The categorical imperative of the social world: autism, character education and the limits of pedagogical deontology

Drawing on Milton’s Double Empathy Problem, this paper argues that the core challenge is not diminished moral agency but reciprocal breakdowns in social interpretation, where neurotypical norms shape what counts as sincerity, kindness, and respect. I show how pedagogical Kantianism, especially the prohibition on lying, readily collapses into rule-primacy, rewarding rule-fidelity while neglecting context-sensitive repair that sustains social belonging. A neo-Aristotelian frame re-centres eudaimonia (flourishing) and phronesis (practical wisdom) while resisting deficit models of autistic sociality in education. I propose a scaffolded form of phronesis as a neurodiversity-affirming approach to virtue literacy: externalising moral salience, supplying deliberative prompts and examples, and rehearsing repair strategies across neurotypes. The paper concludes that inclusive character education must move beyond securing individual moral agency towards re-engineering the social conditions under which practical wisdom becomes teachable, reciprocal and genuinely accessible across neurotypes.