Kantian Rigorism Revised: A defense of Schapiro’s revised Kantianism as a response to the case of the murderer at the door

Abstract

In a notorious essay, Kant defends that one is obligated to tell the truth to a murderer who asks where his victim is. This has been discussed in literature as ‘the problem of rigorism,’ which supposedly does not allow for mitigating circumstances. Several responses exist to this problem, which can be distinguished as rigorism, Kantian apologism, structural Kantianism, and revised Kantianism. In this thesis, I investigate these strategies and defend Schapiro’s revised Kantianism, because it allows for non-ideal situations to mitigate the stringency of the categorical imperative whilst maintaining the core tenets of Kant’s deontology. In doing so, I refute Cholbi’s anything-goes objection to her constitutive approach.