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Kant's Virtue Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Robert B. Louden
Robert B. Louden
Affiliation:
University of Southern Maine
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Among moral attributes true virtue alone is sublime. … [I]t is only by means of this idea [of virtue] that any judgment as to moral worth or its opposite is possible. … Everything good that is not based on a morally good disposition … is nothing but pretence and glittering misery.1

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 61 , Issue 238 , October 1986 , pp. 473 - 489
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1986

References

1 The first quotation is from Kant's Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, trans. Goldthwait, John T. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965), 57;Google Scholar the second from the Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman, Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1963)Google Scholar, A 315/B 372; and the third from the essay, ‘Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View’, in On History, Lewis White Beck (ed.) (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), 21, Ak. 26.Google Scholar

2 Alasdair, Maclntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 219. Cf. pp. 42, 112.Google Scholar

3 Philippa, Foot, Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), 1.Google Scholar

4 Bernard, Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980 (Cambridge University Press, 1981), esp. pp. 14, 19.Google Scholar

5 Onora, O'Neill ‘Kant After Virtue’, Inquiry 26 (1984), 397. Cf. p. 396.Google Scholar For an earlier interpretation which also stresses the prominence of virtue (but in a less either/or manner), see Warner, Wick, ‘Kant's Moral Philosophy’, in Kant's Ethical Philosophy, trans. James, Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983). (Originally published as the Introduction to The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue by Bobbs-Merrill in 1964.)Google Scholar

6 For a more detailed look at this issue, see my essay, ‘On Some Vices of Virtue Ethics’, American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984), 227–236.

7 Kant, , Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Lewis, White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), 9, Ak. 393.Google Scholar

8 Robert, Paul Wolff, The Anatomy of Reason (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 56–57.Google Scholar

9 Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Theodore, M. Green and Hudson, Hoyt H. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), 20.Google Scholar

10 Kant, , The Doctrine of Virtue, trans. Gregor, Mary J. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), 38, Ak. 380.Google Scholar

11 On strength and virtue, see The Doctrine of Virtue, 49–50, Ak. 389, 54/393, 58/397, 66/404, 70–71/408–409. See also Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Gregor, Mary J. (Netherlands: Nijhoff, 1974), 26–27,Google Scholar Ak. 147, and the Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis, Infeld (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963), 73. On the accomplishment of goals, see the Foundations, 10, Ak. 394.Google Scholar

12 Kant, , The Doctrine of Virtue, 41, Ak. 382.Google Scholar See also the Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis, White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), 86–87, Ak. 84–85, and the Foundations, 30–31, Ak. 414.Google Scholar

13 Harbison, Warren G., ‘The Good Will’, Kant-Studien (1980), 59.Google Scholar

14 Onora, O'Neill ‘Kant After Virtue’, and ‘Consistency in Action’, in New Essays on Ethical Universalizability, Potter, N. and Timmons, M. (ed.) (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1984), and Otfried Hoffö, ‘Kants kategorischer Imperativ als Kriterium des Sittlichen’, in O. Hoffö (ed.), Ethik und Politik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1979), esp. pp. 90–92.Google Scholar

15 Kant, Foundations, 17, Ak. 401, n. 1; 38/420, n. 8.

16 O'Neill, ‘Kant After Virtue’, 394.

17 O'Neill, ‘Kant After Virtue’, 393–394.

18 O'Neill, 395; Höffe, 91.

19 O'Neill, 394, 395.Google Scholar

20 Kant, , The Doctrine of Virtue, 41–42, Ak. 383, 69/407. Cf. Anthropology, 26–27, Ak. 153.Google Scholar

21 Kant to the contrary, Aristotelian virtue is not a mechanical habit but rather a state of character determined by a rational principle (Nicomachean Ethics 1107al).

22 Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue, 42, Ak. 383.

23 Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue, 43, Ak. 384.

24 Kant, , The Doctrine of Virtue, 46, Ak. 386. Other components of the duty of self-perfection include the cultivation of one's ‘natural powers’— powers of ‘mind, soul, and body’.Google Scholar

25 Kant, , The Doctrine of Virtue, 80, Ak. 416. Cf. 17/218: ‘All duties, merely because they are duties, belong to ethics’.Google Scholar

26 Foot, Virtues and Vices, 10, 14.

27 Two recent examples of this view include Lawrence, A. Blum, Friend-ship, Altruism and Morality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980),Google Scholar and Lawrence, M. Hinman, ‘On the Purity of Our Motives: A Critique of Kant's Account of the Emotions and Acting for the Sake of Duty’, Monist 66 (1983), 251–266.Google Scholar

28 Nicomachean Ethics VI. 13, 1139b 4–5.Google Scholar

29 Kant, , Critique of Practical Reason, 74, Ak. 72. 486Google Scholar

30 Karl, Ameriks, ‘The Hegelian Critique of Kantian Morality’, 11. (MS. read at the 1984 American Philosophical Association Western Division Meeting.)Google Scholar

31 Kant, , Critique of Practical Reason, 75, Ak. 73. Here I am following Ameriks, 12.Google Scholar

32 Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue, 158, Ak. 484.Google Scholar

33 Kant, Religion, 19, n.; cf. Anthropology, 147, Ak. 282, and Education, trans, by Annette Churton (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), 120–121.Google Scholar

34 Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the Johns Hopkins University in August 1983 (in conjunction with the Council for Philosophical Studies Summer Institute—‘Kantian Ethics: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives’), and at the 1984 Northern New England Philosophy Association meeting at Plymouth State College in New Hampshire. I would also like to thank Marcia Baron, Ludwig Siep, Warner Wick, and the Editor of Philosophy for valuable criticisms of earlier written drafts.