The Kantian idea of hope–Bridging the gap between our imperfection and our duty to perfect ourselves

This journal recently published a special issue on Kant, evil, moral perfection and education. The essays included in the special issue discussed the vulnerably and imperfection of human beings and the role of education as facilitating such beings in their pursuit of moral perfection. The contribution of this article is to put forward a Kantian idea of hope as a response to the difficulty of holding imperfect agents to an impossibly high standard (perfect virtue). Hope plays an enabling role for human agents, mediating the seemingly unstable relationship between imperfect moral agents, characterised by radical evil, and their duty to elevate themselves to the idea of moral perfection in an uncertain world. As such, hope can be seen as a response to the editors’ call to bring attention to the need to work with the vulnerabilities and imperfections of human beings through education and social change. One practical way in which education can accomplish this task is through role modelling. A further contribution of this article is to advocate a Kantian idea of impure role modelling (the role model as imperfect but hopeful).