Summary:

Hans-Ulrich Niemitz discusses Lawrence Kohlberg’s research on “society”. In accordance with Kohlberg’s model of the level of moral judgement, and in contrast to the original formulation of Heinsohn and Steiger’s approach, not every one of the different societal regimes of material reproduction can be termed a society. Only the property-based regime, with its free and legal contracts, is a society, while the custombased system must be termed a “community” and the command-based a “lordship”. To understand what the terms society, community, and lordship really mean, it is essential to identify correctly the distinction between moral standards and ethics in the three regimes. While the lordship lacks both ethics and moral standards, the community is based on moral standards, but lacks ethics. Ethics can be found alone in the propertybased society, which however, has no moral standards. Therefore, in the latter regime, individuals are allowed to act amorally if they do not act illegally and, hence, unethically. With these distinctions in mind, Kohlberg’s question “What kind of societal structure allows individuals to reach which level of moral judgement?” can be answered.