Immanuel Kant's Moral Worth

around elsewhere in order to see what effects may be bound up with it for me (Kant 70).

In this quote, Immanuel Kant addresses whether an action’s moral worth, such as telling the truth, is able to be considered good no matter the circumstances. Kant already established to have moral worth an action must be done from duty, have its moral worth from the maxim, or the intention, that a person wills in doing it, and to be done in reverence of the law (Kant 66-68). Kant sees telling the truth for the sake of duty as having moral worth as it is already in line with what he believes gives an action moral worth. While telling the truth out of fear of a lie’s consequences may give the same result but have different moral undertones. For a person to tell the truth because they feel the backlash of people discovering they had lied, and then lose their credibility, makes this an action done out of fear and not duty (Kant 70). Since in order to lie in order to avoid undesirable outcomes a person looks at outside factors and is driven by fear it does not follow Kant’s guidelines and does

In the case of lying, in order for the lie done out of fear of consequences to be of moral worth, the maxim would have to specify that in certain circumstances it is ok to lie. Since this is situation dependent it cannot be universal and because of this it cannot work within Kant’s philosophy (Kant 70-71). Kant believed a good will is good in itself and not due to the outcome or its effects (Kant 62). In comparing the two situations of telling the truth, one done for the sake of duty is done in good will and the other for fear is done for its outcome. The point of his work is to establish the groundwork and guidelines to a person’s actions and in this quote, he shows that in order for the maxim to be universal there must be not stipulations to it, even if the result is the