Maria Antonietta Pranteda

This paper investigates the sources of Kant’s pre-critical doctrine concerning the applicability of the mathematical method to the measurement of the intensity of psychic and moral states. It reconstructs the conceptual framework within which such a project becomes conceivable, focusing in particular on Christian Wolff’s empirical psychology, eighteenth-century French materialism, and the writings of Pietro Verri. By situating Kant’s reflections within this broader intellectual context, the study highlights both the ambitions and the limits of attempts to quantify subjective states, as well as their relevance for understanding the development of Kant’s moral philosophy.

This paper reconstructs the genesis of the concept of “radical evil” starting from the biblical and theological tradition, showing how the metaphor of the root of evil precedes its philosophical formulation. The analysis then focuses on the transformation carried out by Kant, who reworks this notion in terms of freedom and imputability, excluding any naturalistic interpretation. The essay concludes with a comparison with some twentieth-century interpretations, in particular those of Jaspers and Arendt, highlighting both the persistence and the transformation of the problem in contemporary philosophy. Keywords: Root of Evil, Original Sin, Radical Evil, Moral Evil, Free Will, Banality of Evil.

In the “Critical Delucidation” of the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant sets out a brief discussion of the ‘evil principles’ of moral action that are also imputable based on the free causality of the will to children, as well as to all other persons. This passage is taken into consideration because it represents an alternative explanation of moral evil to the one mainly attributable to natural sensible causes found in the Critique. The coherence of the admission of evil principles with the Kantian doctrine of freedom on the one hand, and the elements of dissimilarity with other assumptions in the work on the other, are discussed. In conclusion, the hypothesis is put forward that the thesis of the evil principles is a partial restatement of ideas formulated by Kant in pre-critical times.

This book reconstructs the genesis and development of the concept of evil in Kant’s philosophy, highlighting a neglected discontinuity between his pre-critical, critical, and later works. In his pre-critical writings, evil is initially understood in metaphysical terms, as a limit or privation, often linked to a Leibnizian framework of imperfection and resistance. Within the Critique of Practical Reason, however, the idea of an autonomous principle of evil proves incompatible with the foundations of practical reason, where evil appears mainly as deviation or resistance to the moral law. By examining Kant’s lectures on anthropology, the study also brings to light a pragmatic account of evil grounded in egoism and the tension between sensibility and moral vocation. These tensions ultimately prepare the transition to the doctrine of radical evil in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, where evil is redefined as a free and imputable choice that corrupts the fundamental maxim of the will. The book thus offers a unified interpretation of Kant’s moral philosophy, clarifying the shift from a privative to a genuinely moral conception of evil.