8 - Kantian perfectionism

Summary

KANT AND VIRTUE ETHICS

“Virtue ethics” as it is currently understood was not on Kant's docket, nor was Aristotle, with whom contemporary virtue ethics is most closely associated, a major figure in Kant's historiography of moral philosophy. Nevertheless, Kant clearly rejected several ancient ideas that have been taken up in contemporary virtue ethics, and did have one criticism of Aristotle that he made on several occasions. First, Kant began his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals by firmly rejecting any idea that we could characterize our moral obligations through several independent virtues such as “courage, resolution, and perseverance in one's plans,” since while these “are undoubtedly good and desirable for many purposes … they can also be extremely evil and harmful if the will which is to make use of these gifts of nature … is not good” (G, 4:393), and a good will, as the Groundwork argues, requires a single fundamental principle of morality to which it freely chooses to conform, in light of which it can decide when and how to use such “virtues” as courage or perseverance. But this was not meant as a criticism of Aristotle; rather, the doctrine of the independence of the virtues was prephilosophical Greek wisdom, which was criticized by Plato through Socrates' doctrine of the “unity of virtue” and by Aristotle in his view that the use of such virtues should be guided by the pursuit of the highest good for human beings.