Kant and the Origins of the Good Will

Kant and the Origins of the Good Will is an in-depth study of the development of Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy from its beginnings in the 1750s up to the mid-1780s. The book also examines how Kant's moral views intersect with aspects of his metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of religion.

The good will and the dignity of humanity are centralâbut often overlooked or controverted-elements of Kant's moral philosophy. In this volume, Patrick Kain systematically investigates the origins and emergence of Kant's moral philosophy, as well as the significance of the good will and the dignity of humanity within it. Starting with some of Kant's early published works, notes and drafts, and student notes from his lectures in a wide range of disciplines, the book examines Kant's thought over the course of several decades.

Kain's analysis of Kant begins with a careful historical and philosophical reconstruction of his conception of the divine will, which reflected, influenced, and informed his developing moral philosophy. Kant and the Origins of the Good Will then provides a detailed interpretation of the emergence of Kant's moral philosophy prior to the publication of the Groundwork (1785). This study of the place of the good will and the dignity of humanity in Kant's thought sheds new light on the origins and content of Kant's published works on moral philosophy in the 1780s.

Patrick Kain, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Purdue University

Patrick Kain is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University and a founding faculty fellow in the Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts Program. His primary teaching responsibilities and scholarly interests are in ethics, the history of modern philosophy, and transformative texts. He received his PhD from the University of Notre Dame and joined the Purdue faculty in 2000. Kain was Humboldt Research Fellow at Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany in 2003 and the Alvin Plantinga Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame in 2018-19. Kain received the 2022 Henry Allison Senior Scholar Prize from the North American Kant Society.

Introduction1. Part I. A Divine Holy Will2. Divine freedom and the metaphysics of modalityDivine freedom and the expression of goodness3. Part II. Obligation, Feeling, and Ideas of GoodnessGoodness, human dignity, and obligation in the early development of Kant's ethics4. Part III. Obligation and the Idea of a Will Good in Itself-Kant's Lectures in the 1770s5. "Moral Kaehler": Worth as a basis and a motive of obligation6. The reality of goodness in "Metaphysics L1"Part IV. The Idea of Humanity and the Autonomy of the Good Will (the Early and Mid-1780s)7. The Critique of Pure Reason and the idea of humanity8. The principle of the good will and the science of the good9. Preparing the groundwork-an end in itself and a law to itselfAn invitation: Seeing the good in the Groundwork