Moral Development and Reality (2003/2019) by John Gibbs

When

I read this a little over a year ago.

Why

As someone who worked closely with Lawrence Kohlberg and has been studying moral development for decades, John Gibbs is a great resource when it comes to Kohlbergian thought as well as its critics and adjacent contemporaries. Therefore, this book is relevant to my scholarship in myriad ways.

How

By drawing parallels between processes in children’s cognitive, social, and moral development, Gibbs articulates a view of moral development in thoughtfully and sincerely tries to make the case for a constructivist approach to moral development while also incorporating aspects of other psychological approaches to (the development of) moral understanding (e.g., socialization, Moral Foundations Theory) that have valuable contributions. He does so by trying to relate the cognitive and affective (emotional) aspects of moral development while also studying moral judgment capacities of atypical (e.g., antisocial) youth. The result is an approach to and a clear articulation of the issues inherent within the study of moral development that is greater than the sum of its parts. I expect the book to become increasingly more influential in my scholarship moving forward, but it informed my paper on Superhero Justice (2025), essay on The Penguin, and my most recent Perspectives on Moral Development class.