![]() ![]() In everyday discourse we might speak of someone being a person of good will if they want to do good things. ![]() That said, Kant does not understand the expression “good will” in the everyday sense. The one thing that has intrinsic value, for Kant, is the autonomous good will of a The opening passage of Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork for a Metaphysic of Morals proclaims that “it is impossible to conceive of anything in the world, or indeed beyond it, that can be understood as good without qualification except for a good will.” This is a clear and elegant statement of the theory of value that serves as the basis for Kant’s ethical theory of respect for persons. Persons, conceived of as autonomous rational moral agents, are beings that have intrinsic moral worth and hence beings that deserve moral respect. But where the utilitarian takes happiness, conceived of as pleasure and the absence of pain to be what has intrinsic value, Kant takes the only thing to have moral worth for its own sake to be the capacity for good will we find in persons. ![]() Like Utilitarianism, Imannual Kant’s moral theory is grounded in a theory of intrinsic value. ![]()
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