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An Analysis of the Will In the Context of Kant's Metaphysics of Morals and Sartre's

Existentialism is a Humanism

The good will, for Kant, is an absolute, a thing-in-itself. Man must have many wills for there to

exist this good will, or there must exist some agent which produces a good will to act through

man. If the latter is true, then the man cannot be responsible for his actions, and cannot thus be

truly good. Should man have multiple wills we should be unable to distinguish them clearly, and

all of their effects, though definitive, would lack attribution to the entire man, for it was so willed

by one of many. Therefore, let us say that man possesses a single will endowed with a particular

quality, or disposition. The will must possess this quality in itself, which is fixed or mutable, or it

must come to possess this quality by its work in the world. The will, being of a fixed disposition,

would yield individuals who may attempt to act in only a single manner for the space of their

existence; the will, being mutable in disposition, would fluctuate non-deterministically by some

impetus supplied for the cause of mutation. The will, determined by its effects, must be subject

to the lack of distinction between the quality of its effects and its own quality: the will is good

because the effects are good; the effects are good because the will is good. The will and its work

in the world do not always parallel in quality. As an individual may try and control those things

around oneself, one’s will is not absolute. If the effects of the will are good, they are so in

themselves; if the will is good, it is so in itself.

The will whose quality is mutable demonstrates itself in those particulars, those environs,

which may persuade and dissuade the individual. Supposing that the will is not good in itself, or

qualitative in some other fixed respect, it must be a will that engenders quality by some alienable

influence, otherwise the will is possessive of many variant qualities which it may only define at

singular moments of temporality. The will which receives its disposition from environs, or other
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external forces, cannot be held responsible for those effects it produces. The responsibility for

effects of the will can only be justified whence that will acts in itself of its own quality. Such a

will that possesses a mutable quality in itself, a capacity for no fixed disposition, must also lack

such a responsibility. Although there exist no external forces or environs to engender such a

quality, which may thereby bear the responsibility, the nature of such a will itself is at fault for

imbuing mutable qualities at temporal events. As for the will of immutable quality, it too has no

responsibility in respect to those effects it produces. There is no freedom for such a will; its

effects are deterministic. The will which may choose and gain such quality from its effects as

“good” presents a mode of freedom. For freedom to exist, the will must exist in itself as the

effect of no other agent. The quality of such a will, which defines that will and its effects, must

not be dependent on any other agent. Were we to say that any quality possessed by a will is

received outside that will, freedom becomes an impossibility. Should such a quality exist of that

will by what it does or what it is, then freedom becomes a possibility. The will which possesses a

good quality of itself, by existence alone, yet by the altering of that existence in itself by no

external effect, shall be called free. It is a moot freedom, a masturbatory purgation of the will to

be that which is good. It is the exercise of an intellectual who has forgotten one’s external reality:

one’s being is solely a bleak internalization and phantom. For the individual who exercises one’s

will upon the external, there may be an inner lacking of freedom to reinforce the quality of one’s

will internally. Though the means may have achieved the desired quality, those powers of the

will to internalize and externalize, to exist and to act, may differ considerably in magnitude. The

internalization of the will is its existence, in so far as the individual becomes the vehicle of the

will: such is the existence of anything which acts. It controls the function which it employs, and
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to what it serves such a function. The quality of the will to then be determined is what actions it

performs, and what existence it assumes.

The effects of the will, possessed of any quality, are not direct effects. It is the physical

instrument of individuals, regardless of those intelligible faculties, which forms the effect. Thus

those effects of the will are indirect effects, and it must demand indirect responsibility for them.

When the existence of the will, however, is thorough and defined, such indirect effects become

direct. Although it is the physical embodiment which affects, the will is tangible by grace of its

internalization. The quality which it has formed of itself, becomes the quality with which it acts.

By the internalization of the will are good acts done, and those responsibilities that would go

justified to the physical, now are justified to the will itself. This is freedom.

The good is what one chooses; there does not exist an objective good. By what one does,

one selects their good. Such a good is not universal, for individuals do not act of one will. Thus

the will forms its conception of good by its existence, in whatever function it serves and the

object of that function. Should the will exist that itself functions to drive a car, and that this

function proceeds by the object of passengers who pay fare, then so is the will of a taxi driver.

His resulting actions, having internalized the will, should reflect such moral good or bad by their

execution; whence the failure of such actions becomes manifest, that effect can be qualified as

“bad.” The objective existence of such entities, however, is fallacy. Kant’s call to universality

does not work among the multitude. If one acted such that all should act, we would be one will.

Should we be one will, no individual would be truly free. The legion itself would lack freedom

as well, in that no other good could exist but that which it chooses. Freedom can only exist in the

presence of non-determinism, and the legion is a deterministic entity free of competition for the
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definition of the good. Whatsoever it wills becomes objective as the only good existent. Without

other conceptions of good, the will becomes qualitively absolute. This is not freedom.