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Kant, emotion and autism: towards an inclusive approach to character

education

Article  in  Ethics and Education · August 2018

DOI: 10.1080/17449642.2018.1505150

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character education, Ethics and Education, DOI: 10.1080/17449642.2018.1505150

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Kant, Emotion and Autism: Towards an Inclusive Approach to Character

Education

Abstract

Modern Kantians often address the conception of Kant as ‘cold hearted rationalist’ by arguing that
there is a place, in Kantian moral theory, for the emotions. This theme of reconciling Kantianism with
the emotions is concurrent with a recent interest, on the part of some Kantians, in issues pertaining
to character education. This paper will argue that Kantianism has much to offer character education;
in particular, inclusiveness of those who might have difficulty experiencing appropriate moral
emotion. Nevertheless, I will argue that this inclusivity can only be maintained if Kantians refrain
from over-emotionalising their accounts.

Key Words

Kant, Emotion, Character Education, Autism,

Word Count

6508

Author Details

Name: Katy Dineen

Affiliation: The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, School of Education, University of
Birmingham

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Kant, Emotion and Autism: Towards an Inclusive Approach to Character
Education
Abstract

Modern Kantians often address the conception of Kant as ‘cold hearted rationalist’ by arguing that
there is a place, in Kantian moral theory, for the emotions. This theme of reconciling Kantianism with
the emotions is concurrent with a recent interest, on the part of some Kantians, in issues pertaining
to character education. This paper will argue that Kantianism has much to offer character education;
in particular, inclusiveness of those who might have difficulty experiencing appropriate moral
emotion. Nevertheless, I will argue that this inclusivity can only be maintained if Kantians refrain
from over-emotionalising their accounts.

Key Words

Kant, Emotion, Character Education, Autism,

Word Count

6508

Introduction

It seems to have become a theme in contemporary Kantianism, in particular amongst those

interested in moral theory, to address the idea of Kant as ‘cold hearted rationalist’. Motivating this,
at least in part, is the thought of reconciling Kant’s deontology with sympathy for the role of the
emotions in moral decision making and action. In the first part of this paper I will describe this
theme. I will argue that, although there is significant room for emotion on a Kantian conception of
morality, it is important to be cognisant of the possibility of the pendulum swinging in the opposite
direction. As Kant’s arguments on the grounding of morality show, there is an aspect of morality that
must stay separate from the emotions and the particularities of human nature, or so I shall argue.
This understanding of Kant’s moral theory, as sensitive to emotion but not grounded on it, is a
contrast both to the cold hearted version of Kant but also to the tendency to over-emotionalise
Kant’s arguments. The second part of this paper will address a specific area wherein contemporary
Kantians are currently making progress. I will argue that recent contributions to character education,
on the part of Kantians, constitute an opportunity to reflect critically on a largely Aristotelian
discipline. In fact, a Kantian approach to the topic may prove to be more inclusive, in one respect. In
effect, it may be more straightforward, on a Kantian theory of character education, to include those
within its scope who have difficulty experiencing appropriate moral emotion. To see this, I will refer
to the topic of character education and the specific case of persons with high-functioning autistic
spectrum disorder (HF-ASD). I will conclude that the benefits of an inclusive conception of character
education may be lost if Kantians do not stop at sensitivity to the emotions, but instead over-
emotionalise his arguments.

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Section 1: Kant: Misunderstood on Emotion?

One particularly influential example of Kant as cold hearted rationalist is Simon Blackburn’s ‘Kantian
Captain’ (Blackburn 1998). In comparing the Humean conception of moral personhood to the
Kantian, Blackburn describes the Kantian agent as follows:

He is a peculiar figure, a dream – or nightmare – of pure, authentic self-control. He certainly appeals

to our wish to be, ourselves, entirely the masters of our own lives, immune in all important respects
from the gifts or burdens of our internal animal natures, or of our temperaments as they are formed
by contingent nature, socialization and external surrounds. Context free, non-natural and complete
stickler for duty, perhaps the Kantian self is nothing but the sublimation of a patriarchal,
authoritarian fantasy (Blackburn 1998, 252)

I find the idea of Kant advocating a version of moral agency that is capable of immunity to our
contingent nature puzzling. Such a nature includes our emotions and yet is larger in scope than our
emotions. In the next section I will lend my voice to a movement that reads Kant as sensitive to the
role of emotions in moral agency. For the remainder of this section I will deal with the idea that we
can be immune to our contingent natures in terms of vulnerability and imperfection.

