Immanuel Kant Good Will Analysis

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In Immanuel Kant’s work, “Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals” he discusses what is good will. He believes that a good will is in itself already good and acts in accordance with goodness. So the traits that are normally associated with a good will like intelligence and courage are not be valued as good but rather are only temperaments that can be used in both good and bad aspects. A good will is not brought on by actions or is it meant to provide some sort of reward at the end of completion, but rather it is brought on only when a will desires to be good. To be in possession of a good will is to not have expect a certain result that reveals itself after completing a duty, but rather it is the thought in accordance to the law where the good will flourishes. …show more content…

First is that traits like judgement and loyalty have merit in whether a person decides to follow a moral ground or not. So does that mean that people who subconsciously stride towards having a good will with these in mind are not going to be able to attain the good? Why does a will have to be inherently good? There need to be certain factors that allow for a good will to act not just because it already wants to, but that there is some form of satisfaction in acting on the good. Another question that arises is if a law is unjust and puts a minority of the population at a disadvantage, does that mean that people who object to said law do not have a good will? What if a state creates a law that only favors a minority while hurting the majority, can people object to the state and still be moral even though they have ulterior motives for acting? What if a person disregards laws not because they are unjust, but because they do not hold value in them and instead acts in accordance to their own laws of

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