The 'Good Will'
It is clear that everyone, even the most ill-omened and ill-intentioned of people likes to maintain that they are full of good will, though that they be expressed as good will towards their own people. Dictators always seem to love children and dogs while planning mass arrests or an invasion. it seems human beings feel an impulse to pretend to be full of good will and may actually believe that we are. Perhaps they do feel this kind of benevolence. They just fail to bring it into their lives.
We might look at things a slightly different way. Imagine a person who always responds to things as the impulse of the moment prompts him. In the dark, he jumps when someone touches him. He sees an ice cream or a woman - or a man, I suppose - and must have one or two. He has assets worth millions but wants more. You can think of more examples yourselves I'm sure. The thing is that there is nothing to unify this person's life other than the succession of emotional prompts and desires, and that is no unity at all. Yet often people discover that they can give their lives a sense of direction and purpose by following some sort of ideology - fascism, communism, militarism, material success or Don Juanism. His life has a kind of spurious unity, but somehow not a unity that we would think worthy of honour or respect. A kind of desperation seems to overcome people of this kind, at least sometimes - and they seem to be driven to continue acquiring more money, sexual conquests, power or success. Their successes seem to be hollow even to themselves, like breaking into an empty room. It is strange that we on the more modest side of this fence seem to be fascinated by stories of such overmastering passions. This may not be what Kant says, but something of the kind may be not too far an inference.
Kant's final claim, made almost incidentally, is that without a good will one cannot hope even be worthy of being happy. In what sense does being a person of good will make us worthy of being happy? He seems to mean that this is the condition without which a person cannot be happy, but what kind of happiness is this? It must, I think, be a happiness that is built upon a life in right relationship to others and the world. If this is true, then happiness for Kant is not any variety of utilitarian satisfaction.
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| Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804 |
Nothing in
the world—or out of it!—can
possibly be conceived that could be called ‘good’ without qualification except a
GOOD WILL. Mental talents such
as intelligence, wit, and judgment, and temperaments such
as courage, resoluteness, and perseverance are doubtless in many ways good and desirable;
but they can become extremely bad and harmful if the person’s character
isn’t good—i.e. if the will that is to
make use of these gifts of nature isn’t good. Similarly with gifts of fortune.
Power, riches, honour, even health, and the over-all well-being and contentment
with one’s condition that we call ‘happiness’, create pride, often leading to arrogance,
if there isn’t a good will to correct their influence on the mind. . . . Not to
mention the fact that the sight of someone who shows no sign of a pure and good
will and yet enjoys uninterrupted prosperity will never give pleasure to an
impartial rational observer. So it seems that without a good will one can’t
even be worthy of being happy.
Comment and Questions:
What are we to make of this opening assertion - the only thing that can properly be called 'good' is a 'good will'? He appears to be drawing attention to something fundamental about a person - the necessity for a permanent disposition that underlies and controls our impulses or emotional urges or promptings or the employments of our native talents and abilities. You may have a talent for entertaining people or a winning way with words or a winsomeness that knocks them dead or fantastic abilities for making money that makes you top-of-the-pops at Goldman Sachs (Sacks of gold, man!), but these talents will seem less attractive or desirable if they are part of a personality that lacks a sense of an underlying commitment to what Kant expresses with the notion of enduring 'Good Will'. Without that you might be a funny or witty or sexy or successful person, but your abilities might be employed in a life that is perhaps anything but 'good'. There must be an underlying, a basic or fundamental commitment to 'the good'. Viewed in this light we might see Kant's notion of 'Good Will' not as something static but as an ongoing process that unifies personality and creates what we call character.
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| Expressions of 'Good Will'? |
It is clear that everyone, even the most ill-omened and ill-intentioned of people likes to maintain that they are full of good will, though that they be expressed as good will towards their own people. Dictators always seem to love children and dogs while planning mass arrests or an invasion. it seems human beings feel an impulse to pretend to be full of good will and may actually believe that we are. Perhaps they do feel this kind of benevolence. They just fail to bring it into their lives.
We might look at things a slightly different way. Imagine a person who always responds to things as the impulse of the moment prompts him. In the dark, he jumps when someone touches him. He sees an ice cream or a woman - or a man, I suppose - and must have one or two. He has assets worth millions but wants more. You can think of more examples yourselves I'm sure. The thing is that there is nothing to unify this person's life other than the succession of emotional prompts and desires, and that is no unity at all. Yet often people discover that they can give their lives a sense of direction and purpose by following some sort of ideology - fascism, communism, militarism, material success or Don Juanism. His life has a kind of spurious unity, but somehow not a unity that we would think worthy of honour or respect. A kind of desperation seems to overcome people of this kind, at least sometimes - and they seem to be driven to continue acquiring more money, sexual conquests, power or success. Their successes seem to be hollow even to themselves, like breaking into an empty room. It is strange that we on the more modest side of this fence seem to be fascinated by stories of such overmastering passions. This may not be what Kant says, but something of the kind may be not too far an inference.
Kant's final claim, made almost incidentally, is that without a good will one cannot hope even be worthy of being happy. In what sense does being a person of good will make us worthy of being happy? He seems to mean that this is the condition without which a person cannot be happy, but what kind of happiness is this? It must, I think, be a happiness that is built upon a life in right relationship to others and the world. If this is true, then happiness for Kant is not any variety of utilitarian satisfaction.
| ... and in the original German |
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