Blackburn’s Kantian Captain would indeed be a nightmare; entirely free from his animal nature,
presumably including his inclinations and emotions, and even immune to them. One must ask, why
would anyone be a Kantian if this was Kant’s view of moral agency? If, like many Kantians, you are
awed by the moral law within you, is not this awe coming from a very human place? Do we not look
up to morality as an ‘awesome’ capacity we have, as humans, in the midst of our all too human
needs and frailties? Thankfully, Kantianism gives us all we need to address Blackburn’s Kantian
Captain. Any reasonably sensitive reconstruction of Kant’s moral theory must allow that the sort of
freedom from our contingent natures that Blackburn mentions is but part of the Kantian story. If
autonomy, in Blackburn’s sense, was the only feature of our moral reasoning worth mentioning,
then the term ‘ought’ would be irrelevant. In fact, ‘ought’, or moral necessitation, is applicable to us
in virtue of the fact that we are needy, vulnerable beings. Absent such needs, we would not be
recognizably human. In fact, we would start to look much more like the Kantian conception of God.
Similarly, the Kantian conception of virtue is only meaningful in the context of human frailty. For
Kant, virtue is morality applied to human beings and includes the experience of an inner struggle.
Such struggle cannot be comprehensibly applied to God or angels, and as such they are holy, rather
than virtuous, beings (Kant 2001, 27:13).

References wherein Kant contrasts human agents with perfect, infinite, divine agents are not
difficult to find. To see how this juxtaposition functions to inform our conception of human agency,
take one example wherein Kant makes use of it:

No imperatives hold for the divine will and in general for a holy will: the ‘ought’ is out of place here,
because volition is of itself necessarily in accord with the law. Therefore imperatives are only
formulae expressing the relations of objective laws of volition in general to the subjective
imperfection of the will of this or that rational being, for example, of the human will (Kant 2002,
4:414)

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Kant uses the juxtaposition of imperfect, finite human rationality, with perfect, infinite, divine
rationality in the above quote, and throughout his practical philosophy, to remind us that practical
reasoning is the provenance of imperfectly rational creatures. Insofar as we are imperfect, but yet
rational, we are uniquely situated: were we perfectly rational we would never act according to the
imperatives of practical reason. In fact, practical reasoning itself would be totally unnecessary. It is
our imperfection, and our finitude and need, that enables our feeling of awe when faced with the
moral law within us.

At this stage, it might still be asked of the Kantian, what is the practical import of this recognition of
the human being as finite? I think it is clear that no reasonable Kantian can claim human beings are
capable of immunity to our animal natures. Our inclinations, our contingent nature and our external
surroundings are inescapable. Nevertheless, a faultfinder may still object to the placement of these
features of humanity within Kant’s theory; perhaps the role of the Kantian Captain is to subject these
circumstances to suspicion and to heft himself, by his boot straps, as far away from them as possible.
Perhaps our needs and our emotions can only be understood as negative; as a pull away from acting
in accordance with the categorical imperative much like the tempestuous waves our Kantian Captain
must navigate in his pursuit of the patriarchal fantasy. I have three responses to this.

First, a Kantian does not have to commit to the idea that these facts about a human being’s
existence are a mere negative distraction from moral behaviour. For one thing, as I outlined above, it
is our contingent nature which enables practical reasoning. Our awe at the example of the heroism,
and sacrifice, of someone like Dietrich Bonhoeffer is not diminished, when we recognise him as a
human being, liable to the same feelings and fears as the rest of us. We can admire all the more his
courage in returning to Nazi Germany when we recognise the fear he experienced in his flight to the
safe haven of the US. His personal struggle here has worth. Presumably such an example
corresponds with the idea that those subjective ‘hindrances’ (eg fear), which far from concealing the
good will ‘elevate it by contrast and let it shine forth all the more brightly’ (Kant 2002, 4:397). Here,
then, our imperfect nature and the inclinations which feed it, even in their most negative
connotation (as pulls against our adherence to the categorical imperative), are nevertheless not
merely negative. It is our finitude and imperfection which enable our practical reasoning, sustain our
feelings of awe for the moral law within us and provide the possibility for moral heroism.

