Frederick Douglass Developmental Stages Of Human Moral Reason

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” People will appreciate the nation if there's equality given to everybody no matter their history of good or bad. What Gandhi says about equality, is not shown in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. This narrative about Frederick Douglass informs the audience about the struggles he had with slavery while growing up in the South. The “Developmental Stages of Human Moral Reason” is a theory developed by Lawrence Kohlberg about the moral thought process. Douglass is the one who shows movement throughout three different moral stages. First, Douglass gives us an example of the first stage which is having fear of authority. Douglass shows the second stage of the moral development which is to satisfy his own needs. Last, Douglass then represents the fourth stage which explains that people with power never see the fear of punishment.

First, Frederick Douglass presents to the audience is the first stage of the moral stages. In Kohlberg's, “Developmental Stages of Human Moral Reason” he describes the first stage as, “fear of punishment and/or obedience to someone in authority,” (1).

Douglass plans on obeying his masters in the beginning so that he won't have any problems with his masters. He then shows that he will do anything that he can just for the sake to know how to read and write. Lastly, he taught slaves the importance of learning how to read and write but doing this good deed he is risking slaves on getting in trouble because they are leaving the plantations and doing something that they aren't supposed to do. Frederick Douglass never got the feeling of equality when he was in the South, but once he set foot in the North, he got that feeling of equality. Gandhi would have never welcome the American society of this time because it’s against his moral