The aim of this chapter is to say what a Kantian ethical theory is, by characterizing Kant's conception of the aims and methods of what Kant calls a metaphysics of morals. I will do this by contrasting a Kantian conception of ethical theory with what I take to be the now dominant conception, a conception that too often influences even the way Kant is interpreted. My contrast will involve reference to great figures in the history of modern ethics such as Kant and Rawls, Mill and Sidgwick, but they will not be sorted in the customary way. And although I regard Kantian ethics as socially radical in its implications, my sympathies within the present narrative of the history of ethics will be decidedly reactionary. No doubt proponents of the dominant conception regard a reading of Kant that brings him into their fold as a charitable reading. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, they tend to take “Kantian ethics” to consist in using certain themes or doctrines in Kant to help out in “ethics” – where it is taken for granted that we already know (from the dominant conception) what ethics is. In this book, as I have said, the term has a different meaning.

The “Intuitional” or “Scientific” Model

The standard or dominant conception of ethical theory has two main characteristics, the first having to do with moral epistemology, the second with the nature of moral principles – the demands made on them, and the way they are to be applied.