Second, there is plenty of scope, within Kantianism, for interpreting our vulnerability as implying the
need for justice. If, as moral agents we are free but finite, and our finitude can constrain our moral
agency, then a Kantian argument can be made for providing conditions that address our needs in
such a way as to promote our freedom. For example, if hunger (as a human need) can adversely
constrain our freedom (it is more difficult not to steal food when starving), then it would be wise to
provide circumstances within which agents are free from hunger. I take it these arguments are close
to those of Onora O’Neill, in particular when she states that, for Kant, it is the combination of agency
and vulnerability which constitutes the circumstances of justice (O’Neill 2000, 138).

Finally, third, and most pressing given the concerns of this paper, is the fact that the emotions, as
part of our contingent nature, can be given a distinctively positive role in Kantian moral theory. In
the next section, I will examine the role of the emotions for Kant.

4
Section 2: Kant, the Emotions and Character

Many Kantians today hold that taking the emotions seriously is fully consistent with their
Kantianism. Katrin Flikschuh describes this as Kantians claiming ‘things are not as bad as they seem’,
a position she terms ‘conceding the principal charge’ (Flikschuh 2014, 265). One example of this
position is that of Thomas Hill and Adam Cureton. In a recent paper, they argue that, for Kant, ‘some
feelings are simply aspects of all moral experience and others should be cultivated aids in our efforts
to avoid wrongdoing and to promote moral ends’ (Hill and Cureton 2018, 265). Similar to my
remarks on the awe inspired by the moral law within me, the authors note that the feeling of respect
for the moral law is a product of our inescapable recognition of moral requirements. Other feelings
mimic respect, for the authors; like guilt, shame and satisfaction. Moreover, some emotions function
as aids to morality insofar as they might facilitate moral action by counteracting contrary inclinations
(for example, sympathy might counteract inclinations of selfishness). Finally, certain feelings, when
appropriately morally constrained, are necessary for human happiness; and as we have an imperfect
duty to adopt the happiness of others as an end, and an indirect duty to pursue our own happiness,
we might be said to have a duty to cultivate these emotions (albeit imperfect and/or indirect) (Hill
and Cureton 2018).

As such, for Kant, emotion is neither avoidable, insofar as we will never be immune to it, nor is it
unimportant. Nonetheless, we can agree with the argument that the sorts of feelings discussed are
either helpful assists to duty or happy by products of it, without going so far as to say that one
cannot be moral if one does not feel appropriately. The question now becomes how significant are
the emotions on a Kantian framework. Are emotions a helpful ally in the work of doing our duty? Or
are they, in some sense, necessary for moral agency? Are emotions part of the meat of morality or
are they the garnish on the plate? On this question, the work of Nancy Sherman is instructive. For
Sherman, the emotions have a constructive role within virtue; she interprets Kant as having a
‘conception of moral character in which emotions responsive to the constraints and ends of duty
come to be viewed as morally estimable’ (Sherman 1997, 126). Sherman allows that if such positive
emotions (those that aid morality) can themselves be shaped by the moral law, such that acting from
the emotion involved a concern for rightness and wrongness and respecting others as ends in
themselves, then ‘a maxim grounded in compassion would seem to have moral content, and moral
worth’ (Sherman 1997, 150). As such, she goes beyond Hill and Cureton’s approach; here emotions
look much more meat than garnish. This is further emphasised when she states the emotions are
‘something more than merely ways of accenting or adorning virtue. They are part of the fabric of the
response. The moral response that lacks appropriate emotional expression lacks a means and mode
of expression that for humans, at least, is morally significant’ (Sherman 2014, 29).

