On What Ground Does Kant Regard the Radical Evil as Universal?

Abstract

In this paper, I address the following question: In what sense and on what ground does Kant universally attribute evil to human beings? By examining two readings, Allen W. Wood’s unsociable sociability interpretation and Patrick R. Frierson’s inductive interpretation, and pointing out their shortcomings, I answer this question in terms of a compromise between the two interpretations: Kant argues for the universality of evil in the sense that human beings are comparatively universally evil, not universally in a strict sense; on the ground that unjust actions which are caused by a kind of passion that inevitably appears in human coexistence support the inference of each individual’s evil Gesinnung. Through this argument, I aim to create a reconstruction of Kant’s background thoughts about radical evil rather than an a priori proof of radical evil.