ABSTRACT

In the recent debates on Kantian philosophy what has not been given much attention by his
admirers as well as his critiques is his Religious philosophy and the idea of Radical Evil.
Religion was an important theme in Kantian philosophy . Although Kant in his Pure Reason has
denied every sort of metaphysical explanation of God but in his later work he has elaborated that
the concept of God and immortality of the soul is the postulate of morality. Critique of Practical
Reason and Metaphysics of Morality develops the question of morality and the need for
morality in our practical life. Kant did not pain himself to demonstrate the existence of God like
his predecessors but for him the concept of God cannot be separated from morality.
Nevertheless, he shocks his readers in the preface of the book Religion Within Boundaries of
Mere Reason from the statement that “morality thus inevitably leads to religion, and through
religion it extends itself to the idea of a mighty moral lawgiver outside the human being, in
whose will the ultimate end(of the creation of the world) is what can and at the same ought to be
the ultimate human end”.(R 6:6) For Kant this idea of a moral lawgiver or an omnipotent moral
being is based on a presupposition which emanates from the concept of morality such that
morality leads to religion. The aim of this paper is to give faith or belief in religion as an
alternative to overcome this evil. For Kant believed that evil is not generated by our social
interaction with the others but our own nature as human beings makes us evil that is our failure
not to observe moral law as it is. For Kant we can overcome this propensity through a change in
the mode of our thought which would reverse the evil character into good and this Kant believed
would serve as a condition for religion to propagate in individual’s ethical life.

Key words:

Immanuel Kant, Critical philosophy, God , immortality of soul, Radical Evil, Conditions for evil,
Faith, hope, destiny, possibility .
INTRODUCTION

This paper has been divided into three section where the first section deals with his religious
philosophy and the idea of radical evil. This will try to engage the reader into his religious
philosophy and how does Kant reconciles the elements of his pure philosophy and his ethico-
religious philosophy. . Kant believed apart from pure reason which governs all principles of
human life the moral law is also one of the fundamental capacity of human beings to generate
their freedom. For Kant believes philosophy apart from pure reason has also practical concerns
which is free from causal laws. The idea God and immortality for Kant is the postulate of moral
law that governs every human beings. The section will also forward the questions in relation to
the problem of evil in philosophy as conceived by Kant’s predecessors. Sin and guilt are seen as
the two moral liabilities in Christian tradition and these are seen as inherited in every human
human from the day when first sin was committed by Adam. Kant differs from the tradition
took a departure from the earlier conceptions of sin and guilt. For he believed that these two
moral liabilities are not inherited but rather a product of our own reason. The section will also
show the conditions for the possibility of evil to happen. The next section suggests the possibility
of faith as a condition of overcoming evil. The idea of a hopeful view of human destiny and trust
and commitment are the important elements in his philosophy of religion. In this part certain
issues would be raised regarding his view of man in philosophy. The section will try to elaborate
his anthropological analysis of humans and how does evil comes into the picture. The last section
is the conclusion talks about Kant’s religious motivation in developing faith as a possibility. The
section will also hint us towards the need for an ethical revolution in human life. For Kant
believed that the hopeful view of human destiny could be possible only through a revolution in
the mode of thinking.
Radical Evil and Kant’s Religious Philosophy