In the following sections of this paper, I will argue against this position as over-emotionalising Kant’s
moral theory. As will become apparent, I do not believe that emotion is part of the fabric of morality
for Kant. Instead I will, in line with Hill and Cureton above, describe Kant as sensitive to the role the
emotions play in morality. Nevertheless, I will also describe Kant as dismissive of grounding morality
in the emotions. This, I believe, has important consequences for character education; an area that is
currently seeing interest on the part of Kantians (Baron 2014; Hill and Cureton 2014). Before
proceeding to the topic of character education, I will spend some time analysing research on how
individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HF-ASD) learn to be moral. My motive
for doing so is to prepare a case for the argument that a Kantian conception of character, that

5
includes an idea of moral agency as sensitive to the emotions but not over-emotionalised, is more
inclusive of such persons than an over-emotionalised account of character. As such, it may be helpful
to end this section by mentioning Marcia Baron’s paper Kantian Moral Maturity and the Cultivation
of Character (Baron 2014). Baron discusses character education by giving the example of Fitzwilliam
Darcy in Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice. In the course of the novel, Mr Darcy learns to be good. As
he does so, he learns that it is not enough to follow good principles; one must also have ‘the right
attitudes and feelings’ (Baron 2014, 69). I shall return to Mr Darcy and character education in the
final section of this paper. First though, I would like to ask, what if Mr Darcy is incapable of this sort
personal awakening; what if he simply cannot combine his principles with the right feelings? It is
these kinds of concerns that motivate my discussion of the literature on how individuals with HF-ASD
experience morality.

Section 3: Emotions and Autism

Over-emotionalizing Kant, in my opinion, amounts to attributing to him a position that places too
much significance to emotion. It is one thing to claim, as I do, that the emotions can aid and inform
moral action, and even empower us and imbue us with awe; and quite another to claim that only
action done from emotion (as well as duty) is moral. Simply put, my specific concern is, ‘what
happens if a person lacks appropriate emotional response’? In an effort to answer this question, I
believe it will be useful to spend some time examining what happens when individuals with HF-ASD
attempt to learn to be moral, or more pertinently, when they attempt to cultivate good character. In
Autism, Empathy and Moral Agency, Jeanette Kennet notes that people with HF-ASD ‘display moral
concerns, moral feeling and a sense of duty or conscience’ (Kennett 2002, 349). In explaining how
people with HF-ASD learn to be moral, Kennnet takes a largely Kantian approach. She states, such
persons can ‘develop or discover moral rules and principles of conduct for themselves by reasoning,
as they would in other matters, on the basis of patient explicit enquiry, reliance on testimony and
inference from past situations’ (Kennett 2002, 351). Interestingly, these considerations lead Kennet
to the conclusion that a Kantian account of agency is preferable to a Humean one on the grounds
that it ‘grants full moral agency to morally conscientious autistic people’ (Kennett 2002, 355).

Kennet’s account was one of the first attempts to use empirical findings from studying persons with
HF-ASD in an attempt to answer the question whether empathy is necessary for morality. Since the
publication of her paper, progress has been made in the field; it is now thought that persons with
HF-ASD do experience empathy (contra Kennet’s arguments) in the form of affective empathy
(Bolland 2013), as explained below. This finding has resulted in a push against Kennet’s conclusions
(Aaltola 2014). Nevertheless, I believe that digging deeper into what the research tells us about how
persons with HF-ASD make decisions in morally salient situations; it becomes apparent that their
experience of empathy is not as clearly discrediting of the Kantian approach as it may have, at first,
appeared.

In the literature, empathy is generally believed to have two components; affective empathy can be
discerned from cognitive empathy on the grounds of emotion versus belief formation (Dziobek
2008). As Elisa Aaltola states, with affective empathy ‘one resonates with the phenomenal aspects of
another individual’s mental states’ (Aaltola 2014, 77), or one ‘feels’ the suffering or joy of another. In
contrast, with cognitive empathy, ‘one forms a representation of the mental state of another
individual’ (Aaltola 2014, 77), or one believes that the other is experiencing joy or suffering.

