Educating in a Postconventional Society

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Notes

¹I am using the term postconventional in a manner informed by the thinking of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas forms his understanding of postconventional moral consciousness in dialogue with the work of Lawrence Kohlberg. Habermas reconstructs Kohlberg's theory in terms of his own theory of commmuncative action. This leads him to define postconventional as the ability to engage in communication in a manner that respects the communicative partner as a moral other. In this article, postconventionality is characterized by relationality, equality, and openness. (See Hyun-Sook Kim 2002; Habermas 1984, 1989.)

² James W. Fowler explains this open self by presenting the concept of “second naivete” in his theory of faith development. The second naivete, which was first used by Paul Ricoeur, is defined by Fowler as a “postcritical receptivity and readiness for participation in the reality brought to expression in symbol and myth” (Fowler 1984, 65, Ricoeur 1967, 351–353).