Response to Gibbs on Kohlberg on Dewey.

Abstract

Reply by the current author to the comments made by Roger Bergman (see record [rid]2006-21103-006[/rid]) on the book (see record [rid]2003-07187-000[/rid]). I enjoyed reading Bergman's scholarly and thoughtful essay review of my book Moral Development and Reality. The main referent for Bergman's thesis is a passage cited by Kohlberg. Regarding "Gibbs on Kohlberg," I did not misread Kohlberg. True, Kohlberg also embraced Dewey's constructivism. But so what? The fact remains that Kohlberg followed Dewey's use of moral internalization as the second of three levels of moral growth. That usage did distort Kohlberg's theory in an important way, as I explicate in Moral Development and Reality. The inconvenient fact for Bergman's thesis is that Dewey did write that passage and never retracted it. Again, I enjoyed reading Bergman's thoughtful essay. If I were to add one thing to Bergman's impressive summary of Moral Development and Reality