In the last decade there has been a remarkable resurgence of interest in studying moral rationality within the broad context of personality, selfhood, and identity. Although a concern with the moral self was never entirely absent from the cognitive developmental approach to moral reasoning, it is fair to say that sustained preoccupation with the ontogenesis of justice reasoning did not leave much room for reflection on how moral cognition intersects with personological processes. Indeed, some topics, such as moral personality, moral selfhood and identity, and the study of virtues and of character were pushed to the margins for paradigmatic or strategic reasons, because, for example, such notions could not be reconciled to moral judgment stagetyping, or could not provide what was wanted most, which was a way to defeat ethical relativism on psychological grounds.

Yet the neglect of the moral dimensions of selfhood and personality could not endure for long, mostly because moral notions go to the very heart of what it means to be a person. Moral notions penetrate our conceptions of what it means to live well the life that is good for one to live. These are foundational questions that have commanded deep reflection since antiquity, reflection that psychological science cannot evade, not the least because the moral formation of children is the central concern of parents, schools, and communities who are charged with educating the next generation. It matters to us that we raise children to be persons of a certain kind. It matters to us that we become such persons.