Meaning

Moral destitution and collapse, a lack of respect for human dignity and worth, and deficits in proper moral functioning at all levels of the world community, often discounted or masked by transparent excuses and vacuous rationalizations, are all viewed as principal causes of the social, societal and ecological crises with which we are confronted today. Developmental psychology is charged with the specific task of illuminating the growth and evolution of moral functioning in human beings. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Developmental Psychology.