Good Will In Kant's Categorial Imperitive

What Kant is attempting to explain is if all the commonly accepted “good” things like health, wealth and friendship are really good, he asks under what conditions do these qualify as good things. He explains that all good things are not good under all circumstances. Nothing can be called good in this world with out qualification except Good Will which Kant says is the effort of rational beings to do what they ought to do rather then to act in self-interest. To better understand good will, when we act, whether or not we attain the outcome that we intended with our actions is beyond our physical and mental control, so the morality of our actions does not depend on the outcome, it depends on the will behind the action. The morality of someone’s action, therefore should be determined by the incentive behind it. In …show more content…
Your Will is a capacity to determining oneself to action. And we can do this in accordance with laws. Not laws of the state or laws of gravity, we can give yourself Laws or rules to abide by that can be applied universally or objectively to all beings of a certain sort (Rational Beings). What serves the Will as a subjective ground of its self determination is an end, one example I can use here is making my wife happy by cooking her dinner which is the action and the goal of the action is the end. If it is given by reason alone it must be equally valid for all rational beings. So if its not just a matter of my subjective preferences or my personal history, its given by reason alone. My example is not given by reason alone, if you say while I’m in a marriage I ought too to insure that my spouse be happy in that relationship with me, that is given by reason alone. He also talks about objective end which are valid for every rational