Kant's Virtue Ethics

Philosophy

Volumn 61, Issue 238, 1986, Pages 473-489

  Louden, Robert B ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MAINE   (United States)

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EID: 84971127799     PISSN: 00318191     EISSN: 1469817X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0031819100061246     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. The first quotation is from Kant's Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, trans. John T. Goldthwait (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965), 57; the second from the Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1963), 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.
2. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 219. Cf. pp. 42, 112.
3. Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), 1.
4. Bernard Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980 (Cambridge University Press, 1981), esp. pp. 14, 19.
5. Onora O'Neill, Kant After Virtue, Inquiry 26 (1984), 397. Cf. p. 396. For an earlier interpretation which also stresses the prominence of virtue (but in a less either/or manner), see Warner Wick, Kants 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
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.
8. Robert Paul Wolff, The Anatomy of Reason (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 56–57.
9. Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Theodore M. Green and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), 20.
10. Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), 38, Ak. 380.
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. Mary J. Gregor (Netherlands: Nijhoff, 1974), 26–27, 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.
12. Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue, 41, Ak. 382. 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.
13. Warren G. Harbison, The Good Will, Kant-Studien (1980), 59.
14. Onora O'Neill, Kant After Virtue, and Consistency in Action, in New Essays on Ethical Universalizability, N. Potter and M. Timmons (ed.) (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1984), and Otfried Höffe, Kants kategorischer Imperativ als Kriterium des Sittlichen, in O. Höffe (ed.), Ethik und Politik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1979), esp. pp. 90–92.
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.
20. Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue, 41–42, Ak. 383, 69/407. Cf. Anthropology, 26–27, Ak. 153.
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.
25. Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue, 80, Ak. 416. Cf. 17/218: All duties, merely because they are duties, belong to ethics.
26. Foot, Virtues and Vices, 10, 14.
27. Two recent examples of this view include Lawrence A. Blum, Friendship, Altruism and Morality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), 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.
28. Nicomachean Ethics 6. 13, 1139b4—1139b45.
29. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 74, Ak. 72.
30. Karl Ameriks, The Hegelian Critique of Kantian Morality, 11. (MS. read at the 1984 American Philosophical Association Western Division Meeting
31. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 75, Ak. 73. Here I am following Ameriks, 12.
32. Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue, 158, Ak. 484.
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.
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.