Kant on Autonomy, Duty, and the Good Will

The Groundwork opens with one of the most quoted sentences in the history of moral philosophy: "It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even beyond it, that could be considered good without qualification, except a good will" (Ak 4:393). Kant argues that ordinarily prized goods — intelligence, wit, courage, wealth, even happiness itself — are good only conditionally, since each can be turned to bad ends by a person of bad character; a courageous criminal, for Kant, is more dangerous, not more admirable, for his courage. Only the good will, understood as a will that acts from duty rather than merely in conformity with it, retains unconditional value regardless of the external success or failure of its undertakings, so that, in Kant's deliberately provocative formulation, a good will would still "shine like a jewel for itself" even if, through misfortune, it achieved nothing at all.