- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Character in Ethics
- 1 Morality and Aristotelian Character Excellence
- 2 Aristotle on the Person-Situation Debate
- 3 Character and Blame in Hume and Beyond
- 4 Kant on Cultivating a Good and Stable Will
- 5 Character and Consequences
- 6 How One Becomes What One Is
- Part II Character in Moral Psychology
- 7 Moral Psychology’s Drinking Problem
- 8 Autonomy, Character, and Self-Understanding
- 9 Virtue and Cognition
- 10 Virtue, Desire, and Silencing Reasons
- 11 Character in Action
- 12 Two Senses of “Why”
- Part III Character in Psychology and X-Phi
- 13 Promises and Consistency
- 14 Do Broad Character Traits Exist? Repeated Assessments of Individuals, Not Group Summaries from Classic Experiments, Provide the Relevant Evidence
- 15 A New Approach to Character Traits in Light of Psychology
- 16 The Psychology of Character, Reputation, and Gossip
- 17 Scrupulous Characters and Mental Illness
- 18 Character and Emotional Phenomenology
- Part IV Character and Society
- 19 Character and History
- 20 The “Character” of Profit and Loss
- 21 Justice and the Intellectual Virtues
- Part V Character in Art
- 22 Fictional Characters as Social Metaphors
- 23 Character, Social Psychology, and the Cognitive Value of Literature
- 24 Fiction in the Brain
- 25 Character and Character Swapping in Mozart’s <i>Così fan tutte</i>
- 26 A Miscast of Character
- Index
Kant on Cultivating a Good and Stable Will
Kant on Cultivating a Good and Stable Will
- Chapter:
- (p.63) 4 Kant on Cultivating a Good and Stable Will
- Source:
- Questions of Character
- Author(s):
Adam Cureton
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
Kant’s deontology is often seen as a rival to virtue ethics. This chapter argues, however, that while there may be differences between Kant’s and Aristotle’s conceptions virtue (for instance, a virtuous person, in Kant’s view, may be destitute and unhappy, fail to cultivate certain emotions and sentiments, etc.), virtue is central to Kant’s ethics. The key problem is whether there is a Kantian account of virtue compatible with Kant’s view of free will. Kant held that having virtue means having a will that is both good and stable. So to cultivate virtue means to cultivate a stable will. But the idea of character cultivation seems to run counter to Kant’s view of freedom, since for Kant, people are always free to choose how to act. This chapter puts forth a novel proposal for solving this problem, one which has to do with the limits on self-knowledge.
Keywords: Kant, virtue, stable will, freedom, self-knowledge, character cultivation
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Character in Ethics
- 1 Morality and Aristotelian Character Excellence
- 2 Aristotle on the Person-Situation Debate
- 3 Character and Blame in Hume and Beyond
- 4 Kant on Cultivating a Good and Stable Will
- 5 Character and Consequences
- 6 How One Becomes What One Is
- Part II Character in Moral Psychology
- 7 Moral Psychology’s Drinking Problem
- 8 Autonomy, Character, and Self-Understanding
- 9 Virtue and Cognition
- 10 Virtue, Desire, and Silencing Reasons
- 11 Character in Action
- 12 Two Senses of “Why”
- Part III Character in Psychology and X-Phi
- 13 Promises and Consistency
- 14 Do Broad Character Traits Exist? Repeated Assessments of Individuals, Not Group Summaries from Classic Experiments, Provide the Relevant Evidence
- 15 A New Approach to Character Traits in Light of Psychology
- 16 The Psychology of Character, Reputation, and Gossip
- 17 Scrupulous Characters and Mental Illness
- 18 Character and Emotional Phenomenology
- Part IV Character and Society
- 19 Character and History
- 20 The “Character” of Profit and Loss
- 21 Justice and the Intellectual Virtues
- Part V Character in Art
- 22 Fictional Characters as Social Metaphors
- 23 Character, Social Psychology, and the Cognitive Value of Literature
- 24 Fiction in the Brain
- 25 Character and Character Swapping in Mozart’s <i>Così fan tutte</i>
- 26 A Miscast of Character
- Index
