Waking Up a Person in the Family in the Context of the Development of Moral Reasoning

Abstract

Catholic personalism, which recognizes man, in the spirit of classical anthropology, as a body-spiritual and rational-volitional being which, through education, reaches his personal maturity, opens up a broad perspective for the theory of the development of moral reasoning as one of the factors constituting a person's potential. Moral reasoning remains a specific mental activity, it is a specific ability that allows us to consider and evaluate moral arguments, and in their light to evaluate our moral obligations, attitudes and judgments. To reason means to have a kind of dialogue with yourself, to hear yourself from within. Moral reasoning can be identified with a conceptual grid, with something like an individually specific moral “esse”, which not so much guarantees the transition to “fieri” but definitely favors it. The more such a moral conceptual base is formed, the easier a person builds new moral judgments, and based on them, he/she undertakes actions in the area of morality. Constructing a network of moral concepts in young people, “awakening” in them a mature personal identity, defined by the stages of moral reasoning, is the family's educational task, which may imply building more morally mature individuals and societies.