Radical Evil Research Articles

Naděje jako most mezi etikou a filosofií náboženství v díle Immanuela Kanta

The paper focuses on the motif of hope, which plays an important role in Immanuel Kant’s practical philosophy. Hope builds a bridge between ethics and the philosophy of religion, and it does so as part of the highest good. I examine the notion of hope in Kant’s thought in three steps, based on three texts: Critique of Pure Reason (Canon of Pure Reason), Critique of Practical Reason (Postulates of Pure Practical Reason; Ethico-Theology), and Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Theory of Radical Evil in Human Nature). I provide arguments to show that, for Kant, hope is a necessary motive. Hope is understood as an attitude of reason, rather than as an emotion. I further demonstrate that in the concept of hope, the desire for happiness intersects with the desire to live well morally. The function of hope, in the context of a lifetime of moral practice, is to help remove obstacles to leading a moral life. Hope is not needed to know what to do. Hope is necessary as a component of the meaningfulness of the whole. The impossibility or loss of hope for the ultimate meaning, as including the achievement of one’s own bliss, would make the lifelong pursuit of morality impossible. Finally, hope turns out to be necessary as a response to the thesis of radical evil in human nature.

자유의지 논쟁의 지형과 칸트의 위치

Free will serves as the foundation of moral responsibility. However, when examining the topography of debates on free will within the history of Christian ethical thoughts, there is a tendency to regard divine grace as absolute while relatively neglecting free will. This paper provides an overview of the debate between Pelagius and Augustinus, which marks the starting point of the free will controversy in the history of Christian ethical thoughts, as well as the semi-Pelagian tradition that emerged in the medieval period. This paper further explores the opposition between Erasmus’s notion of free will and Luther’s concept of the bondage of the will during the Reformation, alongside Melanchthon’s synthesis of these views. Particular attention is given to Melanchthon’s perspectives on reason and revelation, philosophy and theology, and the compatibility of necessity and free will, highlighting their significance as a precursor to Kant’s moral rational faith. Based on this discussion, this paper seeks to elucidate the position of Kant’s moral rational faith within the free will debate. Kant interprets the Bible through the lens of morality within the limit of reason, viewing Jesus Christ as a teacher of the Gospel who adhered to moral law, and clarifies the issue of salvation as arising from the act of good deeds. Furthermore, despite recognizing the deeply ingrained propensity to radical evil within human nature, Kant affirms free will, positioning his moral rational faith between semi-Pelagianism and Pelagianism.

Kant on race and the radical evil in the human species

AbstractReligion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason remains one of the most opaque of Kant's published writings. Though this opacity belongs, partly, to the text itself, a key claim of this article is that this opacity stems also from the narrow lenses through which his readers view this text. Often read as part of Kant's moral philosophy or his universal history, the literature has thus far neglected a different vantage point on the Religion, one that does not refute the utility of these lenses but complements them. This paper places the Religion alongside parts of Kant's corpus that it is less typically paired with, namely his natural history writings—in particular, his writings on the concept of race and the development of the human races. I argue that by doing so, we can shed much light on Kant's infamous claim that there is a radical evil in the human species. More precisely, we will come to appreciate that this evil is not, as it is usually understood, a static property or fixed characteristic of human beings. Instead, radical evil concerns a dynamic, changing defect in human nature that increasingly threatens our aspirations to collective moral perfection.

Generating the Ability of Independent Thinking<br>—From Radical Evil to Extreme Evil to the Banality of Evil

Generating the Ability of Independent Thinking<br>—From Radical Evil to Extreme Evil to the Banality of Evil

Immanuel Kant’s idea of radical evil as a systematic and terminological problem

The paper investigates the systematic connection between Kantian concept of radical evil and radical indeterministic idea of freedom. According to the presented thesis the systematically relevant interpretation of the radical evil concept requires considering not only philosophical ideas Kant`s but also the historic background in which they were formulated. Particularly the specific situation of German philosophic terminology in the 17th and early 18th Century will be acknowledged as one of the most significant factors influencing the development of the radical evil concept. For the sake of methodological precision of the presented analysis, the differentiation between thick and thin concept of evil will be introduced.

