Abstract
Since his pioneering Kant’s Impure Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2000), Robert Louden has helped us put a human face to the abstract a priori principles of Kant’s pure practical philosophy. Through a continuous spate of publications, some of which are gathered in his latest book Kant’s Human Being, Louden has managed to show the importance of the empirical dimension of Kantian ethics—a dimension which had been ignored or dismissed for more than two hundred years by scholars obsessed with “keeping philosophy pure.” This paper discusses the motivation behind Louden’s project and raises some doubts about his understanding of “moral anthropology,” arguing that it is perhaps too empirically-minded and hence fails to do justice to the complexity of Kant’s own thought.