Volume 97, Issue 4

The second analogy of experience is one of the most famous and crucial parts of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason . Despite 220 years of intense scrutiny and debate, however, no consensus has emerged as to the precise nature of its argument. A main source of disagreement in recent years has been the following question: With what is Kant concerned in this section? Is he concerned with (1) necessary conditions of our believing in the first place that there has been a case of objective as opposed to merely subjective succession? Is he concerned, in other words, with necessary conditions of our at least seeming to be aware or having any representation at all (whether veridical or not) of an event ? Or is he concerned merely with (2) conditions under which alone beliefs of some sort can be verified or confirmed ? The second of these possibilities has found its most eloquent champion in Paul Guyer; the first has been defended with great ingenuity by Beatrice Longuenesse.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in Kant's doctrine of radical evil, arising from as diverse quarters as philosophy, psychoanalysis and the social sciences. This interest has contributed to the revival of the notion of evil, which had been displaced from the center of philosophical discussion in the 20 th century. A common trait in the recent literature is that it takes the relevance of the use of the concept of evil for granted. Yet, before understanding what Kant really means by radical evil, it seems appropriate to ask first whether the notion of evil as such is necessary. For, given its religious background, this notion elicits expectations that may be incompatible with the secular concerns of moral philosophy. Such misgivings are aggravated by additional doubts about the concept's explanatory function in the first place. The pertinence of reviving a concept so allegedly flawed cannot be taken at face value. Thus, the task I set for myself here is to show the necessity of the concept of evil as it lies at the core of Kant's moral philosophy already in the Groundwork , far before he actually coins the notion of “radical evil” in the Religion . Whether this latter account is defensible or not, we will at least be sure that talk about an evil which is said to be radical is not in vain.

In the Metaphysics of Morals Kant clearly, and indeed ardently, upholds the state's right to impose the death penalty in accordance with the law of retribution ( ius talionis ). The “principle of equality” as between crime and punishment demands that those who wrongfully kill another should be put to death, for, in having inflicted such an evil upon another, the murderer has effectively killed himself. Kant is quite emphatic on this point: those who have committed murder “must die ”. Here, he argues, “there is no substitute that will satisfy justice”, for there “is no similarity between life, however wretched it may be, and death, hence no likeness between the crime and the retribution unless death is judicially carried out upon the wrongdoer […]”. The ius talionis is, for Kant, the basic principle and measure in accordance with which criminal justice functions. Since the ius talionis entails a strict equality between crime and punishment, Kant's insistence that only the death penalty serves as the appropriate response to murder (or to any other equally egregious crime) is fairly straightforward.