Premium
“THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS”: KANT ON THE HANG ZUM BÖSEN AND THE UNIVERSAL EVIL OF HUMANITY
Author(s) -
DUNCAN SAMUEL
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
the southern journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.281
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 2041-6962
pISSN - 0038-4283
DOI - 10.1111/j.2041-6962.2011.00050.x
Subject(s) - humanity , interpretation (philosophy) , philosophy , analogy , epistemology , relation (database) , problem of evil , theology , computer science , linguistics , database
This paper offers a new interpretation of the propensity to evil and its relation to Kant's claim that the human race is universally evil. Unlike most of its competitors, the interpretation presented here neither trivializes Kant's claims about the universal evil of humanity nor attributes a position to him that is incompatible with his repeated insistence that we are blameworthy for actions only when we could have acted differently. This interpretation also accounts for a number of otherwise bewildering claims in the Religion and makes sense of the analogy Kant draws between the propensity to evil and addiction.