The Origins of the Good Will

Patrick Kain (Purdue University)

The lecture will take place online (via Webex) on Wednesday, 29 October 2025, from 18:00 – 19:30 CET. 

Please see below for the Webex-link and an abstract of the lecture. 

The talk is part of the lecture series Digital Kant-Lectures, organized by Digital Kant-Centre NRW, which takes place on the last Wednesday of each month via Webex. For the program of the series, please see here.

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Webex-Link: 

https://uni-siegen.webex.com/uni-siegen/j.php?MTID=mdc3b8b55999c3eeeb952a94c77ea2c87

Abstract: 

Interpreters have wrestled with, or ignored, the fact that Kant begins–and ends–the first and second section of the Groundwork (1785) with a focus on the good will. (G 4:393, 437) In this lecture, I will suggest that several clues to the significance of this fact can be found in Kant’s early work in moral philosophy. In his “Prize Essay,” Observations, lectures, and “Remarks” from the 1760s, Kant sketched a value-centric moral theory, focused on the kind of goodness that provides the necessity, validity, and motivation that could undergird obligation and necessitation. Engaging Hutcheson, Mendelssohn, and Rousseau, Kant argued that the goodness or perfection of the will is the object of moral feeling; the basis of the worth, honor, or dignity of humanity; and yields a criterion for moral action. While Kant’s pure ideas of practical reason will soon displace moral feeling, and while his account of autonomy, self-legislation and respect will emerge somewhat later, we might consider whether and how the good will, which was central to Kant’s early moral philosophy, may remain central to his later work.