Kant Political Leader :: essays research papers

Kant held that nothing was good in itself except good will. In other words, no maskion, in and of itself, was either wrong or right. tho the motive of the actor lent the action its morality. If a person acted turn pop out of a vested interest (because of a possible consequence) then the act was non-moralit had no moral implications whatsoever. But, if a person acted because she thought she was doing the right thing, then she was performing out of good will and the act was a moral act.In Kants view, actions have true moral worth only when they outflow from a recognition of a duty and a choice to offload it. For example, using Kantian logic, an advertiser who avoided untruthful advertising because he was hangdog of getting caught and fined would not necessarily be acting morally. However, if the advertiser recognised a duty to his constituents to tell the truth, and that is the reason he didnt lie, then the act would be a moral act.Kant defined good will as the uniquely human c apacity to act according to ones principles, not out of an expectation of potential consequences. In fact, Kant had learned through the writings of the Italian philosopher and royal counselor, Niccolo Machiavelli, that basing decisions solely on likely consequences could excuse any action, up to now the most abhorrent. In his famous treatise, The Prince, Machiavelli had proposed that any action taken by a monarch should be based on an assessment of the beat outcome for the monarch himself. Under this guideline (which is also known as egoism), actions such as murder could be excused if they are in the best interest of the person making the decision.Like other sense theorists, Kant believed that human beings were endowed with the ability to reason, and reasoning would logically lead to an ground of how to construct moral rules to live by. Rational beings would, then, logically abide by the rules they set for themselves. In this, he was in accord with the social contractarians. Rul es arrived at in this manner would also become morally obligatory, and Kant sawing machine liability (or duty) as the overriding determinant of morality. He believed that we would recognize our duty when we saw it because we could reason, and reason would lead us logically to recognition.For Kant, there were two explicit types of duties perfect duties and imperfect duties.