Before turning to an account of humility as the virtuous corrective to the situation of the dependent and corrupt rational agent, we must first consider the perspective from which it will make sense to speak of virtue at all in Kantian terms. Many might question whether Kant is a virtue theorist, but what we shall discover in this and the following chapter is that a Kantian ethical system does indeed recognize the moral import of questions of character and virtue, and further, that what makes a Kantian approach to virtue distinctive is that it finds its starting point in the picture of dependent and corrupt agency we have just defended.

I take this latter point as the guide for this current preliminary chapter on Kantian virtue: Kantians generally accept some version of the Corruption Thesis, and we must therefore appreciate that any Kantian theory of virtue will be made distinctive by that fact. Whatever virtue is, it needs to be appropriate to this sort of dependent and corrupt, yet capable and dignified being. This chapter is devoted, then, to an overview of some necessary qualities of a distinctively Kantian virtue theory, the articulation of which locates Kantian virtue within the range of possible approaches to the topic. We shall see that these qualities at once distinguish Kantian virtue from, yet retain a relationship to, traditional, more Aristotelian-inspired approaches to virtue theory. With this general framework in mind, we turn, in the next chapter, to our positive account of Kantian virtue.