Explain the importance of good will in Kant's ethical theory.

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Fran Ricci.

5/9/2007

Explain the importance of good will in Kant’s ethical theory.

Kant places good will at the centre of ethics, and in doing so; went beyond anything ever written before. For Kant, the supreme thing on earth is the development of a good will, and to act from a sense of duty. Kant believed that good will is the only thing that is good in all circumstances.

‘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.’

To develop a good will, we must act rationally, and we must be ruled by reason. Kant believed that if we did this, we would be acting according to God’s wishes.

Kant’s theory directly opposes utilitarian ethics. Kant would insist we were honest (even when faced with death) Kant does not consider the end results, for example happiness for the greatest number, only the action. Before Kant, the most important moral theories were based upon Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, which asserts that whatever leads to the greatest happiness (eudaimonia) is what is moral.

For Kant, ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ and therefore what we ought to do must be under our control.

Kant believed that everyone possesses a conscience, a sense of right and wrong, a sense of duty. Kant placed a high emphasis on reason- he believed if it were applied correctly, it would lead to identical results, in the same way that a science experiment will produce the same results, regardless of who performs it, providing that the person follows the correct method and that no external factor is present.

Kant formulates the Categorical Imperative in three different ways.

Kant presented the first formulation as a principle that one should only do something if one can will at the same time that everyone else should be able to do it too.

‘Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.’

In other words, one’s actions become morally good if done with conviction and without the prospect of self-contradiction if everyone else does the same. At the centre of this theory stands the belief that rational beings should always treat other rational beings equally and in the same way they would treat themselves as expressed in the second formulation.

The second formulation makes people the end, and not the means.

‘Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.’

Because human beings are rational being, they count equally with one another.

Subjective ends Kant defines as any that we take only for ourselves, by inclination or desire etc. Objective ends are those which are willed universally for all, and which serve as the ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ of all actions.

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The third (Kingdom of ends) combines the first two:

‘So act as if you were through your maxims, a law- making member of a kingdom of ends.’

The Categorical Imperative does not tell you the content of your moral obligations. It does not give any rule about promise- keeping. What it offers is a principle of the pure practical reason, merely that something is right only if you can, without contradiction, wish it to become a universal law. Kant illustrated this by considering the situation of someone who needs a loan, and will only get it if he promises ...

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