ABSTRACT
The nature of evil has long been a problem for interpreters of Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy, particularly those that take The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals as the central text of that philosophy. Fortunately, in his later works Kant goes beyond the simple motivational dichotomy of reason and inclination presented in the Groundwork, which seemed to leave no room for imputable wrongdoing. In the Religion and the Anthropology, Kant also ceases to treat all inclinations as of basically the same nature. For Kant, a predisposition or a propensity is not something that a person may or may not happen to have, like a predisposition to alcoholism or a propensity to violence. Kant distinguishes an affect from a passion, which is “not emotional agitation,” but rather “an inclination that excludes mastery over oneself.” Kant gives an example how the logic of both morality and self-love become confused so as to give rise to self-conceit.
