Kant’s Concept of Radical Evil

Ecclesiasticus 25:16

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In Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant discusses the concept of

radical evil. The German word “radikal” derives from the Latin word “rādīx,”

which means “root” (“Wurzel”), “origin” (“Ursprung”), and “source” (“Quelle”)

(Kluge 664). Therefore, when Kant explains the nature of radical evil, he also tries

to enquire into “the origin of moral evil” (Religion 35). Kant observes that “the

source of evil . . . can lie only in a rule made by the will for the use of its freedom,

that is, in a maxim” (17). In Critique of Practical Reason, Kant makes a similar

statement which echoes this observation. He writes that “the concept of good and

evil must not be determined before the moral law . . . but only . . . after it and by

means of it” (54). Therefore, in order to grasp the concept of evil, one has to

understand the struggle in “a pathologically affected” human will, namely, the

“conflict of maxims with the practical laws cognized by himself” (CPR 17).

Human beings, for Kant, are “finite rational beings” (CPR 23). This description

implies the inner conflict that a “creature” experiences:

For, being a creature and thus always dependent with regard to what he

requires for complete satisfaction with his condition, he can never be

altogether free from desires and inclinations which, because they rest on

physical causes, do not of themselves accord with the moral law, which has

quite different sources; and consequently, with reference to those desires, it

is always necessary for him to base the disposition of his maxims on moral

necessitation, not on ready fidelity but on respect, which demands

compliance with the law even though this is done reluctantly. . . . (CPR 71)

As finite beings, humans are driven and conditioned by their sensual desires. Yet, as

rational beings at the same time, they cannot turn a deaf ear to the “voice of reason”

and ignore the commands of the moral law (CPR 32). In his article Kant and

Radical Evil, Fackenheim summaries Kant’s view of human beings in very concise

terms: “Man, according to Kant, belongs at once to two worlds. One is the world of

sense, the other the intelligible world. As a member of the former, he is subject to

natural inclinations; as a member of the latter, he is subject to a universal moral law”

(260). This is the human condition from Kant’s point of view: a being who is finite

and rational at the same time and therefore the will has to constantly strive for the

“unattainable goal” of following the moral law (CPR 72).

Kant defines will in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals as “a capacity to

determine itself to acting in conformity with the representation of certain law” (36).

The representation of laws is actually principles, so the will can be thought as a

capacity determined by principles (24). There are two “direct opposite” principles

that can be adopted as the “determining ground of the will”: one is “the principle of

morality,” and the other “the principle of one’s own happiness,” or the “principle of

self-love” (CPR 19,32). “The principle of happiness can indeed furnish maxims,”

but it can never serve as “laws of the will,” because “practical laws” are objective,

universal practical rules and are the determining ground of “the will of every rational

being” (CPR 17, 18, 33). On the contrary, a “maxim is the subjective principle of

volition,” writes Kant in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (14, note). In

Critique of Practical Reason, Kant defines maxims as follows: “Practical principles

are propositions that contain a general determination of the will, having under it

several practical rules. They are subjective, or maxims, when the condition is

regarded by the subject as holding only for his will” (17). In other words, maxims

are subjective, practical principles that contain the determining ground for the will.

Therefore, “the principles that one makes for oneself are not yet laws to which one is

unavoidably subject” (CPR 17-18).

The question is: how can a human being adopt a practical law, which is objective

and universal, as his or her maxim, which is only a subjective principle? Kant’s

answer is as follows: “If a rational being is to think of his maxims as practical

universal laws, he can think of them only as principles that contain the determining

ground of the will not by their matter but only by their form” (CPR 24). In other

words, only “the form of the maxim” can be thought as a practical law, which is “act

only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that

become a universal law” (GMM 31). If a person adopts this law as his or her maxim,

then this person is morally good. What Kant wants to emphasizes here is the

universality of the moral law.

However, in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant discusses the form

of the maxim in terms of “subordination,” which concerns whether it is the moral law

or the principle of self-love that is “the condition of the other” (31). The

“subordination” of the principle of self-love to the moral law is the reversed “moral

order of the incentives,” and a person is evil if he or she adopts the two incentives in

the inverted order (31). To make the moral law as the “supreme condition” of the

principle of self-love is not an easy task for human beings. They are easily tempted

by what “promises agreeablesness” (GMM 32). Kant makes the following

observation concerning the struggle of the finite rational beings in Religion within the

Limits of Reason Alone:

Man (even the most wicked) does not, under any maxim whatsoever,

repudiate the moral law in the manner of a rebel (renouncing obedience to

it). The law, rather, forces itself upon him irresistibly by virtue of his

moral predisposition; and were not other incentive working in opposition,

he would adopt the law into his supreme maxim as the sufficient

determining ground of his will; that is, he would be morally good. But by

virtue of an equally innocent natural predisposition he depends upon the

incentives of his sensuous nature and adopts them also (in accordance with

the subjective principle of self-love) into his maxim. (31)

Kant thinks that human beings cannot “be morally good in some ways and at the same

time morally evil in others” (20). In other words, they cannot be partially good and

partially evil, or good and evil at the same time (31). If a person adopt the moral law

into his or her supreme maxim, then that person would be good. However, if any

incentive deviating from the moral law is adopted into the supreme maxim of a person,

then he or she would be morally evil (20, 31). Incentives are “the content of the

maxims” (31). Both the moral law and “the sensual impulse” are incentives of the

will, and since a human being “naturally adopts both into his maxim,” what is adopted

is not the content but the form of the maxim (31). “Consequently man (even the best)

is evil only in that he reverses the moral order of the incentives when he adopts them

into his maxim. . . . he makes the incentive of self-love and its inclinations the

condition of obedience to the moral law. . .” (31-32). In other words, when the

incentive of self-love is subordinated to the moral law, “the moral order” of them is

inverted. Kant observes that if “a propensity” to this inversion of the moral order of

these two incentives “does lie in human nature, there is in man a natural propensity to

evil. . . . This evil is radical, because it corrupts the ground of all maxims. . .” (32).

