Review - Kant's Anatomy of Evil
by Sharon Anderson-Gold and Pablo Muchnik (Editors)
Cambridge University Press, 2010
Review by Carsten Fogh Nielsen, MA
Aug 3rd 2010 (Volume 14, Issue 31)
An interesting recent trend within moral philosophy is the (re-)emergence of the attempt to provide a philosophical account of (moral) evil. For much of the 20th century the discussion of evil were relegated to the margins of main stream moral philosophy. Within theological contexts the need for a theodicy, an account of why there is evil in a world created by an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity, thus remained pressing. And at the intersection of psychology and philosophy Arendt's notion of "the banality of evil" and Milgram's infamous "obedience to authority"-experiment inspired a number of interesting developments within social psychology.
Motivated at least in part by the events of 9/11 moral philosophers have once again become aware of the need to explain not only how and why human beings do what is morally right, but also the apparent human tendency to intentionally violate even the most basic and widely accepted moral norms. More precisely put: Philosophers have realized that an adequate moral theory needs to a) be able to explain and account for the regrettable fact that human beings are capable of almost unthinkable cruelty towards each other on both the individual and the social level, and b) provide some guidance in dealing with and opposing evil.
One consequence of this growing philosophical awareness of the problem of evil is a renewed interest in how earlier philosophers conceived, discussed and resolved this problem. One text in particular has turned out to be both an important source of inspiration for the contemporary discussion of evil, and the cause of vehement disagreement and contention, namely Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason [Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft]. In Part One of this text Kant thus provides an account of moral evil, according to which all human beings are infected with a propensity to evil; a propensity which is both an innate and inextirpable part of human nature, and at the same time something which human beings have freely chosen.
Many people regard Kant's attempt to show that evil is a deep-rooted part of human nature, which human beings are nonetheless always-already responsible for actively choosing, to be obscure, inherently contradictory and phenomenologically implausible. Others however believe that Kant provides one of the best and deepest philosophical accounts of moral evil, which the world has yet seen. There is one point, however, on which both critics and supporters of Kant agree, namely that his account of evil is very difficult and that some clarification and elucidation is in order to fully appreciate what is at stake.
Kant's Anatomy of Evil is a collection of essays, which attempts to provide precisely such elucidation. Ten papers by ten prominent Kant scholars, some friendly, others more hostile, offer different approaches to and views on Kant's account of moral evil. They all agree that Kant have something important to teach us about evil and the human tendency to commit immoral acts, but they differ in what aspects of Kant's account they emphasize and the way in which they attempt to make sense of this account.
Of the ten essays, seven represent attempts to interpret and elucidate Kant's text. In "Kant's "Metaphysics of Permanent Rupture": Radical Evil and the Unity of Reason" Philip Rossi employs Susan Neiman's account of the history of the philosophical discussion of evil (as presented in her groundbreaking book Evil in Modern Thought, Princeton UP, 2002) to "outline the contours of a philosophical anthropology that is embedded in Kant's critical project." (Kant's Anatomy of Evil, p. 14). "Kant, the Bible, and the Recovery from Radical Evil" by Gordon Michaelson illuminates the hermeneutical import and argumentative function of Kant's use of biblical imagery. In "Kant's Moral Excluded Middle" Claudia Card criticizes Kant's moral rigorism: his claim that human beings are either good or bad and that no other possibility, no middle position, exists. (Card's essay draws upon and extends her own previous work in The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil, Oxford UP, 2002, but can be read independently of this book). Robert Louden defends Kant's account of evil against a number of common misconceptions and criticisms in his "Evil Everywhere: The Ordinariness of Kantian Radical Evil". In "An Alternative Proof of the Universal Propensity to Evil" Pablo Muchnik tackles the vexed (and endlessly discussed) question of why Kant does not provide a transcendental argument for the human propensity to evil, even though he seems to explicitly state that such an argument exists and can be given. In "Kant and the Intelligibility of Evil" Allan Wood defends and elaborates his social and anthropological interpretation of the basis for the propensity to evil, an interpretation which he has previously presented in his influential Kant's Ethical Thought, Cambridge UP, 1999). And in "Social Dimensions of Kant's Conception of Radical Evil" Jeanine Grenberg examines, criticizes and rejects Wood's anthropological approach, arguing that Wood's interpretation is textually dubious and contradicts basic Kantian ideas.
The remaining three essays are best viewed as attempts to apply Kant's account to questions and problems, which are not explicitly discussed in the Religions-schrift. Patrick Frierson provides an interesting account of how "Kantian Moral Pessimism", the view that a tendency to evil is an inextricable part of human nature, can be used to explain and defuse a number of critical claims made by contemporary social psychologists. In "Kant, Radical Evil, and Crimes against Humanity" Sharon Anderson-Gold demonstrates how Kant's moral philosophy and conception of evil can be extended to account for and be brought to bear on questions concerning group-based conflicts, in particular the horrors of genocide. And in "Unforgivable Sins? Revolution and Reconciliation in Kant" David Sussmann explores the possibility of developing a Kantian account of and justification for the possibility of forgiveness and moral reconstruction in the face of past crimes.
Kant's Anatomy of Evil should be of interest to everyone with an interest in Kant's moral philosophy and the questions and problems of moral evil more generally. The essays, which are mostly very good, explicitly engage with the most current developments in the contemporary discussion of Kant's moral philosophy and, and provide clear evidence that a Kantian approach to the question of moral evil is far more resourceful than people have often assumed.
My only serious criticism of the book is that it does not contain one or two historical essays on how Kant's account of evil inspired and influenced post-Kantian philosophers, in particular the German idealists. Hegel and Schelling for instance each developed influential and interesting accounts of evil, which are clearly indebted to, but also deeply critical of, Kant's account. However, since the explicit intention of Kant's Anatomy of Evil is to further our understanding of Kant's account of evil, the absence of such a historical account is both understandable and justifiable.
© 2010 Carsten Fogh Nielsen
Carsten Fogh Nielsen, MA, post graduate student, University of Aarhus. Main interests: Kant, moral philosophy and the philosophy of popular culture