Analysis of Kohlberg's theory on moral development from quran point of view

Abstract

Moral development has been a noticeable social issue. The holy Quran as the most complete guiding book for humankind endorses deep teachings regarding morality. On the other hand because of importance of ethical issues, many theorists and philosophers have been trying to develop ethical and moral theories, according to their ideological and cultural back grounds. But most of them could not go beyond institutional life of human beings and failed to consider spiritual and motivational underpinnings of morality, which are deeply rooted in God creation and human nature. Although studying moral development in Quran view required a wide and deep reflection in various dimensions, this paper tries to open the discussion as an introduction for future works by analyzing the Kohlberg’s theory of moral development from Quran point of view. Method: This is a review article, which is done using library and web-based sources and deriving relevant references. Results: According to Quran, human beings pass through some stages during their lives. A similar step wised approach to moral development has been discussed in theories such as Kohlberg and Pageant’s. According to Kohlberg, steps and levels of moral development are fixed and unchangeable. In addition he mentioned that moral arguments and judgments are related to cognitive properties. But from Islamic and Quran viewpoint, moral regulations and principles are factual and abstract (Not-relative). Therefore in some dimensions views of western Theorists is completely different and even contradictory with Islamic tradition. One of These major differences is lack of a holistic approach to human moral development and lack of enough attention to spiritual and supererogatory moral ideals. Conclusion: The most important critique against Kohlberg’s theory is its relative weakness in explaining multi-dimensional nature of moral development because of its theoretical and experimental limitations. Using such western theories and instruments for evaluating moral development is not completely compatible with our religious and national culture. Although there are a number of works that try to explain moral development from Islamic (Shi’a) point of view, but very few works have used a comparative approach toward this issue. We recommend more detailed future studies about this issue.