Still, it is useful to see Kantian theorists as holding that Kant had some crucial or seminal ethical matters right, while at the same time committing himself to claims or views that are from their perspective unacceptable. Many defenders of Kant's own account see the austere picture sometimes drawn of his ethics -as based on a rigoristic and formalistic obligation to duty -as mistaken, and argue that Kant's conception of what people are like as moral agents, and of what morality requires of people, is far richer and more satisfying than is often supposed. Moreover, some, like scholars Onora O'Neill (1975), Marcia Baron (1996), and Barbara Herman (1993), may see their work as exploring and defending the essential elements of Kant's moral theory, rather than developing an alternative theory inspired by him, even though they do not accept the metaphysical picture Kant thought crucial to his account. This is not a hard and fast distinction: What appears the right way to defend some thesis of Kant's to one may appear to another to be a complete departure from the crucial components of Kant's critical ethics. Ethical theories may be said to be "Kantian" if they take their inspiration or focus from themes in the ethical theory of Immanuel Kant, while attempting something other than interpretation, development, or defense of Kant's own ethical theory.
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