Kant’s religious philosophy took a radical break with his earlier work when he wrote Religion.
The principle task of the book was to espouse a religion that has deeply moral aspiration and
salvation based on the idea of hope.1 Kant endorsement of the Christian idea of original sin and
salvation are central themes of this book. Although Kant is completely different form the
tradition in his treatment of guilt and corruption which according to the Christian theological
tradition are two moral liabilities that every human being possesses. Kant departs from the
traditional concept of guilt and corruption where both were seen as inherited from our ancestors
which has led to have cause the sin. He says that “nothing is to be charged against us unless it is
a product of our own will” (Religion AK 6:40-41) The German word Erbsunde which implies
heredity whereas Kant did not use the German word instead he uses the Latin phrase which does
not imply that evil is heredity. But how can evil be innate to us ? Kant answers this by saying
“that it is posited as the ground antecedent to every use of freedom given in experience(from the
earliest youth as far back as birth and is thus represented as present in the human being at the
moment of birth – not that birth itself is its cause”(Religion AK: 6:22). This idea stems from
Kant’s anthropological analysis of human beings because Kant believes that the capacity to
reason always confronts the bodily inclinations which human beings develops in course of their
lives (Metaphysics of Morals 6:217). This propensity to evil Kant considers being ‘morally evil’.
But the question can be made that if it is morally evil, it must be free and voluntary and should
originate in time. But for Kant the noumenal freedom has a timeless character. In this context he
distinguishes two forms of deeds the first is an empirical and the other is noumenal where the
former applies to our acts in time and the later is that which transcends time2. And Kant believed
that the real meaning of the deed is embedded in the noumenal use of it. Kant also says that since
this propensity is innate to us given as a product of our freedom this has a universal character
which applies to every human beings. The idea of moral goodness and moral aspiration works
behind this standard claim which was the one of the central themes of his Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals. As he says “it is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or

1
Immanuel Kant , Religion Within Limits of Reason pxi
2
Religion Within limits of reason, pxiii
indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good will” (AK
4:393). Kant’s anti-consequentualist position was based on that idea that moral aspiration cannot
be possible only through extrinsic means. The indication is purely religious because Kant was in
search of something good without any qualification or without any limitation. For Kant this
unqualified goodness is demand of our moral character as human beings and as we know that
morality demands ends to the means. In ethics anything which is morally right or wrong is
judged on the basis of character and actions performed by human beings. Now for Kant those
who accept this position are called rigorists while those who do not are called latitudinarians.
Now for Kant this happens because of our failure to subsume incentive under the moral law. Our
experience according to Kant may seem to follow latitudinarianism but he forwards a kind of a
priori argument. For Kant there is always the confrontation of moral law with the moral
incentive. This claim of Kant has been called ‘incorporation thesis’ that is the claim that moral
law serves as an incentive to the agent who acts on it. 3.Kant does not consider evil as a negative
entity but for him it has a positive sense because of the active resistance to the moral law which
is what makes it evil. 4 Kant characterizes three predispositions that every human pursue because
of their own nature that is the predisposition of Animality which is the sensuous nature of human
beings, the predisposition to Humanity which is the capacity of reason that human beings possess
, and lastly the predisposition to Personality which concerns the accountability of every human
beings as responsible for their actions. For Kant every Human beings possess all the three
dispositions which are innate to them. For Kant these dispositions are rooted in every human
being that is to say that they are contingent as well as original to every human being. Now Kant
goes further that if these dispositions are because of our nature as human beings then there must
be a feature which is common to every one of us while this feature may not be a necessary
condition for evil yet at the same time it robs us of our freedom. This common character has led
Kant to discover the account of universality of evil which is imputed to every human being.
Allen Wood calls this common source of evil as ‘unsociable sociability’ and he believes that it is
due to this unsociable sociability our behaviour becomes evil. In his anthropological analysis of
man Kant is different from his predecessors like the Stoics who believed that evil is generated
due to our own animal inclinations. For Kant this is not only the case once we know that evil is a

3
Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom pp5-6.
4
Allison, On the very idea of Propensity to Evil, p338
product of our own reason so accordingly it is generated because of the priority that we give to
these inclinations. Kant sheds light on this in his Lectures on Religion :

“this predisposition to good, which God has placed in the human being, must be developed by
the human being himself before the good can make its appearance. But since at the same time the
human being has many instincts belonging to animality, and since he has to have them if he is to
continue being human, the strength of his instincts will beguile him and he will abandon himself
to them, and thus arises evil, or rather, when the human beings begins to use this reason, he falls
into foolishness. A special germ towards evil cannot be thought, but rather the first development
of our reason toward the good is the origin of evil. And that remainder of uncultivatedness in the
progress of culture is again evil (LR 28: 1078).

