User talk:Francistung

Kant's analysis of commonsense ideas begins with the thought that the only thing good without qualification is a good will. While the phrases 'he's good hearted', ' she good natured' and 'she means well' are common, 'the good will' as Kant thinks of it is not the same as any of these ordinary notions. The idea of a good will is closer to the idea of a 'good person', or, more archaically, a 'person of good will'. This use of the term 'will' early on in analyzing ordinary moral thought in fact prefigures later and more technical disussions concerning the nature of rational agency. Nevertheless, this is idea of a good will is an important commonsense touchstone to which he returns throughout his works. The basic idea is that what makes a good person good is his possession of a will tht is in a certain way 'determined' by, or makes its decisions on the basic of, the moral law. The idea of a good will is supposed to be the idea of one who only makes decisions that she holds to be morally worthy, taking moral considerations in themselves to be conclusive reason for guiding her behavior. This sort of dispositions or character is something we all highly value. Kant believes we value it without limitation or qualification. By this, I belive, he means primarily two things. First, unlike anything else, there is no conceivable circumstance in which we regard our own moral goodness as worth forfeiting simply in order to obtain some desirable object. By contrast, the value of all other desirable qualities, such as courage or cleverness, can be diminished, forgone, or sacrificed under certain circumstaces: Courage may be laid aside if it requires injustice, and it is better not to be witty if it requires cruelty. There is no implicit restriction or qualification to the effect that a determination to give moral considerations decisive weight is worth honoring, but only under such and such circumstances. Second, possesing and maintaining one's moral goodness is the very condition under which anything else is worth having or pursuing. Intelligence and even pleasure are worth having only on the condition that they do not require giving up one's fundametal moral convictions. The value of a good will thus cannot be that it secures certain valuable ends, whether of our own or of others, since their value is entirely conditional on our possessing and maintaining a good will. Indeed, since it is good under any condition, its goodness must not depend on any particular conditions obtaining. Thus, kant points out that a good will must then also be good in itself and not in virtue of its relationship to other things such as the agent's own happiness or overall welfare. In kant's term, a good will whose decisions are wholly determined by moral demands or as he often refers to this, by the Moral Law. Human beings view this Law as a constraint on ther desires, and hence a will in which the Moral Law is decisive is motivated by the thought of duty. A holy or divine will, if it exists, though good, would not be good because it is motivated by thoughts of duty. A holy will would be entirely free from desires that might operate independently of moral demands tht makes goodness in human beings a constraint, an essential element of the idea of 'duty'. So in analyzing unqualified goodness as it occurs in imperfectly rational creatures such as ourselves, we are investigating the idea of being motivated by the thought that we are constrained to act in certain ways that we might not want to, or te thought that we have moral duties. Kant confirms this by comparing motivation by duty with other sorts of motives, in particular, with motives of self-interest, self-preservation, simpathy and happiness. He argues that a dutiful action from any of these motives, however praiseworthy it may be, does not express a good will. Assuming an action has moral worth only if it expresses a good will, such actions have no genuine 'moral worth'. The conformity of one's action to duty in such cases is only related by accident to content of one's will. For instance, if one is motivated by happiness alone, then had conditions not conspired to align one's duty with one's own happiness one would not have done one's duty. By contrast, were one to supplant any of these motivations with the motive of duty, the morality of the action would then express one's determination to act dutifully under any circumstances. Only then would the action have moral worth. Kant's views in this regard have understandably been the subject of much controversy. Many object that we do not think better of actions done for the sake of duty than actions performed out of emotional concern or sympathy for others, especially those things we do for friends and family. Worse, moral worth appears to require not only that one's actions be motivated by duty, but also that no other motives, even love or friendship, cooperate. Yet Kant's defenders have argued that his point is not that we do not admire or praise motivating concerns other than duty, only that from the point of view of someone deliberating about what to do, these concerns are not decisive in the way that considerations of moral duty are. What is crucial in actions that express a good will is that the motivational structure of the agent be arranged so as to give considerations of duty priority over all other interests. It does not require or even recommend a rule-bound character devoid of the warmth of human emotion. Suppose for the sake of argument we agree with Kant. We now need to know what distinguishes the principle that lays down our duties from these other motivating principles, and so makes motivation by it the source of unqualified valued.