Book contents
11 - Gilligan's “two voices” and the moral status of group identity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2010
Summary
Carol Gilligan's work in moral development has had an extraordinary impact on many academic fields. Her 1982 book In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (henceforth cited as IDV) evidently resonated deeply with the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of countless women who have seen in it an articulation – and an implicit validation – of an approach to morality and human relations in which (sometimes for the first time in a piece of academic writing) they can recognize themselves. Feminist philosophers have developed the philosophical aspects of views like Gilligan's far past Gilligan's own (including her post-1982) work; but Gilligan herself remains a crucial reference point and source of inspiration, and it is on her views that I will focus.
Gilligan's work developed against the backdrop of the views of her former teacher and associate Lawrence Kohlberg, perhaps still the single most influential figure in moral-development theory. Kohlberg (1981, 1984) hypothesized a course of development toward moral maturity that he claimed to be common to all cultures. The path leads the individual from egocentrism to a concern with relationships, then, transcending that, to a focus on social rules, and finally to the highest stage (based on Kant's moral theory) of universal moral principles grounded in individual autonomous reason.
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- Moral Perception and Particularity , pp. 237 - 268Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994