6
Generally, it is held that in a morally salient situation, then, the person with HF-ASD will likely
experience difficulty taking a perspective other than her own (Mazza et al. 2014)1. For clarity, take
the example of Anne, a child with HF-ASD who is part of a mainstream class. Her class teacher
organises a party for the entire class. As part of this, the teacher plans to have a disco; the other
members of Anne’s class love music and dancing. Anne fears such activities. On the morning of the
party, Anne purposely breaks the music CD. Her classmates are very upset by the fact that there will
be no music and dancing. Given Anne’s impaired cognitive empathy, she cannot understand the
point of view of others in her class. Anne acted from emotion (her fear of music and dancing), but it
was a self-directed emotion. Given Anne’s difficulties with cognitive empathy, it is difficult to see
how she could use her emotion to motivate moral action. In fact, Anne may very well feel
compassion for the disappointment of her classmates, but bewilderment as to its cause (how could
they feel anything but fear for music and dancing) and confusion as to how she might alleviate it.

My interpretation of Anne’s emotions, her compassion and subsequent confusion, is consistent with
findings on how individuals with HF-ASD navigate morally salient situations. In an article on moral
reasoning amongst adolescents with HF-ASD, Amie Senland and Ann Higgins-D’Alessandro agreed
that it is cognitive empathy that is impaired, rather than affective empathy, in the case of persons
with HF-ASD, and they noted that adolescents with HF-ASD also showed significantly higher levels of
personal distress than typical adolescents (Senland and Higgins-D’Alessandro 2013). Elucidating the
example of Anne above, the authors found that, while adolescents with HF-ASD perceive themselves
to feel compassion, they were not necessarily able to use it to support decision-making during
challenging sociomoral situations. The authors surmised that the higher distress noted above might
be accounted for by ‘discrepancies between the self-perceptions of adolescents with HF-ASD and
their capacity to use empathetic concern in solving challenging situations’ (Senland and Higgins-
D’Alessandro 2013, 220).

As such then, even though persons with HF-ASD do experience empathy, they have difficult using
this empathy to make a judgment as to the right course of action. Feeling, then, is not doing the
moral work, so to speak. In fact, if anything, feeling would seem to only make matters worse (the
distress outlined above). Nonetheless, persons with HF-ASD do exhibit moral behaviour, and a
commitment and enthusiasm for morality; how can this be accounted for?

A recent study on the link between moral judgment and behaviour among children with HF-ASD is
very informative on this point (Li, Zhu and Gummerum 2014). The authors asked typically developing
(TD) children and children with HF-ASD to judge the morality of an actor in a story as naughty or
nice. After this the children were encouraged to play with the morally nice and morally naughty child
in repeated games. The study found that both sets of children were capable of making correct moral
judgments. Nonetheless, children with HF-ASD did not differentiate their play behaviour between
their naughty or nice playmates, whereas TD children were more likely to play with nice playmates.
The authors concluded that, unlike TD children, the cooperative behaviour of children with HF-ASD
was not influenced by partner’s nice morality. In fact, putting this in terms that suit my present
purpose, the authors surmised that ‘TD children might be more likely to take into account their

1
Note, there is some discord on this. Some authors argue that those with HF-ASD may have impaired cognitive
and affective empathy, while others believe it is only affective empathy that is affected. For my purposes, this
does not matter. My argument will hold if both are affected. As such I have chosen to engage with those who
believe affective empathy is present as it poses more of a challenge for my position.

7
partners' characters, including their morality, compared with HFA [HF-ASD] children’ (Li, Zhu and
Gummerum 2014, 2).

Some of the underlying findings of this report are highly instructive. For one thing, the authors found
that the children with HF-ASD judged harming others as significantly worse than TD children, leading
the authors to surmise that children with HF-ASD might be said to have even more rigid criteria for
what constitutes an immoral act (Li, Zhu and Gummerum 2014, 3). They stated that they found
moral reasoning among children with HF-ASD to be more rule-oriented (Li, Zhu and Gummerum
2014, 3). Moreover, they found (like Anne above) that children with HF-ASD are essentially focused
on the self, and while some such children show empathy and overcome this self-focus, this takes
great cognitive effort (Li, Zhu and Gummerum 2014, 4). The authors quoted Baron-Cohen in that
although autistic individuals are typically self-focused, they are highly moral people, have a strong
sense of justice, and think deeply about how to be good (Li, Zhu and Gummerum 2014, 4). In other
words, they seem to care about their own moral character. As such, it is important that any theory
of character education, as an instrument to helping develop character, be reconcilable with how
these individuals experience morality and learn to be good. The next section of this paper will turn
to this topic and argue that the Kantian account of moral agency I put forward is reconcilable with
the way individuals with HF-ASD experience morality. In this respect, such an account is more
attractive than its over-emotionalised Kantian, or Aristotelian, alternative.