THE MYTHOLOGICAL SPACE OF GOOD AND EVIL IN “THE YELLOW PRINCE” BY VASYL BARKA

To analyze the representation of the Holodomor in Vasyl Barka’s novel “The Yellow Prince”, it is beneficial to draw upon the concepts of artistic universes and mythological studies. In particular, Franz Boas’s notion of mythological universes as source material for the creation of new universes can provide valuable insights. Based on this concept, the apocalyptic motifs of the novel “The Yellow Prince” might be considered a unique author’s attempt to interpret the traumatic experience of the Holodomor. In this case, the biblical eschatology serves as the key to understanding the entire scale of the tragedy and the essence of the crime against the Ukrainian people.
 After analyzing the structure of the novel, drawing parallels with biblical motifs and codes, and noting the most prominent biblical allusions, it becomes evident that the writer constructs his own apocalyptic model of the world, which shows no specific Comings of the Antichrist and Christ as they both are presented collectively. The writer’s dichotomy between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’ contrasts the harmonious, traditional Ukrainian village with the godless Bolshevik regime. The first mode, embodied by the Katrannyk family, functions around the church as a sacred center and a treasury of Christian values. Therefore the process of collectivization and the destruction of the temple disrupts its organic existence, leading to death. Those who strive to preserve their right for the sacred must be prepared to fight, even at the cost of their lives.
 Both the church Chalice-Grail and the martyred peasants represent the collective Christ. The source of evil, in its turn, lies within the hierarchical system of the Bolshevik forces of evil. This system ranges from the symbolic image of the Yellow Prince as a collective Antichrist to radical evil embodied by demonized and dehumanized representatives of the Soviet government and banal evil manifesting itself in unconscious peasants who, due to a lack of understanding, also become accomplices in the crimes. Thus, the evil appears in the novel as a series of negative and demonic images embodied in characters, symbols, and details existing at various hierarchical levels. All these elements serve as a comprehensive representation of the profane.

Can we do our scholarship with our backs to Auschwitz? Gregory Baum, evil and the public role of the religious studies scholar

In his 1987 book Compassion and Solidarity, Gregory Baum recounts a story told by the German Roman Catholic theologian and priest Johann Baptist Metz, who, in response to the Holocaust, developed a guiding principle: ‘You cannot do theology with your back turned to Auschwitz’. Baum challenges scholars to ask the same question. What is the cost of doing scholarship with one’s back turned to Auschwitz and other forms of radical evil? Does not business-as-usual scholarship risk conforming to the dominant culture and practices of our time, no matter what? Does it not risk pushing scholars to acquiesce to the neo-liberal model of the depoliticized, neutralized scholar? Baum’s refusal to ‘do scholarship’ with his back to evil highlights the necessity and urgency of using scholarly expertise to participate in public debates. First, society needs the unique expertise of scholars of religion to address its many interconnected crises. Second, participation in public debates affords scholars the opportunity to develop a self-critical spirit and to look for signs of ideological taint and distorting messages in their work. Participating in public debates results in better scholarship, Baum argues, but only if one adopts a critical-humanistic approach rooted in an emancipatory commitment, a hermeneutics of suspicion, and the perspective of the victims, the marginalized and the excluded. In other words, socially engaged scholarship is only valid when it is critical – as well as self-critical – scholarship. Baum’s approach promotes a scholarly humility about truth claims that avoids inauthentic universalisms. David Seljak explores the necessity and urgency of participation in public debates by the religious studies scholar by examining Baum’s biography, public role and its impact on his scholarship.

Kant über das Satanisch-Böse

Abstract According to Kant, men cannot do evil for the sake of evil. A satanic act of resistance against the moral law is impossible, and therefore the idea of ultimate evil is called a “mere idea”. However, it isn’t impossible to realize the idea of satanic evil, as is widely thought: the idea of ultimate evil can be fully realized by the everyday evil of men, as if they were ultimately evil. Kant exposes this structure within his Doctrine of Right (1797) as an extension of his philosophy of radical evil, presented in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793). This interpretation will be developed in a close reading of the crucial passage – where it is the revolutionizing people of France who are held responsible for having realized the idea of satanic evil.

Kant’s Theory of Radical Evil and its Franciscan Forebears

Dieser Artikel argumentiert, dass Kants berühmte Theorie vom "radikalen Bösen", gemäß der es eine natürliche Anlage zum Bösen und zum Guten in allen Menschen gibt, Vorläufer in der mittelalterlichen franziskanischen intellektuellen Tradition hat. Im frühen 13. Jahrhundert entwickelten Mitglieder dieser Tradition, inspiriert von ihrem Gründer Alexander von Hales, eine neue Vorstellung vom freien Willen, gemäß der der Wille in der Lage ist, zwischen gleichermaßen legitimen Optionen des Guten und des Bösen zu wählen. Damit wichen die frühen Franziskaner von der langjährigen Tradition des Augustinus ab, für den der freie Wille nur das Gute wählen kann, da das Böse lediglich eine Mangelerscheinung des Guten ist, die die menschliche Freiheit einschränkt. Gleichzeitig antizipierten sie die kantische Behauptung, dass Freiheit die Fähigkeit beinhaltet, zwischen guten und bösen Maximen zu wählen.

