Kant’s Theory of Value

Sonja Haugaard Christensen, 2013

Two things fill the mind with ever new increasing admiration and reverence, the more often and more steadily one reflects on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. (1:5:162) For Kant our existence is divided into two: The first implies our place in the world of sense and extension. The second points to the invisible self – our personality, which we meet during understanding because the world is not contingent but universal and necessary. The second raises our worth as intelligent beings with personality, to the moral law revealing a life independent of animality. (1:5:163) The questions of freedom and our ability to be responsible agents will be considered in relation to Kant´s work Critique of practical reason.

Although Kant introduces the idea of a good will in the first sentence of the GROUNDWORK OF THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS, 1 he does not (at least at that point) offer a clear definition of this concept. Many readers, influenced perhaps by the fact that this discussion is followed by an account of the moral worth of actions (or maxims), have been led to posit a straightforward connection between the two concepts: a good will (which is a property or characteristic of persons) consists in performing morally good actions, i.e., in acting from the motive of duty. 2 Thus, according to H.J. Paton, Under human conditions a good will is one which acts for the sake of duty, and only the actions in which such a will is manifested have moral worth. 3 Lewis White Beck draws the same conclusion: An action having this motive [i.e., respect] is moral, and a being which acts from this motive has a good will. 4 I shall argue that the account offered by Paton and Beck (which I shall call the Traditional View) misrepresents the connection between the moral worth of actions and the good will of persons. To arrive at the proper understanding of this relation, the following three questions must be considered. (1) Does a good will consist simply in acting from the motive of duty? Do people have a good will just because they fulfill their duties from the motive of duty? (2) Does acting from duty presuppose that one has a good will? (3) Does the fact that one has a good will entail that all of one's duty-fulfilling actions have moral worth, even if they are not (directly) motivated by duty? Briefly stated, I shall argue that while it is true that only persons with a good will are capable of acting from the motive of duty (Section II), it does not follow either that a good will consists in acting from duty (Section I) or that if one has a good will, all of one's dutiful actions will be (or must be) motivated by duty and have moral worth (Sections III-V). In order to allow for the possibility of frailty or weakness of the will (as well as of impurity), the good will should be conceived of as a second-order disposition, that is, as the unconditional willingness to do what is morally required (and to omit what is morally prohibited), whereas the moral worth of actions is a function of the agent's first-order maxims.

Inquiry, 2000

2003

1996

Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good, without qualification, except a good will. Intelligence, wit, judgement, and the other talents of the mind, however they may be named, or courage, resolution, perseverance, as qualities of temperament, are undoubtedly good and desirable in many respects; but these gifts of nature may also become extremely bad and mischievous if the will which is to make use of them, and which, therefore, constitutes what is called character, is not good. It is the same with the gifts of fortune. Power, riches, honour, even health, and the general well-being and contentment with one's condition which is called happiness, inspire pride, and often presumption, if there is not a good will to correct the influence of these on the mind, and with this also to rectify the whole principle of acting and adapt it to its end. The sight of a being who is not adorned with a single feature of a pure and good will, enjoying unbroken prosperity, can never give pleasure to an impartial rational spectator. Thus a good will appears to constitute the indispensable condition even of being worthy of happiness.

Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 2022

This article questions the central role of the good will in the moral theory of Immanuel Kant. The good will, according to Kant, is the only thing that is good in itself, and therefore good without limitation or qualification. This is an objectionable claim in support of a controversial position. The problem is not just that the good will is not the only thing that is good in itself, which indeed it is not, but more importantly, that the good will is not so much a thing that is good in itself as it is the good kind of a thing that is otherwise neither good nor bad in itself. The goodness of a good will is no more intrinsic than the goodness of a good act. A good will, whatever else it may be, is a will that is good, much like how a good act is an act that is good, neither of which is good for any reason other than the goodness predicated of the corresponding subject. This article thus challenges Kant’s position on ontological grounds. It questions the validity of claiming intrinsic goodness for a complex construct whose goodness is, in fact, extrinsic to its substance.

2018

Introduction Kant"s Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals was published in 1785. It is in fact a preliminary section of his philosophy, directed to the discovery of the supreme principle of morality. The Critique of Practical Reason was published in 1788. This is a full-scale examination of the practical activity of reason. Taken together with the Groundwork, it represents the most abstract side of Kant"s ethics. Kant"s Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone was published in 1793. The relevant sections of this contain an account of the evil principle in man and a discussion of the relations between morality, religion and theology. The Metaphysic of Morals was published in 1797. This is a systematic working-out in their application to human beings of the rational principles of morality laid down in the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason. This paper mainly focuses on Kant"s primary ethical principles as laid down in Groundwork. In Groundwork Kant argues that every person is worthy of respect as a rational being, capable of reason and capable of acting and choosing freely. Kant does not mean that we always succeed in acting rationally. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don"t. He means that we have the capacity for reason and for freedom and that capacity is common to human beings as such. When reason governs our will, we are not driven by the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Our capacity for reason makes us distinctive and sets us apart from mere animal existence. It makes us more than mere creatures of appetite. Discussion According to Kant, the moral worth of an action consists not in the consequences that flow from it, but the intention from which the act is done. What matters is the motive. What matters is doing the right thing because it is right not for some ulterior motive. Kant writes, "A good will is not good because of what it affects or accomplishes.... Even if... the power is completely lacking in power to carry out its intentions; if by its utmost effort it still accomplishes nothing... even then it would still shine like a jewel for its own sake as something which has its full value in itself"(Sandal 111).

