section_path: Philosophy/Moral thought/"The Doctrine of Virtue"
section_name: "The Doctrine of Virtue"
paragraph_text: "The Doctrine of Virtue"
  
  As Kant explains in the 1785 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and as its title directly indicates, that text is "nothing more than the search for and establishment of the supreme principle of morality ". His promised Metaphysics of Morals was much delayed and did not appear until its two parts, "The Doctrine of Right" and "The Doctrine of Virtue", were published separately in 1797 and 1798. The first deals with political philosophy, the second with ethics. "The Doctrine of Virtue" provides "a very different account of ordinary moral reasoning" than the one suggested by the Groundwork. It is concerned with duties of virtue or "ends that are at the same time duties". It is here, in the domain of ethics, that the greatest innovation by The Metaphysics of Morals is to be found. According to Kant's account, "ordinary moral reasoning is fundamentally teleological — it is reasoning about what ends we are constrained by morality to pursue, and the priorities among these ends we are required to observe".
  
  There are two sorts of ends that it is our duty to have: our own perfection and the happiness of others (MS 6:385). "Perfection" includes both our natural perfection (the development of our talents, skills, and capacities of understanding) and moral perfection (our virtuous disposition) (MS 6:387). A person's "happiness" is the greatest rational whole of the ends the person set for the sake of her own satisfaction (MS 6:387–388).
  
  Kant's elaboration of this teleological doctrine offers up a moral theory very different from the one typically attributed to him on the basis of his foundational works alone.