Freud, Piaget, Apel, and Habermas

Freud's moral-psychological speculations and Piaget's theoretical investigations on child development are both empirically reductionist interpretations of moral autonomy in Kant. Each tries to empirically demonstrate that children gradually arrive at an understanding of themselves as morally responsible actors. This encounter - through process - with existential constraints compels developing subjects to adopt the perspective of moral autonomy. This detranscendentalization is particularly well illustrated in the works of Karl-Otto Apel and Jurgen Habermas. Each locates the moral subject within a communicative community. In this light, it's the product of a speech community. ~Slight rephrasing of Axel Honneth's, Philosophy of Right, 34-35.