GOOD WILL - IMMANUEL KANT

Good Will by Immanuel Kant


The only thing that is good without qualification and limitation is the good will. All other things, if they are good, are only intrinsically good and may turn out to be bad in some circumstances, e.g. happiness, money, talents, beauty, intelligence. Then, what’s so good about the good will? The reason is that the good will is always good no matter what, because it only ever acts from one motive and this is respect for duty. The will, Kant says, is the faculty of acting according to a conception of law. When we act, whether or not we achieve what we intend with our actions is often beyond our control, so the morality of our actions does not depend upon their outcome. What we can control, however, is the will behind the action. That is, we can will to act according to one law rather than another. The morality of an action, therefore, must be assed in terms of the motivation behind it.

The good will is the only unconditional good despite all encroachments. And goodness cannot arise from acting on impulse or natural inclination, even if impulse coincides with duty. It can only arise from one’s actions in a certain way. For instance, Kant’s illustration of two shopkeepers who are honest in their own way. One is honest because it is good for business, or because he loves his customers, or simply because he enjoys it. However, none of these are moral motives because none need to involve being honest because it is right this shopkeeper is acting in accordance with the categorical imperative which, after all, requires us to be dutifully honest – but he is not acting morally or dutifully in the strict Kantian sense he is not being honest because of the categorical imperative.

The other shopkeeper may feel none of these emotions – no love, no joy, and no sympathy – yet he is the truly moral shopkeeper so long as his motive is to be honest because that is his moral duty. Kant argues, “It is not sufficient to do that which should be morally good that it conform to the law; it must be done for the sake of the law.” There is a clear moral difference between the shopkeeper that does it for his own advantage to keep from offending other customers and the shopkeeper who does it from duty and the principle of honesty. Likewise, in another of Kant’s carefully studied examples, the kind act of person who overcomes a natural lack of sympathy for other people out of respect for duty has moral worth, whereas the same kind act of the person who naturally takes pleasure in spreading joy does not. A person’s moral worth cannot dependent upon what nature endowed them with accidentally. The selfishly motivated shopkeeper and the naturally kind person both act on equally subjective and accidental grounds. What matters to morality is that the actor thinks about their actions in the right manner.
Sometimes we might think that the motivation that makes an action good is having a positive goal - to make people happy, or to provide some benefit. But that is not the right sort of motive. No outcome, should we achieve it, can be unconditionally good. Fortune can be misused, what we thought would induce benefit might actually bring harm, and happiness might be undeserved. Hoping to achieve some particular end, no matter how beneficial it may seem, is not purely, and unconditionally good. It is not the effect or even the intended effect that bestows moral character on an action. All intended effects “could be brought about by through other causes and would not require the will of a rational being, while the highest and unconditional good can be found only in such a will.” It is the possession of a rationally guided will that adds a moral dimension to one’s acts. So it is the recognition and appreciation of duty itself that must drive our actions.

A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects. Reason recognizes the establishment of a good will as its highest practical destination, and in attaining this purpose is capable only of a satisfaction of its own proper kind, namely, that from the attainment of an end, which end again is determined by reason only, not withstanding that this may involve many a disappoint to the ends of inclination. We have then to develop the notion of a will which deserves to be highly esteemed for itself, and is good without a view to anything further, a notion which exists already in the sound natural understanding, requiring rather to be cleared up than to be taught, and which in esteeming the value of our actions always takes the first place, and constitutes the condition of all the rest. In order to do this we will take the notion of duty, which includes that of a good will, although implying certain subjective restrictions and hindrances.

Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a Good Will.

Bibliography
Kant, Immanuel. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. T.
K. Abbot. New York: Prometheus Books, 1988.

Stewart, Noel. Ethics: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy. USA: Polity Press, 2009.