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By drawing on four foundational issues in the study of moral development – moral definition, ontogeny, variation, and epistemology – this article offers a means for bounding moral development controversies, in the sense of defining their parameters and clarifying the conflicts. Numerous controversies are examined, to provide a sense of the robustness of the analyses. These controversies include debates between character-education and social-cognitive theorists concerning moral education, claims of gender differences and charges of sex bias in moral development research, differing interpretations of cross-cultural data, tensions embedded in anthropological theories of cultural relativism, and attempts to move from empirical findings to statements of value. In addition, attention is paid to how the four foundational issues can and often should be brought together in moral theory and research.