Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
HOW DEMANDING IS KANTIAN VIRTUE?
In the last chapter we saw that Kant's notion of imperfect duties brings to bear the important idea of discretionary latitude: We have play-room (Spielraum) in how we fulfill our ends. The introduction of this notion seemed a helpful way of relaxing what can be an overly rigoristic feature in Aristotle's account – perhaps best expressed by the thought that while there are many ways to go wrong in fulfilling virtue, there is only one way to get it right. Put this way, “hitting the mean” gives the sense that virtue has a determinate manifestation relative to each person – toward this object, at this time, in this manner. The discretionary element of good judgment becomes obscured. Still, Kant's notion of latitude may leave us wondering just how demanding his own conception of virtue is.
In this chapter I want to explore the kind of latitude imperfect duties permit. We can locate our discussion within the context of a pair of familiar, though conflicting, criticisms often leveled against Kant's theory of virtue. On the one side, it is argued that Kantian virtue theory is too latitudinarian, giving arbitrary discretion to whether we fulfill duties of virtue. This is sometimes couched within a more general view that Kantian ethics, as a duty-based theory, is minimalist insofar as doing one's duty is conceived of as doing some minimal amount and no more.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.