Being Right,and Being in the Right

This paper presents a critique of a prevailing conception of the relation between moral reasoning and judgment on the one hand, and moral goodness on the other. I argue that moral reasoning is inescapably vulnerable to moral, as opposed to merely theoretical, failure. This, I argue, means that there is something deeply misleading in the way that Kant's moral theory, and some of its main rivals, have invited us to conceive of their subject matter.