Abstract

Offers a “practical” interpretation of Kant's famous thesis that only a good will is unconditionally good. Rather than providing a criterion for praise and blame, this thesis affirms the moral priority of a will to do what is right, no matter what it costs in terms of conditional goods. So understood, the thesis is not subject to many objections that critics have raised, for example, that it prescribes self‐righteous preoccupation with one's moral purity.