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
6 - An Alternative Proof of the Universal Propensity to Evil
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
I want to address a vexed question in this essay: does Kant really need a transcendental deduction to justify his claim “man is evil by nature”? Transcendental deductions, Kant is the first to admit it, are notoriously difficult. In the case of the Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, whose transcendental argument (if there is one) must be assembled through careful detective work, the difficulty is clearly compounded. I take up the gauntlet here because much of the current debate on this question is fueled, I suspect, by an insufficient grasp of the systematic character of Kant's doctrine of radical evil. Triggered by Kant's own lack of expository clarity at crucial passages, interpreters have tended to conflate the different notions of an “evil disposition” (böse Gesinnung) and a “propensity to evil” (Hang zum Bösen). A reader of the acuity of Henry E. Allison, for instance, says:
[T]he distinctive features of the Kantian conception of Gesinnung are that it is acquired, although not in time, and that it consists in the fundamental or controlling maxim, which determines the orientation of one's Willkür as a moral being. Given this, we can now see that this Gesinnung is precisely what Kant means by a moral propensity.
But surely this cannot be Kant's considered view. For he cannot possibly mean that the individual's choice of Gesinnung is equivalent to the species's choice of propensity. Otherwise, our personal wrongdoing would be explicated (and exculpated) by sheer membership in humanity.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Kant's Anatomy of Evil , pp. 116 - 143Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
- 30
- Cited by