L'honneur de la raison

This article attempts to show that the doctrine of the impossibility of total error (DIET) is one of the main presuppositions of Kant's moral thought and not just of his theoretical thought. I will exhibit how the antinomy of reason is one of the most important motives of Kant's philosophical inquiry and then illustrate my interpretation of radical evil by advocating an interpretation of reason in Kant as a unitary faculty.

Enlightenment and religion in Kant

How can we reconcile religion and Enlightenment in Kant? I begin by analyzing Kant’s conception of a rational religion and the key concepts of radical evil and ethical community. I refer to many instances of overcoming evil in Kant’s work. First, I show that in the Anthropology, the cultivation of society is one possibility, while in the Idea for a Universal History, the unsociable sociability plays a role to accomplish a moral end. In Religion, on the other hand, only an ethical community can defeat evil. Since evil has its source in social relations, only a society of virtue can counteract passions. Second, I ask whether we can reconcile religious faith with rational Enlightenment or if some concepts used in Religion, such as radical evil, are only a disguise for anti-Enlightenment conceptions. Finally, I ask if it is reasonable to argue that we should keep religion as an important social practice or if it always brings a higher risk of anti-Enlightenment outcomes such as fanaticism. I analyze the case of Brazil, where the Evangelical church helped to elect a right-wing president with a very conservative and anti-Enlightenment agenda.

Антропологические предпосылки кантовской этикотеологии

In Kant’s main treatise on philosophy of religion, the doctrine of religion itself is forestalled by a discourse about the moral quality of human nature, which has an outward appearance of an overt declaration of anthropological pessimism. This paper aims to investigate this introductory anthropological survey within the context of Kant’s ethical principles and philosophical methodology, as an anthropological framework of his philosophy of religion. Dogmatic optimism as well as dogmatic pessimism in anthropology equally eliminate the possibility of ethico-theology, conceived as religious extension of the ethics of duty. Between the positions of good and evil, between the two versions of rigorism, no mid-point is possible; they cannot be united in an abstract, external manner. Good and evil in Kant’s philosophy exists only as definitions of freedom, are traceable to an act of freedom and imputable to free actors. According to Kant, in human nature there is an inborn potential for the good: a receptivity for the moral law as self-sufficing incentive for an action. The moral law, although it is objectively (in the idea) the prevailing incentive, is at the same time subjectively (in the experience) weaker than the incentive from inclination. The reflection upon this circumstance uncovers an antinomy in the foundations of Kant’s doctrine of religion; transcendental idealism, specifically the notion of intelligible deed, which chooses the supreme maxim of one’s moral disposition, gives a clue for its solution. The problem of the moral quality of the will is therefore determined, not by the character of the performed action itself, but by the “form of a maxim”, by the interrelation of incentives in the rule which determines the action. And so the radical evil of human nature in the appearance does not revoke, for Kant, the unconditional relevance of the moral goal guiding free human beings.

The Day the World Stopped Working

The Day the World Stopped Working

Autonomy and Radical Evil: Kant’s Ethical Transformation of Sin

Abstract The paper examines Kant’s idea of autonomy as well as his conception of radical evil against the background of the theological tradition relevant to him. It is shown that both of them can be understood as ethical secularizations of theological concepts—the freedom of God and the concept of original sin—and that in both cases the problems of the theological tradition reoccur.

Politics and Terrorism of Immanuel Kant‘s Radical Evil

This article analyzes Immanuel Kant’s concept of radical evil within the broader corpus of Kant’s practical works in order to ascertain whether suicidal terrorism can be interpreted using his philosophical framework. Said analysis establishes the dynamic between radical evil and other characteristics of Kantian human nature – unsocial-sociability and propensity towards humanity, whilst focusing on the political implications of said dynamic. When analyzed utilizing the established framework of politics of radical evil, suicidal terrorism reveals the extremities of human behavior as well as potential flaws of Kantian philosophy.

Radical Evil, Social Contracts and the Idea of the Church in Kant

AbstractIn this article I argue that Kant’s understanding of the universality of radical evil is best understood in the context of human sociality. Because we are inherently social beings, the nature of the human community we find ourselves in has a determinative influence on the sorts of persons we are, and the kinds of choices we can make. We always begin in evil. This does not vitiate responsibility, since through reflection we can become aware of our situation and envision ourselves as members of a different community, one with different expectations, making genuine virtue possible. This understanding of radical evil helps to make sense of Kant’s high regard for the church in Religion.

