Kant’s Theory Of Human Nature And Radical Evil

Domestic research on the Kant’s philosophy has been started from the Three Critiques, ignoring his religious thought. Kant’s philosophy can be summarized in three major issues:a) what can I know, which belongs to the epistemology; b) what should I do, which belongs to the morality theory; C) what may I hope, which belongs to the science of religion. The three issues can be attributed to one question, i.e. what is man? Thus, the system of Kant’s philosophy is based upon the conception of man, i.e. upon the reflection of morality and religion. In his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, which focuses on the reflection of morality and religion, Kant attempted to establish a moral religion built on reason, while human nature, especially the radical evil is an important and unique view in the thought of moral religion.Kant absolutely abandoned the empirical perspective, which was accepted by the philosophers before Kant, and built his theory of human nature and radical evil on the foundation of transcendental freedom. Transcendental freedom is the foundation of the possibility of the theory of human nature and evil predispositions, and it is the final destination to overcome the evil predispositions. Moreover, the discussion of freedom is necessary to the theory of human nature and evil predispositions. This article is divided into four parts:(1) from the definition of human (or human nature) to the judgment of human nature. This section concerns on the issue that the perspective on the problem of man has transferred from scientific definitions to value judgments. Scientific definition limits man in the view of empirical perspective, makes man lost the way of becoming, so it is the wrong way to explain the conception of man; while the value judgment make man on the way of becoming and living. Kant put man in the perspective of transcendental freedom and agreed the freedom of man.(2) Thoughts of the radical evil before Kant. This section writes about different philosophical schools’evil-human-nature theory, such as ancient Greek and Roman, the philosophy of Christianity and Naturalism, and compares them with Kant’s theory of human nature built on freedom. The aim of this section is to highlight the transcendent to the theories of human nature before Kant.(3) Kant’s conception of freedom and human nature. This part describes the conception of freedom detailedly in perspectives of transcendental freedom and practical freedom, and points out the theory of human nature built on the two foundations.(4)Kant’s thought of the radical evil. This part analysis the thought of willur and will, law and maximum, the radical evil in the human nature.This essay tries to point out that theories of human nature built on the empiricism, naturalism and mechanism is unbelievable. Kant has transcendent all the traditional philosophical views, builds his theory on the freedom and proposes the view of the radical evil, creatively attributes the radical evil to the hypocrisy, self-deception. And the theory of freedom is the clue to understand the theory of human nature and the radical evil.