Abstract for the Kant in Asia International Conference

at Hong Kong Baptist University

20-23 May 2009

Aleksander Bobko, “The Unity of Human Personhood and the Problem of Evil”

Evil is undoubtedly one of the most equivocal issues in Kant's philosophy. For a long time he didn't deal with it, constructing instead his critical philosophy as the philosophy of good. It was only when he considered the radical evil of human nature that he approached the question of the essence of evil, but failed to find a satisfactory explanation for it. He concluded that evil remains a mystery. The outcome of these considerations is also surprising - in spite of the autonomy of ethics he had espoused in his critical writings Kant concluded that "ethics inevitably leads to religion". On the basis of these analyses I will endeavor to show the meaning of evil as conceived in Kant's concept of man and that contrary to the tradition of the Enlightenment the ultimate condition of the unity of human personhood is the assumption that God exists.

Back to the Final Programme Schedule