Homonymy and Amphiboly, or Radical Evil in Translation

By Aristotle’s own admission, homonymy and amphiboly, or syntactic homonymy, are unlikely to be accidental features of the Greek language (nor of any language, nor of language as such), but rather a radical evil that can at best be subdued, through recourse to categories, for example. Or we could choose to follow the sophists and exploit it by aiming at an essentially sonorous consensus. But then such texts would constitute a radical evil for translation.

Reasonable Liberty

Like Kant at his time, Jürgen Habermas wants to encourage the reader to use his „reasonable liberty“. There is no doubt, that the philosophical positions of Kant on the one hand and of Hegel on the other hand hold, until today, a key role in the development of the „discourse of modern age“. In order to oppose a short-circuited synthesis of both systems, which are obliged to the idea of liberty quite differently, this essay demonstrates the substantial differences regarding to elementary concepts like peculiarity of the individual will, law and legislation, people and sovereignty of the people. That both philosophers differ in their interest of questioning becomes quite clear regarding to the citizen/state relation. While Hegel tries to describe the reality of the state as a „moral universe“ and therefore as „reality of reason“, Kant is interested in knowing about the potential state togetherness of individuals which have experienced in them the „radical evil“. The differences concerning the estimation of the „subjective“ individual will in its relationship to the „objective“ will of „generality“, concerning also the (Rousseauian) concept of contract and the citizens as „co-legislators“ are culminating in the relationship between „law“ and „morality“. Whereas Kant (wrongly) ignores ethos and history, Hegel is lacking the concept of „intersubjective communication“ (so Habermas states). From both insufficiencies conclusions are resulting which are important for coping with the actual difficulties with „inclusion“ and „integration“.

Суспільство та держава у світлі їх функціонального навантаження як джерело незручних питань в розрізі соціального буття людини

Numerous attempts to improve social institutions are conventionally nominal or declarative. The latter indicates that essential changes in this perspective are possible only as a collateral consequence of exertion in another sphere. Respectively, the subject of the efforts should be the person as a whole, including their culture, nature and way of being through certain activities. The efficiency of the effort is determined, among other things, by good will and the intention of the subject to improve, whereas the formation of the intentions is conditioned by experiences as emotionally affected or idea-driven. Thus, properly formed ideas about social institutions are the beginning of a systematic transformation of the institutions themselves conceived to be as humane as possible – both comfortable and favorable for self-realization of the person in accordance with individual growth. The afore-mentioned ideas should be based on the establishment of the functional core in human existence, i.e. the ability to meet specific needs and expectations. At the same time, various assumptions about what the phenomena, institutions or processes might be, do not only distract from the effective activities, including fulfillment of assigned duties, but also trigger numerous conflicts. Therefore, this article is aimed at understanding the functional core, and the place and role of a number of key social institutions in human life. The impetus for this reconsideration has been a desire to overcome the conditionality of everyday life, based on assimilated mass stereotypes as the truth due to systemic social training, concealed behind education and upbringing. In addition, contextually, the article represents an unconventional viewpoint on the relationship between law and legislation, correlated with nature and the status of man. Since the transitory link between human nature and human status is sexuality based on the established hierarchy of values, the realization or leveling of human rights, therefore, is determined by the system of laws, which is formed in accordance with the hierarchy of the intrinsic values. At the same time, the system of laws or norms of social action and interaction shows the functioning of the state as a mechanism to limit or control the manifestation of radical evil, in other words, the tendency of man to give themselves the right of exception.

Auschwitz: The Ruined Concept of Evil

Attempts to philosophically comprehend Auschwitz, which inevitably become acts of moral thinking, are faced with the impossibility of relying on the concept of evil and turn into criticism, through to its rejection. H. Arendt's concept of radical evil, which is fundamentally different in content from Kant's, captures the transformation of people into superfluous, which in the idea of the banality of evil is defined as lack of subjectness. Both radical nature and banality take the idea of evil outside the bounds of moral philosophy. But the peculiarity of thinking about Auschwitz also lies in the fact that it does not allow itself to use those “measurement instruments” that are destroyed or discredited by it. Such a discredited means is the dichotomy of good and evil, which lies at the heart of any, but especially Nazi morality: it is in it that the idea of evil and the appeal to it are present to the greatest extent, in contrast to the world of victims and witnesses. The view of Auschwitz and its assessment as evil by an ethical scientist looking from the outside, for whom evil is given as knowledge, is subjected to special criticism: the author refers to the criticism of the idea of knowledge of good and evil by Spinoza and Bonhoeffer. The remaining opportunity to preserve the concept of evil for those who think of Auschwitz as their own act is rejected on the basis of the conclusion that Auschwitz as the ultimate givennes of killing can only be opposed by the givenness of an act of non-murder that is not mediated by moral ideas and norms, primarily by the idea of combating evil