Section 4: Over-Emotionalising Kant

It is hard to say, for sure, if the children and adolescents with HF-ASD mentioned above are acting
from duty. This admission may seem to concede defeat on my part, but in fact it is consistent with a
Kantian approach. After all, the content of others’ maxims are not the sort of thing we can ever be
sure of. In fact, Kant goes so far as to stipulate that even our own motives may be obscured to us
(Flickschuh 2014, 266). What a Kantian can say, I believe, is that it certainly appears that these
children and adolescents are attempting to act from duty. They are reasoning about morally salient
behaviour (naughty or nice) and coming to appropriate conclusions. This reasoning seems to be rule
based; they are, in Kennet’s words developing and discovering moral rules for themselves. I would
also add that these rules seem to be the outcome of a commitment to exceptionlessness, a theme I
will pick up on presently. Moreover, the children seem to be thinking deeply about such matters and
they are concerned by issues like fairness and justice. The children’s lack of discernment in the
second task (choosing a playmate) may have multiple interpretations. It may be a failure of cognitive
empathy; the HF-ASD child may fail to take the position of the ‘naughty’ child and may fail to see
that they have a characteristic tendency towards naughtiness. It may be that the child with HF-ASD
applies ‘strict’ rules to deciding who to play with, and past naughtiness is not encapsulated within
these rules. Moreover, it may well be that part of the commitment to these strict rules comes from a
respect for the fair treatment of others.

I began my treatment of Kant by arguing that there is a role, on his account of moral agency, for the
emotions. Nevertheless, I held back from what I termed ‘over-emotionalising’ Kant. Motivating my
misgivings on this is a respect for the following piece from Kant’s Groundwork:

Empirical Principles are not at all fit to be the ground of moral laws. For, the universality with which
these are to hold for all rational beings without distinction- the unconditional practical necessity

8
which is thereby imposed upon them- comes to nothing if their ground is taken from the special
constitution of human nature or the contingent circumstances in which it is placed (Kant 2002, 4:442)

I do not believe it is a coincidence that Simon Blackburn uses the term ‘contingent nature and
surrounds’ when describing the Kantian Captain, though if he is alluding to this passage, I believe he
has misconstrued the relevance of it. Instead of pertaining to our capacity to immunize ourselves to
emotion, Kant is maintaining his commitment to exceptionlessness. Put simply, for Kant, it would be
incorrect to say we are moral because we have certain emotions. When it comes to the grounding of
morality, the justification of ‘ought’, emotions (and our contingent circumstances) are completely
irrelevant. So, emotions cannot ground morality, and neither can ‘the contingent circumstances’
within which we find ourselves. A description of the world, and our sensible natures within it, cannot
afford us a justification for morality. Motivating Kant here is the idea of universality. Morality must
be exceptionless; it must be lawlike in this respect. Emotion cannot give us this lawlikeness.

Going back to Marcia Baron’s Mr Darcy, what can a Kantian like me say about his character
education? The sort of Kantianism I have been describing can allow that he would be well-advised to
cultivate the right attitudes and feelings; they will, after all help him discharge his duty; they might
be a great source of meaning and worth in his life. He may even have duties to this end, albeit
indirect and imperfect ones (discussed above). But would he fail, morally, if he did not pursue this
cultivation; if he, instead, remained a man of good principle but bad temper? I do not think so. Now
imagine a Mr Darcy with HF-ASD. What if, consistent with his HF-ASD, he always experienced great
difficulties overcoming his self-directed emotions in morally salient situations, and could only do so
with great cognitive effort, applying principles of exceptionlessness, etc? Well, on the account I have
put forward, he can still be said to show a commitment to morality, and morally appropriate
behaviour.

