Education of moral beings: the distortion of Habermas’ empirical sources

ABSTRACT

This article scrutinises one of the mainstream views of how one grows into responsible membership of society; the view based on Jürgen Habermas’, Lawrence Kohlberg’s and Jean Piaget’s theories. Habermas praises Kohlberg’s and Piaget’s psychological theories and uses them as empirical sources crucial for his theoretical work. We argue that this view should be revised in light of new empirical findings as Habermas’ Kohlberg’s and Piaget’s view is based on a false understanding of the development and functioning of human reason and morality. We do not, however, defend a view that reduces normative questions to empirical facts. In contrast, we agree with Habermas that in an adequate (educational) theory, both philosophical and empirical dimensions have to be taken into account but argue that the empirical research results he has utilized are fallacious in light of current research findings. Finally, we discuss the relevance of our argument for educational theorisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Morality
• rationality
• Habermas
• Piaget
• Kohlberg

Acknowledgements

This research was supported financially by the Eudaimonia Institute of the University of Oulu and is part of the project Citizenship in Change: Constructing a Novel Theoretical Framework for Education. This research was also supported financially by the Kone Foundation. We are thankful for the support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In a recently published article Huhtala (2017) discusses naturalistic moral philosophy and the insufficiency of reason as the core of morality from the viewpoint of Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophy.

2. In the 1970s and 1980s, Habermas’ project of discourse ethics was characterised by a strong interest in connecting philosophical theories to empirical research findings. In particular, the works Communication and the Evolution of Society (1976) and Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (1983) drew heavily on Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s theories. Habermas then moved on, and his philosophy focused on different themes, e.g. ‘privatization’ (1985–2000) and, in the late 1990s, ‘publicization’ (Portier 2011, 426).

3. There are two different tendencies in Habermasian thought, as he emphasises both the importance of the close connection between empirical sciences and philosophy (Habermas 1983, 116–119) and emancipation as the goal of his idea of reconstructive sciences (Alford 1985, 324). The space constraints of this article do not allow for a discussion of whether these tendencies are contradictory. We focus on Habermas’ way of using empirical knowledge as part of his theory building.

4. One problematic dimension of Piaget’s theories is his belief that we can discover the general conditions of knowledge construction in science by observing children (Piaget 1971, 13–14). Furthermore, he examined children’s cognitive development specifically by observing his own (three) children (Saran 2007, 191), deriving universal conclusions from these observations.

5. See also Epstein 1994; Kahneman 1994; Moll et al. 2002.

6. In the field of moral philosophy, Kurth (2018) has introduced an empirically informed philosophical account of emotions as bio-cognitive models, which can directly steer the cognitive processes of knowledge inquiry. Kurth focuses particularly on the emotion of anxiety as a forward-looking (future-orientated) emotion that may enhance an individual’s performance, help her identify potential threats and (inner moral or social) conflicts, and by evoking alertness, anxiety may even smoothen social interactions (1–6).

7. Haidt used the notion of ‘WEIRD’ to describe prevailing moral accounts in Western societies. The acronym WEIRD refers to the sizeable minority of white, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic citizens who share the same liberal moral foundation. According to Haidt, and perhaps going against common judgement, the moral domain of WEIRD cultures is remarkably narrow, mainly stressing the dimension of moral autonomy (2012, 129).

8. Although his starting point is an evolutionary understanding of human development and behaviour, Greene interestingly comes close to Kantian moral philosophy. He suggests that by acknowledging that all human beings have the common desire for happiness and by committing ourselves to the principle of the Golden Rule (met in most, if not all, philosophical and religious worldviews) and its idea of impartiality, we avoid the backdrop of relativism (Greene 2013, 340). Greene’s moral theory seems to be suggestive of universalism in the sense that he detects common features shared with all humans and the universal moral principle of the Golden Rule as the basis of moral theory in heeding moral pluralism. Greene argues that without acknowledging both, the shared desire for happiness and treating others as you wish to be treated – the core message of the Golden rule – we have no standard for assessing different moral systems, which makes us subject to moral compromises against our moral intuitions and reasoning. In this way, contemporary findings also emphasise the role of moral reasoning. According to Greene, the aim to maximise global happiness is a metamoral ideal that places moral reasoning prior to our moral intuitions (Greene 2013, 345–346).