GOOD WILL; THE SOURCE OF MORALITY

GOOD WILL; THE SOURCE OF MORALITY

Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Konigsberg. Kant was the last influential philosopher of modern Europe in the classic sequence of the theory of knowledge during the Enlightenment beginning with thinkers John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.

Kant created a new perspective in philosophy which had widespread influences on philosophy continuing through to the 21st century. He published important works on epistemology, related to religion, law, and history. One of his most prominent works is the Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation into the limitations and structure of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics and the epistemology, and highlights Kant's own contribution to these areas. The other main works are the Critique of Practical Reason, which concentrates on ethics, and the Critique of Judgment, which investigates aesthetics and teleology.

Critically speaking he was an opponent of Utilitarianism. Kant, unlike Mill, believed that certain types of actions (like murder, theft, and lying) were absolutely prohibited, even in cases where the action would bring about more happiness than the other alternatives. For Kant, there are two questions that we must ask ourselves whenever we decide to act: (i) Can I rationally will that everyone act as I propose to act? That means my subjective maxim can accept universally. If the answer is no, then we must not perform the action. (ii) Does my action respect the goals of human beings rather than merely using them for my own purposes? Again, if the answer is no, then we must not perform the action. (Kant believed that these questions were equivalent).
Kant’s theory is an example of a Deontological moral theory. According to this theory, the rightness or wrongness of actions does not depend on their consequences but on whether they fulfill our duty. It speaks about the moral obligation.

Good Will

The morality of Kant is focused on good will which is the essential faculty of human beings. “Reason, whether it is empirical or pure (practical), has goodness as its fundamental element: a conditioned good on happiness in the case of the former, and an unconditioned good in the good will on the case of the latter. In its primary employment in the practical sphere, Kant presents reason as good will, which is accepted as the as the principle from which, moral actions come forth.”

Kant in his writings always keeps consistency to bring forward the importance of ‘good will’. “It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will….. Good will seems to constitute the indispensable condition of our very worthiness to be happy.”

The good will is a power of intentional action, as it is good not because of what it produces, but only by virtue of volition. In the critique of Practical Reason Kant holds the t “practical reason….deals with the grounds determining the will, which is a faculty either of bringing forth objects corresponding to conceptions or of determining itself, i.e., its causality to effect such objects (whether the physical power is sufficient to this or not).” From this perspective “the moral worth of an action does not lie ion the effect expected from it, and so too does not depend on any principle of action that needs to borrow its motive from expected result.” So for Kant, the source of a moral action is nothing but the good will, which has universal application in the practical realm.

The moral value attaches only to willing itself, to the extent that even of the will lacks the power to carry out its intention, and accomplishes nothing through its utmost efforts, “even then (the good will) would still shine like a jewel for its own sake as something which has its full value in itself.” “Then nothing outside the will, not even the end to which it is directed, can be considered to bestow the good will with goodness; that is, whatever action is being performed which is of immense value from our common point of view of morality, cannot impart any goodness to the will, which is good by itself. Willing, as the activity of the good will, which is good by itself. Willing, as the activity of the good will aim at the realization of a particular end, is the core of moral action and, hence it is the unconditional good.”

The stress on the good will as the source of morality is the basis of humanity, i.e., that which makes man worthy of happiness, by being prone to good. “the will is conceived as a power of determining oneself to action in accordance with the idea of certain laws. And such a power can be found only in rational beings” these laws gave to be those that do not result from any inclination and, thus, nothing which rests on the production of something in the natural world. For Kant, that which exclusively determines the will is “objectively the law and subjectively pure respect for this practical law.

The will is said to be rational and, hence, law-abiding so much so that it is reason in its practical employment: “Everything in nature has the power to act in accordance with his ideas of laws- that is, in accordance with principles- and only so has he a will. Since reason is required in order to derive actions from laws, the will is nothing but practical reason.”

The good according to Kant is “a power to choose only that which reason independently if inclination recognizes to be practically necessary, that is, to be good.” The necessity referred to the nature and action of the will means that when an action is required by appropriate rational principles, the agent has to choose- by necessity – those actions dictated by the principles of reason, regardless of whatever other motives may try to compete with the former. As Paton said, “Reason must also seek a greater good which is unconditioned by our desires and needs, and only so can it be adequate to its purpose in spite of its inadequacy for the pursuit of happiness. Such an unconditioned good in so far as it aims at satisfying certain desires or at attaining the objects of these desires.” So the power to act in accordance with a conception of laws is the practical reason the objective content of which is the good will itself, its form being the a priori law. Will acts from a motive of duty, which is considered to be the highest order desire. It leads us to take an interest in acting from the moral law for its own sake or to further the realm of ends as required by the moral law for its own sake or to further the realm of ends as required by the moral law. The good will is the only unconditional good from a moral point of view as it results from the disposition to act from a sense of duty, from the willing of the good will without any other motive.

“Actions from other motives even where ignorance is absent can lead to bad results. Thus sense duty of duty is the only motive which has a direct conceptual tie to the categorically valid end of moral conduct. In this sense a good will is a categorical ought-to –be. Thus the sole motive of the food will is to do its duty only for the sake of doing its duty; in other words, what it intends to do, it intends to do, it intends because it is its duty, and it does it despite certain subjective limitations and obstacles.”

Conclusion

According to Kant will is the basis of all moral understanding. Although we have inclinations we have to avoid all such inclinations with our pure practical reason. Then we can filter the things around us and receive only what our reason commands us to do. This should be done by using the virtue of freedom. By virtue we are endowed with rationality. A moral person according to Kant is the man who exercises this reason in his actions. And morality is based on this reason and it is objective in nature and that is called categorical imperative. An agent’s subjective maxims which are derived from the good will are also objective in the sense that they are valid for every rational being, regardless of inclination or particular subjective constitution. In other words each subjective maxim should be an objective maxim or every individual maxim also applicable for all universal beings. As human beings are not free from other inclinations, those subjective maxims have to assume the nature of imperatives. So that they would direct the will to conform to principles valid for all rational beings. It is the only in this manner that the goodness of the good will can be realized in the case of an agent whose choices are affected both by reason and other interests.



BIBLIOGRAPHY
Crane Brinton. Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Vol. 2, p. 519. New York: Macmillan, 1967.
Chackalackal, Saju. Unity of Knowing and Acting in Kant. Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications, 2002.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton. London: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason, trans. and Introd. Lewis White Beck. Indianapolis: Bobbs- Merril Educational Publishing,1956.
Paton, Herbert J. The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant’s Moral Philosophy. London: Hutchinson and Co., 1947; 3rd Edition 1958