Doing the Right Thing for the Wrong Reasons: A Student Essay That Puts Intentions on Trial

Start with a shopkeeper who never cheats anyone. Prices are fair, change is exact, nobody gets shorted. Then learn why: not from honesty, but because a reputation for honesty is good for business. Has he done something good? That old puzzle sits at the centre of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, the question Mount Holyoke student Chiara Hodge took to an international essay prize this autumn.

Hodge, class of 2029 and a philosophy and film, media and theater double major, was shortlisted in the philosophy category of the John Locke Institute’s 2026 Global Essay Prize for her response to the question, “Is it ever wrong to do the right thing for the wrong reasons?” Mount Holyoke reported on 14 October 2026 (Mount Holyoke College). Information verified through 27 October 2026.

Her answer, as the college summarised it, was yes — an action with a positive outcome can be morally wrong if the intention behind it is wrong.

Kant, moral worth and intentions

Hodge built that argument through Immanuel Kant, the college said. For Kant, the reasons behind a decision are essential to understanding its moral value. An act that happens to line up with duty, but is done for self-interest, lacks the moral worth of the same act done because it is right. The shopkeeper is Kant’s own style of test case: fair dealing done only to protect profit is prudent. It is not, on this account, moral in the full sense.

That distinction — between an act being right and an act having moral worth — is where most of the argument lives. Kant is not mainly asking whether customers were treated fairly. They were. He is asking what kind of will produced the fairness, and whether that will would stay fair if profit pointed the other way.

Hodge did not leave the opposing view out. Mount Holyoke noted she also considered consequentialism, which evaluates actions according to their outcomes. On that view, the shopkeeper’s customers lose nothing, the fair price is paid, and it can seem odd to condemn an act because of a private motive nobody was harmed by.

She also, the college reported, tested her own argument: she “challenged herself to consider opposing viewpoints and identify potential weaknesses in her reasoning.” That habit matters more than it sounds. A one-sided Kant essay is easy to write. A good one has to survive the donor who gives for a tax break, the volunteer who loves the praise, the colleague who tells the truth only when lying looks risky.

The John Locke Institute Global Essay Prize philosophy field

Scale is part of the story. The John Locke Institute competition drew 100,227 entries from 183 countries in 2026, with shortlisting in the top 17.5% of entrants, according to LVS Ascot’s report on its own shortlisted pupil (LVS Ascot). Haileybury, reporting two shortlisted students, said entries are judged by senior academics from universities including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton and Stanford (Haileybury).

Shortlisted entrants were invited to the Institute’s academic conference and awards ceremony in London in October, Mount Holyoke said. Hodge had been before — first attending its conference and awards ceremony at age 14, also in philosophy, an experience she credits with influencing her decision to study the subject at college.

Her teachers get a share of the credit in her own telling. James Harold served as her academic referee, and Kyoungmin (Kay) Cho discussed the essay with her over the summer. Courses in introduction to philosophy, ethics, and philosophy and literature gave her the ground on moral responsibility, intention and consequence.

And she is candid about the hard part. “When I sit with a philosophical problem I often struggle to give my opinion in clear and organized words, though I may understand it perfectly inside my own head,” Hodge said, in Mount Holyoke’s account.

Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons: can a good action still fall short?

Here is where the question stops being a parlour game.

Think about mixed motives, which is to say think about real life. A company cuts emissions because the credits pay. A public figure apologises because the polling is dreadful. A friend helps you move house partly from love, partly because you helped last spring and the debt itches. Pure duty, unmixed with self-interest, affection or habit, is rare. If moral worth requires purity, moral worth will be rare too — and a consequentialist will ask whether rarity is a discovery about morality or a defect in the test.

Analysis: Hodge’s position, as summarised, is strongest as a claim about character and weakest if it is read as a claim that the act itself should be undone or condemned outright. The fair shopkeeper should keep charging fairly. The world is better for the act whatever the motive. But we learn something different about a person who would cheat the moment cheating paid, and philosophy is allowed to mark that difference even when the till balances.

That is probably why this question keeps being set for young writers. It forces a choice most adults dodge daily: do we judge the deed, the doer, or both, and in what order? Hodge chose intentions, argued it through Kant, let consequentialism push back, and got a trip to London and a room full of strangers eager to argue about it. “Being able to take part in the academic conference and awards ceremony was thrilling,” she said. On this question, the argument is the prize as much as any ranking that follows it.

Sources

1. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/news/news-stories/question-morality-when-intentions-matter
2. https://www.haileybury.com.au/news/haileybury-students-recognised-in-global-essay-competition
3. https://www.lvs.ascot.sch.uk/2026/07/21/lvs-ascot-pupil-shortlisted-in-global-essay-competition/
4. https://www.cosmic.nyc/blog/john-locke-philosophy-2026