Why the Kantian ideal survives medical learning curves; and why it matters

Abstract

The ‘Kantian ideal’ is often misunderstood as invoking individual autonomy rather than rational self-legislation. Le Morvan and Stock’s otherwise insightful discussion of ‘Medical learning curves and the Kantian ideal’, for example, draws the mistaken inference that that ideal is inconsistent with the realities of medical practice. But it is not. Rationally to be a patient entails accepting its necessary conditions, one of which is the ineliminable existence of medical learning curves. Their rational necessity, therefore, offers no grounds against a Kantian understanding of how morality might function in the practgice of medicine.