What is the ground of all maxims? Kant thinks that it should be possible for us

to infer a priori “an underlying evil maxim” from one or several evil acts done by an

agent; “and further, from this maxim to infer the presence in the agent of an

underlying common ground, itself a maxim, of all particular morally-evil maxims”

(16). This “ultimate subjective ground of the adoption of maxims” is called

“disposition,” which is a maxim itself (20). This disposition is both “innate” and

“acquired.” (17, 20). It is “innate” because “it is posited as the ground antecedent to

very use of freedom in experience . . . and is thus conceived of as present in man at

birth—though birth need not be the cause of it” (17). Yet, the paradox is that, even

though a disposition is considered as inborn, it is also “adopted by free choice,” but

not “in time” (20). Kant explains as follows: “Since, therefore, we are unable to

derive this disposition, or rather its ultimate ground, from any original act of the will

in time, we call it a property of the will which belongs to it by nature (although

actually the disposition is grounded in freedom)” (21). In other words, our will can

freely choose to acquire the ultimate maxim of all our maxims, but since it does not

choose in time, it appears that our will naturally chooses its ultimate maxim. If the

will adopts the principle of self-love into the ultimate maxim, then “the ground of all

maxims,” that is, the disposition, is corrupted, because the moral order of incentives is

reversed (32).

However, Kant admits that “ the ultimate subjective ground of the adoption of

moral maxims is inscrutable” (17). In other words, we do not know what the

ultimate ground is for a person to adopt the reversed moral order. Referring to the

Bible, Kant wrote, “the first beginning of all evil represented as inconceivable by

us . . . but man is represented as having fallen into evil only through seduction, and

hence as being not basically corrupt . . . but rather as still capable of an improvement”

(39). The state of innocence, even though it is wonderful, is not completely positive

for Kant. “There is something splendid about innocence; but what is bad about it, in

turn, is that it cannot protect itself very well and is easily seduced” (GMM 17). The

problem of innocence, therefore, is that it goes astray easily.

Kant made the

following remark: “In the search for the rational origin of evil actions, every such

action must be regarded as though the individual had fallen into it directly from a state

of innocence” (Religion 36). This fall from the state of innocence into that of evil,

fortunately, is never a hopeless condition. We cannot completely eradicate the

wickedness in us, but that does not mean we should not even try.

Radical evil, according to Kant, lies in the human nature. Human beings have

this “natural propensity . . . to evil” (24). However, the paradox is, even though a

propensity is “innate,” it can also be considered as being “brought by man upon

himself” (24). That is to say, our nature is imputable if it does not follow the moral

law. Like the disposition, this propensity to evil, that is, radical evil, is also both

innate and acquired (24, 28). Kant thinks that “a propensity to evil can inhere only

in the moral capacity of the will. But nothing is morally evil . . . but that which is

our own act” (26). The paradox of the propensity is that it is both an act and not an

act. Kant thinks the word “act” can refer to the will’s “exercise of freedom” to adopt

“the supreme maxim” (26). Or, it can refer to the actions performed through “the

exercise of freedom” “in accordance with that maxim” (26). The former is

“intelligible action;” the latter, “sensible action” (26-27). Kant explains that the

propensity to evil is “intelligible action,” therefore not an act performed in the

sensible world, because it is “a subjective determining ground of the will which

precedes all acts and which, therefore, is itself not an act” (26). In other words, it

refers to the will’s choosing the principle of self-love as the supreme maxim, and

therefore not empirical action. Kant calls this propensity to evil the original sin

“(peccatum originarium)” (26). However, the propensity to evil is “sensible action,”

since it is “the formal ground of all unlawful conduct,” which “violates the law and is

termed vice,” which is the derivative sin (peccatum derivatum) (26).

According to Kant, the natural propensity to evil as intelligible action “cannot be

eradicated” (27). In other words, the original sin is ineradicable. In fact, according

to Kant, there is always hope for human beings to improve themselves. “For man,

therefore, who despite a corrupted heart yet possesses a good will, there remains hope

of a return to the good form which he has strayed” (Religion 39). In other words, we

need not to despair of the condition of humanity. To become morally better, a person

needs to have “a revolution in his cast of mind” as well as “a gradual reform in his

sensuous nature” (43). That is to say, this transformation is both intelligible and

sensible: “For, the will stands between its a priori principle, which is formal, and its a

posterior incentive, which is material, as at a crossroads” (GMM 13). Through this

continuous and infinite progress, hopefully human beings can all strive to become

morally better persons.

Works Cited

Fackenheim, Emil L. “Kant and Radical Evil.” Immanuel Kant: Critical Assessments.

Vol. 3. Ed. Ruth Chadwick. London: Routledge, 1992. 259-273.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason. Trans. and ed. Mary Gregor.

Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

---. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. and ed. Mary Gregor.

Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

---. Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. Trans. Theodore M. Greene and

Hoyt H. Hudson. New York: Harper, 1960.

Kluge: Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. Ed. Elmar Seebold.

Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995.

Philosophy

AD 1700 to 1800

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Kant’s Concept of Radical Evil