1932)
- La naissance de l’intelligence chez l’enfant (1936)
- La psychologie de l’intelligence (1947)
- Introduction à l’épistémologie génétique (3 vols., 1950)
- L’épistémologie génétique (1970)
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