Good Will By Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a philosopher who made great contributions with his work on the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Kant’s interest with metaphysics left him in the company of Aristotle, who had the original work on metaphysics. Kant’s goal in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals was to find and make the supreme principal of morality. Kant covers several concepts in his work on metaphysics, some of the key concepts in his work are good will, moral worth, and imperatives. When it comes to good will Kant believes that “Nothing in the world—indeed nothing even beyond the world—can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will” 1. In the next key concept, moral worth, Kant believes that actions are only morally right depending on their motives, “an action done not from inclination but from duty” 2 is morally right according to Kant. Kant’s imperatives are broken down into two types, those being hypothetical and categorical. A hypothetical imperative is an “action that is good to some purpose, possible or actual” 3. A categorical imperative “directly commands a certain conduct without making its condition some purpose to be reached by it” 4. From these concepts you can tell that Kant is a perfect world philosopher who thinks that all humans are rational beings, who have preeminent good in them, and should always strive to be their best selves.

“The good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes or because of its adequacy to achieve some proposed end; it is good only because of its willing, i.e., it is good of itself” 5. In Kant’s eyes there is no escaping a good will if you are a rational being, therefore we, as humans all have the ability to do good because...

... middle of paper ...

...to choose the best choice for them.

Kant was definitely a perfect world philosopher who had good ideas and beliefs about how the world should work but they were just unrealistic expectations of what people should do. Kant thinks that all rational beings are instilled with good will therefore should strive to always do actions out of good will. Kant also explained that actions should be done out of duty and not inclination for them to be considered morally right because you should do things because they are right and not because its going to benefit us. Imperatives to Kant were a way to check what kind of decision a person was going to make. With all these concepts anyone can see that Kant had a good idea of what people should be like, however, it is just not rational to believe that everyone is going to stop and really think about every decision they make through.