D-Board Kant

Kant

Handout #2

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1. Good Will and Categorical Imperative

1. Good Will: “Good without qualification” (7)

• It has “intrinsic unconditional worth” (7), absolute good. o “A good will is good not because of what it effects or accomplishes, not because of its fitness to

attain some proposed end; it is good only through its willing, i.e., it is good in itself” (7)

• Reason is a practical faculty, i.e., it aims at influencing the will! o Its goal is to produce a will that is “good in itself” (9) o Attainment of a good will gives reason its own satisfaction, i.e., that of “fulfilling a purpose

which is in turn determined only by reason” (9)

▪ More precisely, the purpose of the good will is determined by reason via the application of the categorical imperative

** Will: Ability to act according to one’s own conception of law or principles

• Rational Beings are the only beings that have the power to act according to their own “conception of laws, i.e., according to principles, and thereby [they have] a will” (23).

• “The will is a faculty of choosing that which reason, independently from inclinations, recognizes as being practically necessary, i.e., as good” (23).

• “If reason infallibly determines the will, then in the case of such a being actions which are recognized to be objectively necessary are also subjectively necessary” (412, p. 23).

o This is an instance of good will

** The principle of morality: falls under the province of a single supreme principle of pure reason, i.e., the

Categorical Imperative (CI)

• CI: “Always act in such a way that you can also will that the maxim of your action will become a universal law”

• “It is the fundamental principle of the autonomy of reason in action” (vi)

Note: Importance of MOTIVES. E.g., the good will is good independently of its consequences!

2. “To have genuine moral worth, an action must be done from duty” (fn. 12, 12).

“Wherein, then, can this worth lie,” if not in the consequences of the action?

3. “An action done from duty has its moral worth, not in the purpose that is to be attained by it, but in the

maxim according to which the action is determined. The moral worth depends, therefore, not on the

realization of the object of the action, but merely on the principle of volition according to which, without regard

to any objects of the faculty of desire, the action has been done” (12-13).

4. “Duty is the necessity of an action done out of [from] respect for the law” (13).

• “An action done from duty must altogether exclude the influence of inclination…there is nothing left that can determine the will except objectively the law and subjectively pure respect for this practical

law” (13)

5. Since we stripped the will of all its empirical components, what is left “to serve the will as principle” (14)?

• The principle is the CI, “the universal conformity of [the will’s] actions to law as such” (14) o That is, “I should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should

become a universal law” (14).