Groundwork of The Metaphysic of Morals - Common Sense of Duty

Common Sense of Duty

Kant states that there is nothing "which can be regarded as good without qualification, except a good will." A good will is the moral compass that always seeks good: if an agent fails, it is not the fault of the good will but of the agent's ability to carry it out.

In the opening section, Kant explains what is commonly meant by moral obligations and duty. It is fairly common sense, he writes, not to consider moral an act done out of inclination for the self. A shopkeeper with honest prices does so foremost to be respected by his customers, not for the sake of honesty. He "deserves praise and encouragement, but not esteem." It is common knowledge that the people for whose good actions there is no reward are those who act most morally. Kant revises this in his declaration that they are the only people acting morally. We esteem a man who gives up his life because he gains nothing in doing so. "Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the law." Thus, to follow the moral law, the intrinsic sense of right and wrong, is our greatest obligation.

Read more about this topic:  Groundwork Of The Metaphysic Of Morals

Famous quotes containing the words sense of duty, common, sense and/or duty:

    ... social advance depends quite as much upon an increase in moral sensibility as it does upon a sense of duty ...
    Jane Addams (1860–1935)

    Governments which have a regard to the common interest are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms; but those which regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic, whereas a state is a community of freemen.
    Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)

    Man is not merely the sum of his masks. Behind the shifting face of personality is a hard nugget of self, a genetic gift.... The self is malleable but elastic, snapping back to its original shape like a rubber band. Mental illness is no myth, as some have claimed. It is a disturbance in our sense of possession of a stable inner self that survives its personae.
    Camille Paglia (b. 1947)

    [If not re-elected in 1864] then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.
    Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)