Acceptance of externally defined rules, laws and norms; originating outside the self. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), following Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), considered the imposition of laws from without to be non-moral, or a least leading to a spurious form of morality. The opposite of heteronomy is autonomy. Heteronomy in a developmental context would be, for example. the education of children by means of transmitting knowledge and values from one generation to the next. Piaget‘s approach to education opposed such a view in emphasizing its aim should be the cultivation of intellectual and moral autonomy.
See Moral development, Self