I believe these arguments have important implications for character education, in particular Kantian
conceptions of character education. To see this, let me dig a bit deeper into Baron’s account of the
cultivation of character. Clearly, in a number of ways, I am very sympathetic to her approach; I have
outlined these points of consent above when describing my view of Kantian moral theory as
sensitive to the emotions. Nonetheless, I believe Baron is an example of ‘over-emotionalising’ Kant.
Although she does mention the idea that we should not over exaggerate the extent to which we can
control our emotions, this does not seem to constrain her account. In fact, she states that ‘the
cultivation of morally desirable affective responses and attitudes is a vital part of good child-rearing
and, more generally, of the moral education of children’ (Baron 2014, 71). Moreover, when it comes
to the idea of the sort of moral struggle I attributed to Bonhoffer, Baron does not seem to concur
with my estimation of its worth. Baron gives, what she believes to be a morally salient example, of a
child delighting in smashing up a car, and says of it:

The problem is not (merely) that those who find such a thing intensely pleasurable are more likely to
be, or grow to be, destructive. It is plausible to suppose that they are, but even if they are not, finding
such activities pleasurable is itself morally problematic (Baron 2014, 72)

Imagine for a moment a second Bonhoffer; a pyromaniac Bonhoffer who, although actively anti-
Nazi, nevertheless experiences intense pleasure upon witnessing them burn books. Now think of the
struggle this twisted Bonhoffer might feel. On the one hand, his intellectual and moral principles tell
him burning books is wrong, especially when done from a commitment to Nazism. On the other

9
hand, he just loves starting fires and watching others do so. A Kantian Bonhoffer would know that
he cannot trust this emotion, and to do the right thing he must instead reason appropriately. And
yet he struggles. For me, this struggle has worth. It is the human struggle; the struggle of beings who
are prone to all sorts of corruption but still capable of morality; it is the struggle of persons liable to
all sorts of mistakes and misadventures while maintaining the potential for autonomy2.

At the risk of mixing my metaphors, let me now return to my Mr Darcy. One might disagree with me
here on the extent to which I can say a HF-ASD Mr Darcy is subjecting the content of his maxims to a
universalizability test, and only willing those which pass. After all, some studies have found lower
moral reasoning among those with HF-ASD (Senland and Higgins-D’Alessandro 2013). It may be the
case, consistent with the Li, Zhu et al study, that Mr Darcy can apply rigid (exceptionless) rules; but
at times fail to accord with a Kantian conception of morality given his difficulty with abstraction.
Importantly, this too is consistent with a Kantian view of morality. At the heart of this article is a
vision of Kant, far from the Kantian Captain view, as a philosopher all too aware of human moral
frailty. If perfectionism means one cannot be said to be capable of morality, if one does not show
perfection in morality, then Kant was no perfectionist. In fact, the highest good of perfect morality is,
according to Kant, unachievable, at least in this life. It is an ideal we must strive for, but never reach.
Our failures in morality do not mark us as amoral; they show us to be human. It is not important that
HF-ASD Mr Darcy sometimes fails, it is only important that he is capable of moral behaviour on the
Kantian conception. As such then, a Kantian conception of morality can include HF-ASD Mr Darcy
within its purview. Can the same be said of other approaches?

