Stage Three: awareness regarding the interconnectedness of people everywhere resides at the heart of stage three—as does our connection to nature. There is a pervasive sense of universal care. Martin Buber’s (2000) concept of “I-Thou” relationships is central to this stage three perspective. We are together with other people on behalf of something greater than either of us. This something greater includes all people and the environment in which we all dwell. Everything in some important ways becomes “sacred” and is a source of beauty and grace.
Achieving a higher stage of moral development is not permanent, however. The critique of Kohlberg’s model as failing to account for inconsistencies is justified. Anyone can fall from a higher moral stage to lower ones when under or duress, stress. Downward developmental pressures also increase when there are major conflicts of interest—or when one is confronted with the intoxication of privilege or power (in service to self-interest) or the desperation of powerlessness and alienation. A developmental state can sometimes drop two moral stages in Gilligan’s taxonomy.
Each of these three stages has to do not just with relationships, but also with the expanding engagement of intelligence. The first stage, selfishness, harnesses the individual’s egocentric intelligence. We become “smart” about serving our own individual interests. We become opportunists and clever manipulators of the world in which we live. The second stage, care, concerns collective intelligence. We become “smart” about collaborating with others in our group, tribe or community on behalf of shared interests and priorities. The third stage concerns a global intelligence on behalf of global care. All residents of the world become the focus of this collective endeavor–including those least well off and those who are the least powerful.
With the identification of this third stage comes a concern about reality and feasibility. Is Carol Gilligan joining with her mentor, Lawrence Kohlberg, when envisioning a world of global care from the distance of her ivy-covered halls of Harvard? And has she really left behind Kohlberg’s models of moral reasoning? Isn’t he also focused on relationships. His preconventional phase seems to be about not letting in any outside relationships (egocentrism), while his conventional phase is about figuring what to do with the relationships that we are letting in. The postconventional phase, in turn, is about becoming independent of the relationships we have let in.
While conventional morality is about allowing for an external locus of control over our decisions, postconventional morality is about gaining an internal locus of control regarding our moral decisions. It is ultimately about context and relationships for both Kohlberg and Gilligan. This might be the major reason why Carol Gilligan and Lawrence Kohlberg remained committed and caring colleagues, despite their seeming differences.
Contextual Knowing
Diverging from the established epistemological framework (which supported Lawrence Kohlberg’s model) Carol Gilligan offered an alternative mode of knowing that is more commonly found and valued in non-western cultures and among many women in western cultures. Contextual knowing has received greatest attention in not only the writings of Carol Gilligan, but also those of Mary Belenky and her associates (Belenky, et al., 1996) as well as those of their colleagues at the Stone Center in Wellesley Massachusetts (Miller, 1987; Jordon, et. al., 1991).
