I. The Idea of the University

Lewis White Beck states the problem of Kantian education in its clearest and starkest form when he says that Kant’s “strict moral philosophy has, and can have, no place for moral education.” This is so, not only owing to difficulties with which moral philosophy has struggled ever since Socrates famously asked whether virtue can be taught; it is also and especially the case because the foundation of virtue for Kant is based uncompromisingly on freedom understood as accountability, or the responsibility of a moral person for deeds that are, as such, “imputable” to him. Our knowledge that we are free comes to us via “conscience”—that fundamental ‘factum’ or ‘deed’ of reason that commands obedience to the moral law, and in so doing “announces” to us that we can do what we ought to do. Two difficulties for moral education here arise: on the one hand, the very possibility of external helps or hindrances to moral goodness seems to detract from the absolute freedom of the moral person, who must be able to take full credit or full blame (it is difficult to see how there can be half-measures here) for his own goodness or evil. On the other hand, and on the assumption that we take full responsibility for our own moral improvement (or lack thereof), it is hard to see how such improvements can come about, given that in order to do so, as it seems, we would already have to be the improved beings we aspire to become.