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Metaphysics, Philosophy: Rousseau on the Problem of Evil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2009

Andrews Reath
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
Barbara Herman
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Christine M. Korsgaard
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

The desire to become the “Newton of the mind” was an understandable eighteenth-century aspiration. It may be less understandable that Kant awarded the honor to the philosopher whose writings seem closest to literature, and even more surprising that he does so because of Rousseau's response to a problem that seems closest to theology.

Newton was the first to see order and regularity combined with great simplicity, where disorder and ill-matched variety had reigned before. Since then comets have been moving in geometric orbits. Rousseau was the first to discover in the variety of shapes that men assume the deeply concealed nature of man and to observe the hidden law that justifies Providence. Before them, the objections of Alfonso and the Manicheans were valid. After Newton and Rousseau, God is justified, and Pope's thesis is henceforth true.

The present essay seeks to understand just what Kant meant in this unpublished note. Initial study of Rousseau's writings on the subject will raise more questions than it answers. For where Rousseau seems to be addressing the traditional problem of evil, he is conventional, even reactionary; where his work is interesting, and revolutionary, he seems to be addressing different questions altogether. Thus it may be unsurprising that this extraordinary note is seldom quoted in full, and that requests to explain it rarely produce more than the apologetic suggestion that the remark is, after all, pre-Critical. In trying to appreciate Kant's claim, I examine Rousseau's discussion of the problem of evil and his role in transforming that problem in several directions.

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Reclaiming the History of Ethics
Essays for John Rawls
, pp. 140 - 169
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

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