Admiration is often described as having a singular motivational profile – the disposition to imitate. This article provides a developmental assessment of admiration’s action-potential, proposing a series of stages between (1) naïve imitation, a basic mimetic impulse, and (2) non-imitative virtuous actions. The process is marked by an increasing ability to represent the actions and desires of another, becoming the middle term between the learner and the exemplar. This developmental assessment is necessary because the leading accounts of moral development today lean on the idea of imitation as essential to the process of virtue acquisition without providing an explanation of how imitation works, psychologically speaking. Moreover, these accounts treat imitation as a static disposition, rather than one that matures over time. Insight regarding this developmental progression can provide us with a better sense of how to educate using exemplars in order to advance a learner from admiration to moral virtue. This article also fills in gaps in the admiration literature concerning how we regard inimitable excellences and contends that it may not be beneficial to emulate an exemplar’s motivations, in addition to her actions.

钦佩通常被描述为具有独特的动机特征-模仿的性格。本文提供了对钦佩的动作潜能的发展评估，提出了一系列阶段，介于（1）天真的模仿，基本的模仿冲动和（2）非模仿的美德行动之间。这个过程的特点是能够表现出另一个人的行为和欲望的能力不断增强，从而成为学习者和范例之间的中间术语。这种发展性的评估是必要的，因为当今道德发展的主要论述都基于模仿的思想，这是美德获得过程必不可少的，从心理上讲，并没有提供关于模仿如何工作的解释。此外，这些帐户将模仿视为一种静态倾向，而不是随着时间的推移而逐渐成熟。对这种发展过程的洞察力可以使我们更好地理解如何使用样例进行教育，以使学习者从钦佩转为道德美德。本文还填补了赞美文学中关于我们如何看待无与伦比的卓越成就的空白，并认为效仿榜样的动机以及举动可能并不有益。