Does Kantian ethics overvalue self-examination? Kant certainly places great emphasis on it,
suggesting that we must have a standing concern for our own character in order to live well at
all. Yet this emphasis invites the criticism that the Kantian figure of virtue is self-absorbed —
a charge that Korsgaard’s influential work on moral reflection does little to address. However,
the charge of self-absorption can be dismissed if we trace Kant’s view of moral reflection to his
more general claim that reflection is a condition of sound judgment. While judging is making an
objective determination about how things are, or what ought to be done, reflecting is considering
whether one is in a position to be making a cognitive determination at all. The reflective person
cares principally about the objective matter under consideration; and any concern that he has for
his own cognitive agency is internal to this end. From this it follows that any genuine attempt to
cultivate the moral disposition in oneself can never assume a life of its own, and hence that the
emphasis Kant places on reflection entails nothing about self-absorption.