The Research On Kant’s Radical Evil And Remedy Evil To Good

Good and evil is an important problem in Kant’s philosophy.Different from the traditional view of good and evil,Kant talks about radical evil and changing evil to good based on freedom.Human nature has two possibilities: an original predisposition to good and a propensity to evil.As a rational being,people can be responsible for their good or evil behavior.People can choose moral laws or self-love motivation as highest maxim.“Radical evil” is human perverts the moral order of the motivation of behavior intentionally in the condition of realizing the moral law.So change evil to good need to restore the order of moral,and carry out the revolution of the spirit.The issue of overcoming evil is directly related to religion.Kant advocates a moral religion,it’s the key to help us overcome radical and go to supreme good.This article attempts to study Kant’s thoughts of radical evil and changing evil to good.Therefore,this article is divided into four parts.(1): Thoughts of humanity before Kant.This section mainly analyzes the views of philosophers before Kant on the issue of good and evil,such as the ancient Greek period,Augustine period and modern naturalism.And compare them to Kant’s theory of humanity based on freedom.The purpose is to highlight Kant’s transcendence of predecessors.(2): The theoretical premise of good and evil.This part will clarify the premise,basis and position of the issue of good and evil.By analyzing and explaining factors such as maxim and laws,propensity to predisposition to prove that Kant chooses the predisposition to good and the propensity to evil based on the freedom.(3): The radical evil in human nature.This part will focus on a series of questions about Kant’s thought of the radical evil.Analysis the thought of human is evil in nature and the original of the radical evil.In addition,this part will respond to several criticisms surrounding Kant’s radical evil thoughts to defend the radical evil.First,radical evil is plausible from an‘anthropological’ standpoint.Secondly,this part will refute Allison’s proof of universality,and tries to prove that the predispositions to good by Allison does not hold.Finally,this part will prove how are the freedom of choice and the universality of radical evil compatible? This part of the argument will prove that the radical evil is because people subordinate the moral law to the incentive of sensuous inclination.This is a conscious hypocrisy that reverses the moral order that corrupted all moral ideas.(4): Remedy Evil to be Good.This part will demonstrate how Kant uses rational religion to deal with people’s problems of remedy evil to good.The supreme good is the state of the unity of virtue and happiness.However,they don’t have causal relationship because they are in different worlds.In order to have motivation to pursue morality in the real world,Kant can only choose to use "God exists" and "Soul immortality" to connect the unity of the two worlds.It demonstrates Kant’s "morality inevitably leads to religion".And this article will try to respond to the contradiction between external happiness and internal virtue as the ultimate goal,the contradiction between the divine grace and the spontaneity of man,which try to maintain Kant’s thoughts of good and evil.