Case Study on Moral Development
In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind
of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a
form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The
drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the
drug cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a
small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he
know to borrow the money, but he could only get together $1,000 which is half
of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to
sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, “No, I
discovered the drug, and I am going to make money from it.”
The classic ending to this vignette is: So Heinz got
desperate and broke into the man’s store to steal the drug for his wife.
What level of moral development is Heinz demonstrating,
perhaps?
This would be preconventional morality, conventional or
postconventional??
Re-write the ending to the vignette such that it now
places Heinz at the other two levels of moral development:
1 First Ending:
2. Second Ending:





