Theories--or models--of human development are intended to account for how
and why people grow up as they do. A convenient way to distinguish one type
of theory from another is to identify the aspects of life on which different types
focus. For example, some concentrate on intellectual development, attempting
to explain how people's skills of analyzing and memorizing improve with the
passing years. Others center attention on physical development, seeking to
clarify how the body as a biochemical organism increases in size, complexity,
and coordination. Still other theories concentrate on how people's morally good
and morally bad behavior evolves. This third group--the ones intended to
explain the development of moral thought and action--is the concern of this
book.

Obviously, dividing human development into such categories as intellectual,
physical, and moral distorts the reality of life, a reality that finds these aspects
intimately interwoven. It is apparent that intellectual growth depends on the
biochemical condition of one's body, and moral reasoning is just one kind of
intellectual activity. However, the task of comprehending development as a
whole is so daunting that we are obliged to approach the task piece by piece.
Moral development is one such piece.

A theory of moral development, in essence, is an attempt to explain how
individuals acquire moral values and how such values help guide the way those
persons treat other people and--in the case of some theories--the way they
interact with supernatural spirits.

As the title of this book indicates, the contents include two general classes of
theory--the secular and the religious. Secular theories are proposals based on
empirical observations that avoid any reference to such notions as invisible
supreme beings (gods, spirits of ancestors) that influence people's behavior,
continued spiritual life after one's physical death, or unseen places (heaven, hell)
in which a person's disembodied spiritual essence (soul) may interminably dwell

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