Kant's moral theory is distinctive in being concerned with the notion of unconditional practical authority. Because of this, his theory is distinctly non-teleological in not being grounded in something that is already recognised to be desired or worth wanting, but rather on the merely formal representation of an unconditionally binding law. This does not preclude, this thesis argues, that material value that we acknowledge through our capacity to feel (under the headings of 'pleasure' and 'pain') something as being intrinsically desirable or undesirable. If we acknowledge the different levels of motivation at play, when we talk about eating from the merely formal representation of duty and material motives concerning pleasures and pains - in one word happiness - we will be left with a Kantian position that is not vulnerable to the common charges of empty formalism, nor the charge of anthropocentrism, that limits the scope of duty to free and rational creatures rather than to all creatures, for whom things can go well or badly.

Con-textos Kantianos: International Journal of Philosophy, 2018

A new book by Jeffrey Edwards Associate Professor of Philosophy, Stony Brook University (State University of New York) entitled Autonomy, in Moral Worth, and Right. Kant on Obligatory Ends, Respect for Law, and Original Acquisition has been published this year in the excellent Kantstudien-Ergänzungshefte series. The book incorporates some published materials from Edwards’ previous articles and anthology chapters but, at the same time, it makes a coherent unity aimed at investigation of the problems related to Kant’s practical philosophy and its relation to the history of modern ethics. The analysis of Kant’s last major work on ethics, Metaphysics of Morals of 1797, which forms the basis of that research, allows Edwards to unveil new implications and consequences of Kant’s theory of practical reason’s obligatory ends and his juridical theories of right and property. The book has got a clear structure of contents and is divided into four main parts: each one has got detailed divisions...

Interest in Kantian ethics is flourishing. The past twenty years have provided a flood of books and articles explaining how Kant's ethics is more interesting and promising than its detractors have realised. Despite their disagreements on detail, Rawls, Hill, O'Neill, Herman, Korsgaard, and their many followers, are part of a real revival of interest in Kantian ethics. Kant's Ethical Thought, by Allen Wood, has both incorporated and extended many of the distinctive insights that fuel this revival. The influence of Korsgaard is perhaps the strongest here. Wood, however, goes significantly further than other interpreters in his emphasis on the centrality of Kant's conception of humanity as an end in itself and the practical importance of the formula of autonomy and the realm of ends in the derivation of duties. Unlike Korsgaard and others, he emphasises the inadequacy of Kantian universalisability procedures. Wood, however, has contempt for critics who have hastily rejected Kant's ethical theory because of the inadequacy of the formula of universalisability. Wood argues that we only discover the full promise of Kantian ethics when we move beyond the formal principle of morality and focus on Kant's conceptions of human dignity, of autonomy as the source of normativity, and of a harmonious human community. Although Kant's conception of the dignity of humanity has received a good deal of recent attention, Wood has provided an exceedingly careful and detailed reconstruction of Kant's argument. The first half of Kant's Ethical Thought goes over every argument of the first two sections of Kant's Groundwork and seems to consider every possible objection. The result is very slow going. Although I am not sure how many people will work their way through this thicket of arguments, this first part of the book is careful, thorough, and valuable. The conclusion of these arguments is that Kant's ethics is based squarely on the absolute and unconditional value we must find in humanity and thus on the equal dignity of all persons. Wood also concludes that it is only in the idea of the realm of ends that we truly see what the formula of humanity requires and that it is only by willing as we would in a realm of ends that our autonomy is fully realised. Like Kant's critics, Wood argues that we cannot construct an adequate universalisability test without first specifying the morally relevant features of maxims (p. 105). Unlike most of Kant's critics, however, Wood considers (and rejects) the more sophisticated recent attempts to salvage the universalisability procedure. Furthermore, he shows that the concept of obligation requires a more substantive determining ground for the will than a universalisability test of maxims, alone, can provide. The requirements of morality must be based on a substantive value that moral agents must acknowledge to be an objective end. Only such an end could provide the necessary motivational basis for a categorical imperative (p. 114). On Wood's interpretation, Kant's controversial claim that a good will is motivated by duty and that actions motivated by sympathetic feelings alone lack moral worth is much more plausible. Morally good conduct expresses the value or dignity of both ourselves and the equal worth and dignity of other persons. Beneficent actions, motivated by duty, express our respect for the humanity of another person. So, when Kant argues that beneficence motivated by duty, and not inclination, has moral worth and reflects a good will, his point is that principled beneficence express a deeper concern and caring about others. The core of the moral motive is not formal duty but a recognition of the value and importance of both oneself and others. If I