EMSP 3213

This course will examine the roots of the modern conception of radical evil in the late work of Immanuel Kant. Beginning with the traditional, pre-Kantian conception of evil as a merely negative phenomenon - as a lack or privation of being - we will trace the emergence of Kant's radical innovation, his positive conception of evil as the ineradicable "knot" at the very heart of human freedom. We will also consider at some length the subsequent career of Kant's doctrine in 19th- and 20th-Century thought.