It is an interesting exercise to try to locate Hand’s approach on Kohlberg’s taxonomy, particularly in light of what I think is an irresolvable tension in Kohlberg’s approach.

Kohlberg’s stages are entirely formal—higher levels of moral reasoning are identified not in terms of the actual beliefs or judgments endorsed but the principles by which agents defend their judgments. Accordingly, Kohlberg’s version of moral education focuses on improving the routes by which students arrive at whatever judgments they settle on, but it does not allow him to identify anything in particular that they should judge to be right or wrong. While it was clear that the politically minded and liberal Kohlberg had his own opinions about the right position on any number of controversial subjects, he could only hope that students would arrive at those conclusions themselves. Towards the end of his life this inability to identify, from within his theory, specific beliefs students should be taught directly was a growing concern for Kohlberg. Continue reading…