Kant's Theory of Virtue
The Value of Autocracy

This book indicates a significant development in approaches to Kant's ethics, offering a systematic interpretation and assessment of Kant's theory of virtue.

Anne Margaret Baxley (Author)

9780521766234, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 November 2010

206 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.48 kg

"...Anne Margaret Baxley’s book, Kant’s Theory of Virtue, is the most informative and comprehensive discussion of the nature and role of virtue in Kant’s ethics currently available..."
--Robert B. Louden, University of Southern Maine, Journal of the History of Philosophy

Anne Margaret Baxley offers a systematic interpretation of Kant's theory of virtue, whose most distinctive features have not been properly understood. She explores the rich moral psychology in Kant's later and less widely read works on ethics, and argues that the key to understanding his account of virtue is the concept of autocracy, a form of moral self-government in which reason rules over sensibility. Although certain aspects of Kant's theory bear comparison to more familiar Aristotelian claims about virtue, Baxley contends that its most important aspects combine to produce something different - a distinctively modern, egalitarian conception of virtue which is an important and overlooked alternative to the more traditional Greek views which have dominated contemporary virtue ethics.

Acknowledgments
List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. The good will, moral worth, and duty: concerns about Kant's rationalist moral psychology
2. Kant's Conception of Virtue and the autocracy of Pure Practical Reason
3. Virtue, human nature, and moral health: Kant's dispute with Schiller
4. The moral psychology of Kantian virtue
Conclusion: Kant's considered account of moral character and the good will reconsidered.

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], Western philosophy: c 1600 to c 1900 [HPCD]