Immanuel Kant was a man of many ideals. He had his own ideas and thoughts on what perfect happiness and good will actually meant. As stated in my ethics book, "To be genuinely worthy, Kant argues, one must not just act in accordance with duty; one must also act for duty's sake." Basically, I feel what Kant is trying to present to his readers, is that to have happiness one must be .
self-motivated to better his/her environment not for personal benefit, but for the others that you may affect in your actions. .
Immanuel Kant believed that to have morals one must act on one's internal duty to always do the right thing. Not because benefits are reaped from the action at hand, but because it is just the correct and proper thing to do. Acting on an internal duty because rewards are being received is not Kant's definition of moral duties. He feels only true moral duties can be acted upon if its selfish acts that inflicted them. The idea of moral worth focuses directly on our motivation behind our actions.
Kant also believes that it is morally wrong to give wrong statements to a person, or in other words, it is wrong to lie. .
Moral duty prevents us from lying. He believes that the only way to be moral is to tell the truth all the time no matter who may get hurt in the long run. Even when personal happiness is at stake, in morality, you can never lie.
So in conclusion, Kant is stating that to be truly moral and to have a happy life, you must live your life unselfishly and do whatever you can to make the world a better place. You need to do things that others are going to benefit from even if you personally do not. So in Kant's theory, to be truly happy you cannot be heteronomus, and there is nothing better in the world than having a good will to act in accord with our good will.
