I am honored to contribute to this volume on Lawrence Kohlberg's work. Kohlberg was always an inspirational figure for me-first, as a psychologist who saw both philosophy and psychology as necessary for an understanding of the phenomena of morality and moral development; and second, as a thinker who invited criticism of his views and who struggled to come to grips with the criticism. As a philosophical critic of Kohlberg's view of morality, I always felt welcome to engage him in dialogue.
Complementary Principles of Morality
The notion of universality plays various roles within Kohlberg's system. First, it is involved in the empirical claim that the development from preconventional through conventional to principled reasoning is a human and cultural universal (though according to Kohlberg's own findings only a minority of people in any culture actually attain the highest stage). Universality is also involved in the related normative claim that, from a universal standpoint, the empirically final stage of moral reasoning, preferred by all of those who can understand that stage, is also the normatively most adequate form of moral reasoning.
Without directly taking issue with either of these claims, I focus on a third claim concerning how, for Kohlberg, universality characterizes I have benefited in writing this paper from an unpublished manuscript by Peter Davson-Galle, "Against 'Moral' Partialism," Department of Philosophy, Tasmanian State Institute of Technology, Laurceston, Australia. I also thank Owen Flanagan, Jr., and David Wong for helpful comments on early drafts of this chapter and Johannah Meehan for insights into Habermas's recent views.
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