Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Kant's “Metaphysics of Permanent Rupture”: Radical Evil and the Unity of Reason
- 2 Kantian Moral Pessimism
- 3 Kant, the Bible, and the Recovery from Radical Evil
- 4 Kant's Moral Excluded Middle
- 5 Evil Everywhere: The Ordinariness of Kantian Radical Evil
- 6 An Alternative Proof of the Universal Propensity to Evil
- 7 Kant and the Intelligibility of Evil
- 8 Social Dimensions of Kant's Conception of Radical Evil
- 9 Kant, Radical Evil, and Crimes against Humanity
- 10 Unforgivable Sins? Revolution and Reconciliation in Kant
- Select bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Kant's “Metaphysics of Permanent Rupture”: Radical Evil and the Unity of Reason
- 2 Kantian Moral Pessimism
- 3 Kant, the Bible, and the Recovery from Radical Evil
- 4 Kant's Moral Excluded Middle
- 5 Evil Everywhere: The Ordinariness of Kantian Radical Evil
- 6 An Alternative Proof of the Universal Propensity to Evil
- 7 Kant and the Intelligibility of Evil
- 8 Social Dimensions of Kant's Conception of Radical Evil
- 9 Kant, Radical Evil, and Crimes against Humanity
- 10 Unforgivable Sins? Revolution and Reconciliation in Kant
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
Contemporary debates in moral philosophy have primarily been focused on meta-ethical questions about the justification of morality, disregarding the ease with which perfectly justified norms are displaced by non-moral considerations. Given the scope, magnitude, and inventiveness of human wrongdoing, this philosophical trend seems utterly misguided. The challenge does not lie so much in how to justify morality, but in understanding how perfectly justified judgments are so easily disregarded by self-serving calculations.
Kant's doctrine of radical evil has much to tell us about this. Against the widespread tendency to explain evil in terms of the pernicious power of natural inclinations, Kant believed that evil represented “an invisible enemy, one who hides behind reason and hence [is] all the more dangerous” (R 6: 57). The enemy is invisible, for “no matter how far back we direct our attention to our moral state, we find that this state is no longer res integra” (R 6: 58n.). And it is exceptionally dangerous, for the corruption in question is self-imposed: “genuine evil consists in our will not to resist the inclinations when they invite transgression” (ibid.). Since this type of volition rests on a maxim, and maxim formation in Kant always takes place under the constraints of the categorical imperative, evil hides at the heart of practical reason: it is the deliberate attempt to subordinate what we ought to do in favor of what pleases us.
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- Kant's Anatomy of Evil , pp. 1 - 12Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
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