The Emerging Comprehensive Moral Psychology of Darcia Narvaez Paul Lewis

Key Words: Darcia Narvaez, moral psychology, moral development, four-component model, triune ethics, tacit knowledge, implicit processing, moral intuitionism, Michael Polanyi. This review essay offers an overview of Darcia Narvaez's work in moral psychology based on a representative selection of essays published over roughly the last decade. I trace the roots of her work in post-Kohlbergian moral psychology and show how her work has developed over time into one of the few attempts to articulate a normative and comprehensive moral psychology that is conversant with both moral philosophy and the neurosciences. Darcia Narvaez will present a paper on " The Moral Person: Psychology, Neuroscience, and Polanyi " at this fall's Annual Meeting of the Polanyi Society. In preparation for the meeting, this article offers an overview of her work in moral psychology based on a representative selection of essays published over the last decade or so. The development of her work appears to unfold over time such that one phase lays the groundwork for the next, leaving her poised to develop one of the more expansive and inclusive moral psychologies available today. Those who know Polanyi well will see affinities between his work and hers at several points, among them a stress on the role of tacit knowledge and the importance of perception, education as a mentoring process in which students learn to inhabit a tradition of inquiry, and a sense of the person as a mind/body whole. Her work first came to my attention during the fall of 2008 when I was doing research on character development and pedagogy. Her work stood out to me for several reasons, not least of which is that she makes explicit reference to Michael Polanyi for helping her appreciate the importance of the tacit dimension in moral reasoning. Moreover, as her work develops over time it largely seems to offer contemporary psychological confirmation that Aristotle's ancient account of moral development is on target. In addition, her work seeks to integrate philosophy and the neurosciences into her psychology. Finally, she is not content simply to work at the theoretical level; she explicitly develops and puts into practice a pedagogy for moral development that is informed by her research. Before reviewing her work, I begin with a biographical sketch. Narvaez is currently Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. 1 Born in Minneapolis, MN to a professor of Spanish and a " Minnesota …