The other day in class we were discussing Lawrence Kohlberg's Moral Stages. These stages he created explain moral reasoning development. There are six stages, but eventually he stopped using the sixth stage to categorize people into, because it was such a rare stage to find a person at. The sixth stage, universal principles, included people like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.
Kohlberg's Moral Stages
This idea of moral development levels reminded me of another set of stages I learned about in my freshman english class, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It has four levels that must be in tack to make it to the top level of the pyramid, or "self-actualization". The first thing listed under the self-actualization section is "morality". Are Maslow's and Kohlberg's ideas linked? If so, do you have to be at a certain one of the stages to reach self-actualization? Though Kohlberg's stages do not have a hierarchy, the sixth stage is clearly the stage Kohlberg found hardest to reach, and those who did were extraordinary people (so there is some sort of hierarchy).
This being said, can a stage one person, if they have all of Maslow's basic needs covered ever reach self-actualization? Or is self-actualization as difficult to reach as Kohlberg's sixth moral stage?
Personally, I think that it would be impossible to have all your needs met by Maslow's standards and be in the stage 1 of Kohlberg's Moral stages. A baby would be on the bottom level of Maslow's standard but how could it ever be in the 6th stage of Kohlberg's standard. I think that most of the levels of Maslow correlate with that of Kohlberg.
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