Modelling Morality: A Kantian Account of Moral Examples

Commentators have recently shown that Kant’s view of moral examples is more complex than what appears in the Groundwork . Throughout his works, Kant presents explicit reasons for and against the use of moral examples. Reconciling these opposing attitudes has proven difficult. Lacking a satisfactory account of how Kant thinks we should engage with and learn from moral examples, the difficulty has remained. In this paper, I construct and defend an account that resolves the prima facie inconsistency by viewing moral examples as analogous to scientific models, thus leading to ‘new’ and plausible perspectives on recent debates in Kant scholarship.