To be found in Kant's Theory of Ethics, trans. by Abbott, pp. 10, 16.]
So far does Kant carry this worship of the idea of goodness that he
separates it from the several virtues that make up goodness in the
concrete and bows down before the resulting bare abstraction Good
Will, the will to do good. This leads him to a curiously dehumanized
position. Prudential acts, he declares, are obviously good in their
consequences; they therefore deserve no praise; whatever one does
calculatingly, with view to future results, has no moral worth. And
on the other hand, whatever good acts one does instinctively, pushed
on by animal impulses, including love and sympathy, deserve no praise
and have no moral worth. It is only what one does from the single
motive of desiring to do the right that awakens Kant's enthusiasm.
"The preservation of one's own life, for instance, is a duty; but, as
every one has a natural inclination to which most men usually devote
to this object has no intrinsic value, nor the maxim from which they act
any moral import." [Footnote: The Metaphysic of Morality, sec. I.] What
shall we say to this?
(1) Kant's statements are a mere crystallization of an unanalyzed
feeling; their plausibility rests upon our ingrained enthusiasm for
goodness. But if that enthusiasm be challenged, how shall we justify
it? How do we know that good will is good, unless we can see WHY it
is good? Many other things appeal to our instincts as good; may not
this particular judgment be mistaken, or may not all these other things
be equally good with good will? Kant's Hebraic training is clearly
revealed in his exaltation of good will; it reflects the practical
Lebensweisheit we have learned from the Bible.
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