I think, as Kantians, the more we move towards Aristotelianism, the more problematic it becomes to
maintain the view that inherent emotional frailty, the sort exhibited by my HF-ASD Mr Darcy and my
Pyromanic Bonhoffer, is consistent with the potential for full moral agency. According to Kristjan
Kristjánsson, implicit in the move towards Aristotelianism is an ‘image of the self as an enmattered
essence, which if it is to realize its full potential, must think its feelings and feel its thoughts.’
(Kristjánsson 2007, 3). Similarly, Kristjánsson notes that virtue typically comprises a set of
perception/recognition, emotion, desire, motivation, behaviour and comportment or style, where
none of the factors can be evaluated in isolation from the others (Kristjánsson 2015, 14). If feeling
and thought is so entangled, on the Aristotelian conception, it becomes difficult to see how moral
behaviour is possible without appropriate moral emotion. The Aristotelian might argue that ‘falling
short’ is as consistent with their account as it is with a Kantian one. Instead of full autonomous
virtue, HF-ASD Mr Darcy might obtain moral continence. Leaving aside the insult that is the term
‘continence’ (as opposed to ‘incontinence’), can someone who cannot exhibit appropriate moral
emotion be said to be merely falling short, on an Aristotelian account? Here, for the Aristotelian, it
depends on what one is struggling with. If, like HF-ASD Mr Darcy, you struggle with your own nature,
you are incapable of immunity to your feelings of superiority (or as Austin might call it – conceit), it is
difficult to see how you could attain continence. I follow Heidi Furey on this; her account of Aristotle
has it that such a constant internal struggle against one’s own feelings, would constitute a flaw in

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This struggle is also the struggle at the heart of man’s unsocial sociability (Kant 2007, 44), or the tension
between his inclination to live in society and his resistance to others. Interestingly, this struggle has the result
of ameliorating the situation of man as a species, from barbarism to culture (Kant 2007, 44). Moreover, as
mentioned in section 1, it is also the struggle associated with the Kantian conception of virtue. As Manfred
Kuehn states in his introduction to the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, virtue is “something
human, perhaps even all-too-human”(Kant 2013, xxv).

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one’s character (Furey 2017). As such, it isn’t that Mr Darcy falls short on his path to virtue
compared to someone with the appropriate emotional responses; he is ‘on the wrong path
altogether’ (Furey 2017, 480).

It is certain that Aristotelian concerns have influenced the Kantianism of Nancy Sherman; but they
are, I believe, also present in the Kantian character education of Marcia Baron. In fact, as I see it,
inherent to over-emotionalising of Kant’s moral theory is a commitment to Kristjánsson’s
enmattered essence. As I hope to have shown, while there is certainly scope on the Kantian account
for a concept of moral agency that is sensitive to the role of emotion, an over-emotionalisation may
lead to excluding some, or at least denigrating their moral experience to that of constant failure
(those with HF-ASD). As any teacher worth their salt knows, you ought not to set children up to fail.
If the task, set by the teacher, is structured in such a way that some children simply cannot access
the learning in virtue, perhaps, of a special educational need, then the task is inappropriate. All
educational approaches ought to take into account the needs and potential exclusion of its learners;
character education is no different. This is not to say that Aristotelian approaches are inappropriate.
The move towards Aristotle, has been in my opinion, a move in the right direction. It would seem we
are operating in a zeitgeist that embraces the emotional element of humanity. Whether this
phenomenon is captured through the vocabulary of ‘emotional intelligence’ or the public floodgate
opening of momentous events like the death of Princess Diana, it certainly dovetails nicely with a
move towards Kristjánsson’s enmattered essence. That said, as I have shown, something may have
been lost along the way. The intuitions that drive teachers to differentiate their classroom approach
such that all can be included in the learning, should move us to differentiate our approach to
character education. Perhaps this differentiation might end up being a hybrid approach; it is beyond
the remit of this article to discuss this in depth. Nonetheless, given the concerns of this paper, when
it comes to inclusiveness, I believe the Kantian approach to character education has the edge over its
Aristotelian counterpart.

Conclusion

Throughout, I have expressed my approval for a concept of moral agency that gives emotion its due.
A Kantian account of moral agency can do this due-giving, without compromising on its
inclusiveness. As such, when it comes to character education, Kantian variants can include some
within its purview that might be excluded on over-emotionalised Kantian or Aristotelian alternatives.
This inclusion is important. I have described individuals with HF-ASD as having the capacity to
commit deeply to morality, even if they may find using moral emotion to support their decision
making difficult or even impossible. It is incumbent upon character education to find a way of
including these individuals in a way that facilitates their development of character, and refuses to
denigrate their experience of morality. I believe that a theory of character education, with a Kantian
account of moral agency (as outlined above) can include these individuals appropriately.

11
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