Avoiding Vice and Pursuing Virtue: Kant on Perfect Duties and ‘Prudential latitude’

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (4):618-635 (2017)
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Abstract

To fulfill a perfect duty an agent must avoid vice, yet when an agent refrains from acting on a prohibited maxim she still must do something. I argue that the setting of morally required ends ought to consistently inform an agent's judgment regarding what is to be done beyond compliance with perfect, negative duties. Kant's assertion of a puzzling version of latitude of choice within his discussion of perfect duties motivates and complicates the case I make for a more expansive interpretation of the duty to pursue virtue.

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Mavis Biss
Loyola University Maryland

Citations of this work

Kant on the Normativity of Obligatory Ends.Martin Sticker - 2024 - The Journal of Ethics 28 (1):53-73.

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References found in this work

Kant's Theory of Freedom.Henry E. Allison - 1990 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lectures on ethics.Immanuel Kant - 1930 - London,: Methuen & co.. Edited by Louis Infield.
Lectures on ethics.Immanuel Kant - 1980 - International Journal of Ethics (1):104-106.
Kantian ethics almost without apology.Marcia Baron - 1995 - Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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