Kant goes further than this

“Hence [a human being] finds evil first when his reason has developed itself far enough that he
recognizes his obligations. St. Paul says that sin follows upon the law.... As soon as the human
being recognizes his obligation to the good and yet does evil, then he is worthy of punishment,
because he could have overcome his instincts. And even the instincts are placed in him for the
good; but that he exaggerates them is his own fault, not God's.... This justifies God's holiness,
because by following this path the whole species of the human race will finally attain to
perfection. But if we ask where the evil in individual human beings comes from, the answer is
that it exists on account of the limits necessary to every creature (LR 28: 1079)

Our actions are a result of our desires and passions to strive for something that could bring
happiness in our lives these desires at the early stages of development according to Kant does
nothing but plays the role assigned to them by nature.

CONDITIONS FOR THE GENERATION OF EVIL

Now since we know that our sensuous nature is also a product of our freedom and reason so
there is also the possibility that it could be misused and this perversion compels us to adopt an
evil maxim. For Kant believes that human beings has dual nature when it comes to action and
character that is the capacity to reason helps him to obey the moral law and his sensuous nature.
Both these incentives are present in every human beings evil is generated when the incentive of
self-love overrides the moral incentive. Now selfishness has two meanings for Kant that is it is a
precondition for being evil and it results because of placing the self-love above morality. Kant
considers the possibility of evil as something positive because he considers that evil is nothing
but it originates from our own freedom. As Kant believes that evil is not something outside of us
but rather our own composite nature makes us evil. For evil is something embedded in our
freedom to choose that is to say our ability to choose good or bad is a product of our own
freedom which follows from our own nature as human beings.

FAITH AS A POSSIBILTY OF OVERCOMING EVIL

In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant says that human reason is concerned with three fundamental
questions that belongs to his life-world that is what can I know? What I ought to do? And what
may I hope?. The first two questions have been much discussed in his earlier two critiques. But
the question of hope became a part of his views on Religion and theology which became one of
the central themes of Religion Within Boundaries of Mere Reason. Kant adds one more question
that what is man? To which Kant provides an anthropological analysis and this proves that
Kant’s view on faith and Religion is more anthropocentric rather than theocentric 5. The idea of
hope is very important because it has lot of religious connotation attached to it and it has deeply
moral aspiration from religion. In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant has famously stated that he
has to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith (CPR Bxxx cf. A 745 B 773). Kant
although has concluded that neither can reason nor any scientific explanation will be able to
prove the existence of any sort of belief in an omnipotent being or Religion. The faith which
Kant was forwarding in two Critiques and also in other places was within the limits of reason.
Now here it is important to see as he further elaborates in his Pure Reason in relation to the three
questions that was posed by him. In his Pure Reason he distinguishes three forms of attitude
meinen, Wissen and Glaube. The first one is translated as ‘opining’ that is the subjective
grounds for any judgments yet these subjective grounds are not sufficient, then comes knowing
(wissen) that has both subjective as well as objective reasons for something to be true. Between

5
Logic, tr. Robert Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz [Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, l974], 29)
‘knowing’ and ‘opining’ Kant places the third one Glaube which is translated as hope or faith.
For Kant faith is neither opinion nor knowledge but Glaube can be seen as a kind of commitment
or trust. These religious commitments which Kant wants us to make is based on the idea of hope
which is one of the central themes in his Religion. For Kant religious faith cannot be known
through knowledge but rather one has to see it as the hopeful view of human destiny.6 In his
Critique of Practical Reason he asserts that as we cannot prove faith yet our continuous striving
towards morality leads us to doubts as well as commitments.

