The Moral Judgment of the Child

Introduction

Piaget published “Le jugement moral chez l’enfant” in 1932; it was translated into many languages. Based on observations of children playing marbles and on interviews about clumsiness, theft, lies, punishment and justice, the book distinguishes two moralities: a morality of constraint, in which rules come from adults and are held sacred, and a morality of cooperation, in which rules arise from agreement among equals and can be changed. Moral development leads from the first to the second. The book discusses Durkheim’s and Kant’s ethics and was the starting point for Kohlberg’s theory of moral stages and for the debates that followed, including Gilligan’s critique.

Connections

Builds on

• Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals1785 · Immanuel Kant

More works by Jean Piaget

• 1950Introduction to Genetic Epistemology