As its title suggests, this volume is to serve a double purpose. It is to explore the role virtue plays within the framework of Kant’s practical philosophy. It is also to explore possible points of contact between a Kantian ethics (including Kant’s own) and an ethics of virtue. The volume thus easily fits into some recent trends in scholarship. Increasingly, more attention has been given to the Metaphysics of Morals, in which Kant develops his substantive, or “doctrinal,” position in the field of ethics and which thus constitutes the completion of the project begun in the more familiar Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason. In the second part of the Metaphysics of Morals – “The Doctrine of Virtue” – Kant fleshes out his account of the specific duties of a genuine moral agent, sometimes subtly modifying some prior positions. This of course involves an account of the significance of virtues and the possible moral merit of feeling – topics that provoke interest in light of their potential to provide a picture of Kant’s moral theory beyond the “rigorist” guise in which it is often viewed. In addition to this scholarly exercise, there has also been interest in formulating a contemporary Kantian ethics sensitive to the objections of virtue ethics. The collection thus contributes to an interesting development in the understanding of Kant’s moral philosophy: both Kant’s earliest critics and recent virtue ethicists have directed their attacks at the apparent neglect of the role of natural dispositions to act well and of the importance of feeling and emotion in moral life.
The volume consists of twelve contributions looking at this field from different angles and, for the most part, addressing concrete problems within it. The first essay, by editor Monika Betzler, serves as an introduction and overview of the remaining eleven entries, which are the main object of this review.