The question what I may hope ?makes Kant completely odd with his earlier predecessors who
found optimism in the best of all possible worlds created by a supernatural being. However
Kantian optimism is grounded in knowledge. There are two sides of it the first side is his denial
of knowledge for faith the other is indispensability and irreducibility of the two sides. 7This
leaves out the possibility that our hope has a possibility to realize the moral intention by acting
according to the maxim in the world. Kant did not ground hope in religion or faith in fact the
basic structures of faith itself reveals a form of hope. Kant leads the enquiry further and argued
that our intention must not be limited to the world but rather we should work in such a way that it
leads us towards a complete coordination of natural world and moral law and so we may hope
for the immortality and the existence God. As he says in his Practical Reason that the possibility
of highest good is achieved only by the presupposition of the soul’s immortality8. The idea is that
we must presuppose a supreme being as one of the conditions to make the highest good possible.
These demanding hopes are nothing but a progress towards striving something good which is
unconditioned. But these moral claims took a religious form in Religion. In the preface of the
book Kant makes the claim that ‘morality inevitably leads to religion’ and ends with making the
claim that our right course of action does not proceeds from grace to virtue but rather it goes the
opposite way from virtue to grace (R 190). According to Kant the proposition of highest good
when used with practical reason is a synthetic a priori proposition which goes beyond the moral
law. Now since morality has the capacity to usher the highest good and also human capacity is
not enough to reach the make the highest good possible because human self is always in the
process of lacking. Now we can assume an omnipotent being as the ruler of the world who can
make this possibly happen. Hope is here also seen as bridging the gulf between our commitment
to the world and our moral action. Although the text does not makes it clear that whether Kant
was talking about this-worldly hope or the other-worldly hope. A little later in the book he
clarifies his intention that the concept of highest good cannot be separated from morality this
cannot be realized unless we work towards our end. This compels him to believe in the moral
law giver through which he will be able to pursue our goals of life. ( R 130).Kant also proposes

6
Kant on Reason and Religion, Tanner Lectures on Human Values, p281
7
Kant on Reason and Religion, Tanner Lectures on Human Values, p282
8
Critique of Practical Reason, Immanuel Kant.
a kind of philosophical theology instead of a rational theology and suggests that there must have
to be special courses of lectures on religion. Scriptures are not seen as an authoritative body
rather Kant conceives scriptures as models or symbols of moral principles. Kant’s reading of
religious is scriptures and the Adamic myths are also different from the traditional conceptions.
For Kant temptation and salvation are the symbols of the conflict between moral incentive and
the incentive of self-love. It is important here that Kant sees these religious stories as narratives
that helps us to understand the moral principle. As he says that task of these narratives is to bring
out morality in the ‘interest of morality’. For Kant these stories apart from giving external
message has some intrinsic value attached to it and the task of reciting these stories has to bring
out the meaning of morality which is attached to it. The issue here would be still that whether
morality comes first or the scriptures but he clarifies that morality should always be at the first
place.

“since . . . the moral improvement of men constitutes the real end of all religion of reason, it
will comprise the highest principle of all Scriptural exegesis” (R 102).

Kant believed morality should reveal itself in practical reason but the Scriptural texts sometimes
may not be restricted to reason only. This is because his view is that religious text that follows
morality must be forced rather than reasoned.
 CONCLUSION

Practical Reason and Metaphysics talks about the cultivation of an ethical commonwealth
which would help an individual to transform his moral character. This transformation for Kant is
a kind of revolution in the mode of thought of an individual and this according to Kant is the first
step towards goodness (Religion 6:67). This helps an individual to acquire the holiness of
maxims. For Kant those individuals who have recognized this revolutions as well as the moral
law as the governing principle would constitute what he calls the “The Kingdom of God” or the
ethical commonwealth. (Religion 6:95).Kant sees radical evil as a sort of disposition that has
been imputed to us or in others we have an innate propensity to evil. The question is now how do
we overcome this evil? For Kant it is neither a matter of resolution nor by changing our everyday
practices. Even if try all sorts of stuffs to overcome this evil it would not help because the
disposition would still remain corrupted. The only solution for this is to make a hard
commitment or as Kant says through a revolution in the mode of thought. Unlike the political or
social revolution Kant is talking here about an ethical revolution which would not let the
incentive of self-love override morality. An individual or a historical human who acquires the
holiness of maxims Kant identifies him as the ‘Son of God’. The historical human Kant describes
as the one who has “descended from heaven” or the one who believes in “practical faith”.
However for Kant it is not sure that this revolution has a certainty yet he believes that this can
change the heart or can transform the disposition.

(Md Shad Ahmad

Department of Philosophy, JNU

New Delhi- 110067)

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Kant on Reason and Religion ONORA O’NEILL THE TANNER LECTURES ON HUMAN
VALUES Delivered at Harvard University April 1-3, 1996