Kant and Overdemandingness II: The Demandingness of Perfect Duties

ABSTRACT In this paper, we consider how demandingness objections pertain to perfect duties in Kantian ethics. We revisit the framework of demandingness that we introduced in a previous paper, before introducing three cases that have been suggested to constitute problems for Kant, specifically regarding perfect duties. We argue that some of these cases do constitute problems for the Kantian framework, but the complaint of overdemandingness obfuscates other issues. In particular, we suggest that Kantian ethics may benefit from a theory of goods. However, we observe that supplementing Kantian ethics in this way may yield a number of further difficulties.