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According to Kant, moral philosophy should emphasise the need for our actions themselves to be good in themselves, rather than as a means to an end, and that they may go counter to our natural inclinations. Since we are rational beings, we have the ability to judge and come to a conclusion on what course of action is right. Sometimes, the course of action we take goes against our inclinations. Kant says that shows true autonomy of action since we are no longer slaves to our desires and inclinations should we choose to ignore them. His premise for saying that we are slaves to our inclinations is that we do not choose our preferences to begin with, and so, satisfying those desires blindly, and at all (,or most) times would imply that we are controlled by those desires and are not totally free, autonomous beings.
This is why, he says that, (p 159) for an action to have moral worth, it not only has to 'conform to the moral law- it must also be done for the sake of that law.' Our actions, should they be based on our inclinations rather than our moral reasoning, will not have moral worth. When kind people give alms to a beggar because they feel sympathy, they are doing this seemingly moral act out of sympathy. This would be an emotional reason, not a moral one. Similarly, should they do this because alms-giving has been instilled into them as a right, moral act, by their parents, and/or through their religious beliefs, and not by rational moral thought; Kant says that their actions do not have moral worth since the primary motivator is not an act of duty. An act of duty is one in which the person doing it is doing it chiefly because it is the right thing to do. It does not have to be the only motivation for the act, but it has to be the primary one.
This leads to the question of how we decide the right action from the wrong action. Kant says that we do so by referring to the categorical imperative. Since, according to Kant, all actions are ends in...