Quotation
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“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.”
Immanuel Kant · Critical philosophy · Enlightenment · 1785
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the opening as a claim about unlimited goodness: talents, courage, even happiness can be put to bad use, and only a good will is good without qualification. A good will is good by its willing, not by what it achieves. A rival reading hears a contempt for consequences and for happiness as such, but he does not say effects never matter. He says they are not what makes the will good without limitation; The sentence opens the Groundwork, before the formulas of the categorical imperative are derived.
Did Immanuel Kant really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Mary Gregor's translation of the Groundwork, Academy edition volume 4, page 393, the opening claim. Talents and gifts can be bad without a good will. The German is his. This wording is a translation.
Where it comes from
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Ak. 4:393
Approximate date: 1785.
How to use it
A clever campaign in a by-election in Bristol can display every talent the opening lists, and still be the sort of cleverness he thinks is dangerous without a good will behind it. The test is not whether the campaign wins. It is whether the maxim of the winning would still be acceptable if the talents were stripped off; Success is not the unlimited good; Neither is the warm feeling of being on the right side.
A mindset reading
Unlimited is the word doing the work, and dropping it turns the sentence into a slur on every other good. He thinks happiness is what a finite being wants, and he thinks it is not good without limitation. A rival use treats the good will as a mood of sincerity that excuses a maxim one would not state in public; Sincerity is not the argument; The form of the maxim is.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is a good will, a will that acts from duty, whose goodness does not depend on its usefulness. The Groundwork's first section moves from this opening to the concept of duty and then to the first formula of the categorical imperative. Academy page 393 is the standard address. Gregor's English is the translation this library follows for the Groundwork; Consequences return, under control, when he discusses the kingdom of ends and later the doctrine of right.
- ethics
- virtue
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the opening as a claim about unlimited goodness: talents, courage, even happiness can be put to bad use, and only a good will is good without qualification. A good will is good by its willing, not by what it achieves. A rival reading hears a contempt for consequences and for happiness as such, but he does not say effects never matter. He says they are not what makes the will good without limitation; The sentence opens the Groundwork, before the formulas of the categorical imperative are derived.
Did Immanuel Kant really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Mary Gregor's translation of the Groundwork, Academy edition volume 4, page 393, the opening claim. Talents and gifts can be bad without a good will. The German is his. This wording is a translation.
Which work is it in?
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Ak. 4:393 Approximate date: 1785.