"Kant thinks that the ground and source of all goodness (of the moral kind) lies in the will, and that a 'good will' is one that is determined by the moral law, which is what reason demands of the will in forming its ends or objectives in action. So a good *action* is only good because it has been guided by a good will, one sensitive to the demands of reason (and these can be ferreted out by applying the categorical imperative as a test for whether or not a given proposed action satisfies those demands), which detects the moral law (under the right conditions). Yet it is the goodness of the *end* to which the will (and therefore the action) is directed that matters, and so, in fact, Kant would not say that intentions are more important than actions, but rather, that the latter are determined by the former, and only when the former are guided by a will that is itself determined by the moral law does action satisfy the requirements of the moral law and lead to the best (morally acceptable) results.
Now, Aristotle has a very different analysis of what constitutes the goodness associated with human life, one that depends on excellence in the realization of one's proper (and natural) function(s) (=those functions that are distinctive to you as the kind of creature you are). Here intentions matter, but what determines whether an action is good is whether it involves the realization of excellence in one's functioning. This amounts to a kind of health or well-being that the good person achieves, and their intentions matter less than the results of their actions."
-Excerpted from an e-mail from instructor Jason Potter, University of Colorado at Boulder
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