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Kant regarded the good will as a single moral principle that freely chooses to use the other virtues for genuinely moral ends. [6] For Kant, a good will has a broader conception than a will that acts from duty. A will that acts from duty alone is distinguishable as a will that overcomes hindrances in order to keep the moral law.
Kant thinks that uncontroversial premises from our shared common-sense morality, and analysis of common sense concepts such as ‘the good’, ‘duty’, and ‘moral worth’, will yield the supreme principle of morality (i.e., the categorical imperative). Kant's discussion in section one can be roughly divided into four parts: the good will;
In The Only Possible Argument, Kant questions both the ontological argument for God (as proposed by Saint Anselm) and the argument from design. Kant argues that the internal possibility of all things presupposes some existence: [1] Accordingly, there must be something whose nonexistence would cancel all internal possibility whatsoever.
Kant derived a prohibition against cruelty to animals by arguing that such cruelty is a violation of a duty in relation to oneself. According to Kant, man has the imperfect duty to strengthen the feeling of compassion, since this feeling promotes morality in relation to other human beings.
Kant's ethics focus, then, only on the maxim that underlies actions, and judges these to be good or bad solely on how they conform to reason. Kant showed that many of our common sense views of what is good or bad conform to his system, but denied that any action performed for reasons other than rational actions can be good (saving someone who ...
The Doctrine of Virtue develops Kant's ethical theory, which he had already laid the foundation in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). Kant particularly emphasizes treating humanity as an end in itself. The duties are analytically treated by Kant, who distinguishes duties towards ourselves from duties towards others.
Kant argued that the goal of humanity is to achieve perfect happiness and virtue (the summum bonum) and believed that an afterlife must be assumed to exist in order for this to be possible, and that God must be assumed to exist to provide this. Rather than aiming to prove the existence of God, however, Kant was simply attempting to demonstrate ...
Kant's position is that moral goodness, which consists in following the rule of the categorical imperative, is more fundamental to ethics than good consequences, and that it is the right motivations—an obligation to duty—which is criterial for defining a person as good. Hence, Kant is a deontologist, in the terminology of contemporary ...