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Essays and Treatises on Moral, Political, and Various Philosophical Subjects
Essays and Treatises on Moral Political and Various Philosophical Subjects Author:Immanuel Kant General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1798 Original Publisher: s.n. Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select fro... more »m more than a million books for free. Excerpt: : GROUNDWORK OF THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. SECTION I. TRANSITION FROM THE COMMON MORAL COGNITION OF REASON TO THE PHILOSOPHICAL. There is nothing in the world, nay, generally speaking, even out of it, poisible to be conceived, which can, without limitation, he held good, but a Good Will. Understanding, wit, judgement, and however the talents of the mind may be named, or courage, resolution, and perseverance in the design, as properties'of the temperament, are no doubt good, in many views, and worthy of being wished for; but they may become bad too and pernicious in the highest degree, when the will, which is to make use of these gifts of nature, and whose peculiar quality is on that account denominated character, is not good. In the very same manner are circumstanced stanced the gifts, of fortune. Power, opulence, honour, even health and the whole wellbeing and contentment with one's situation , under the name of felicity, give courage and by this frequently superciliousnefs also, where there does not exist a good will, which . corrects and renders universally conformable- to-end their influence on the mind, and with this at the same time the whole principle of action; not to mention, that a reasonable impartial spectator, in viewing an uninterrupted prosperity of a being, whom no stroke of a pure and good will ornaments, can never feel a complacency; and thus the good will seems to constitute the indispensable condition of the worthinefs even, to be happy. Some properties are even favourable to this good will itself and can lighten its work very much, but have, notwi...« less