Good Will is a term referring to making proper and correct decisions in reference to social skills related to other people one encounters. A will in psychology and philosophy is a term referring to the decision making process of the mind^[1]. A will is good if it acts from duty (moral motives). An example of good will would be of a cashier who gives the correct change from a sense of fairness, and not from fear of getting caught by the store manager. A person's decision making process acting to conform just with procedure to "flex their muscles" is not acting out of goodness. Here an example would be a cashier that won't take the next person in line just because they have 11 items when the line is marked "10 items or less"; especially when it was unintentional on the part of the customer. This is not making good decisions on the part of fairness and is not good will. Being unintentional, it would make more sense on the part of business goodwill to process this customer like any other customer. This is referred to as good sense (practical judgement) or just plain common sense. Good Will is to always assume good faith on the part of the other person's intentions. Good Will is based on the concept of the Golden Rule. Duty is a term loosely appliedDuty to any action (or course of action) whichDutyDuty is regarded as morally incumbent, apart from personal likes and dislikes or any external compulsion. ... Look up Procedure in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For the philosophical concept of goodness see Goodness and value theory. ... GOodwill is really accouting term Goodwill is a concept used to refer to an individual or a businesss ability to exert influence within a community, club, market or another type of group, without having to resort to the use of an asset (such as money or property), either directly... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The ethic of reciprocity or The Golden Rule is a fundamental moral principle found in virtually all major religions and cultures, which simply means It is arguably the most essential basis for the modern concept of human rights. ...

A good way to show Good Will is to give generous credit to other people and not to take much credit on a project yourself, even if you did most of the work. This will retain their Good Will and get them to back you on your next project. Good will is being lavish in distributing recognition to other people, especially those that helped you considerably.

Famous Orators

Harriet Beecher Stowe is known to have quoted, "Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be."

Albert Einstein once said this that is related to good will, "It is high time that the idea of success be replaced by the idea of service."

Epictetus is quoted in his Encheridion I of saying, "There are things which are within our power .... opinion, aim, desire, and aversion."

There are three things which inspire confidence in the orator's own character that induce us to believe a thing apart from the proof if it^[2]

Good Sense

Good Moral Character

Good Will

Immanuel Kant tries to uncover the principles behind common sense morality as it relates to Good Will. He observes that only a Good Will is good without qualification (always good). A Good Will is good in itself, not just for what it produces. In his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals ^[3] he opens with: Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was a white American abolitionist and novelist, whose Uncle Toms Cabin (1852) attacked the cruelty of slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential, even in Britain. ... Albert Einstein ( ) (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass-energy equivalence, . He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the... Epictetus (c. ... Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher from Königsberg in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). ...

"There is no possibility of thinking of anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be regarded as good without qualification, except a Good Will. Intelligence, wit, judgment, and whatever talents of the mind one might want to name are doubtless in many respects good and desirable, as are such qualities of temperament as courage, resolution, perseverance. But they can also become extremely bad and harmful if the will, which is to make use of these gifts of nature is not good. Reason's goal isn't to produce happiness (it's a poor means to this end), but to produce a will that's good in itself. Happiness, the satisfaction of all our desires, is too indeterminate to be a workable guide. Good Will isn't the sole and complete good, but it's the highest good and the condition of the worthiness to be happy. The complete good is happiness combined with Good Will."

References

1. ^ New Standard Encyclopedia, 1992 by Standard Educational Corporation, Chicago, Illinois; page W-212
2. ^ Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1377^b21
3. ^ Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant