Radical evil

Radical evil (German: das radikal Böse) is a phrase coined by Kant in Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone (1793).

There Kant writes:

The depravity of human nature, then, is not so much to be called badness, if this word is taken in its strict sense, namely, as a disposition (subjective principle of maxims) to adopt the bad, as bad, into one’s maxims as a spring (for that is devilish); but rather perversity of heart, which, on account of the result, is also called a bad heart. This may co-exist with a Will [“Wille”] good in general, and arises from the frailty of human nature, which is not strong enough to follow its adopted principles, combined with its impurity in not distinguishing the springs (even of well-intentioned actions) from one another by moral rule. So that ultimately it looks at best only to the conformity of its actions with the law, not to their derivation from it, that is, to the law itself as the only spring. Now although this does not always give rise to wrong actions and a propensity thereto, that is, to vice, yet the habit of regarding the absence of vice as a conformity of the mind to the law of duty (as virtue) must itself be designated a radical perversity of the human heart (since in this case the spring in the maxims is not regarded at all, but only the obedience to the letter of the law).

— Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone

Bibliography

• Huang, Hshuan, "Kant's Concept of Radical Evil"
• Kant, Immanuel, Kant: Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: And Other Writings, (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy), Cambridge University Press (January 28, 1999), ISBN 0-521-59964-4, ISBN 978-0-521-59964-1
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Radical Evil" in "Kant's Philosophy of Religion"