Kant Good Will Analysis

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Kant to focus less on theoretical obscurity and more upon practical issues and leads to the notion of good will which Kant explains at the outset of Section I in Groundwork: It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good will (Gr. 4:393) Good will includes several features: it is neither merely designed to make us happy, nor does it rely on the consequences of an act or unconditional good. While we may doubt the solidity of Kant’s theory as a way to support his definition of goodwill, for Kant’s practical philosophy, the real problem is how an agent can embrace goodwill. Kant explains that as phenomenal beings, we not only have inclinations…show more content…
Perhaps such absence is for some purpose. Considering that Kant’s initial concern is to clarify the problems of freedom rather than the particularities of the moral law, perhaps, given the synthesis of the three formulations in the second section of the Groundwork, Kant might consider it unnecessary to modify CI yet again. By the time of the Second Critique, he engages in a rather careful explication of the moral law in which he does not offer a clear definition of the moral law, since it appears that providing the theoretical ground for the moral law is…show more content…
But this is not the course Kant takes in the Metaphysics of Morals. The most basic aim of moral philosophy in the Second Critique and, and so also of the Groundwork, is, in Kant’s view, to ‘seek out’ the foundational principle of a ‘metaphysics of morals,’ which Kant understands as a system of a priori moral principles that apply the CI to human persons in all times and cultures. In this sense, if Kant’s mature writings are labeled empty formalism, his ethics would not offer us any practical guidance. Rather, Kant tests these moral concerns in practice and in doing so we discover that the charge of empty formalism does not withstand careful

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