Moral Development, Sufi Philosophy and the Hidden Intellectual Legacy of History: An Integrative Assessment on Kohlberg, Gilligan, Fowler, Maslow and the Greek–Islamic–Anatolian Intellectual Chain
Chapter from the book:
Köroğlu,
M.
(ed.)
2026.
Current Approaches and Multidisciplinary Perspectives in Educational Sciences.
Synopsis
This study addresses three organically interrelated questions within a single academic framework. The first is comparative: what are the structural similarities and fundamental differences between the moral and faith development theories of Kohlberg, Gilligan, Fowler, and Maslow and the Islamic Sufi tradition's ideal of the perfect human being (insân-ı kâmil)? The second is historical and science-critical: through what mechanisms did the concepts produced by the Islamic-Anatolian intellectual tradition enter Western science without attribution or with only partial citation, and what does this mean ethically for researchers who appear to have introduced new concepts or appropriated concepts developed by others? The third question completes the chain of origins: which Greek and Hellenistic sources did Islamic scholars explicitly acknowledge, and how did they transform these sources by rebuilding them through Turkish-Islamic culture? The study aims to make an integrative and original theoretical contribution to cross-cultural psychology, psychology of religion, and the historiography of science in the Turkish academic literature.
