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Radical evil (German: das radikal Böse) is a phrase used by German philosopher Immanuel Kant, one representing the Christian term, radix malorum. Kant believed that human beings naturally have a tendency to be evil.
Kant’s account of radical evil demonstrates how evil can be a genuine moral alternative while nevertheless being an innate condition. Given the general optimism of the time, Kant’s view was revolutionary.
According to Kant, we become radically evil when we subordinate the moral law to our own self‐interest (prudence). He holds that we never do wrong for the sake of doing wrong but only for the sake of prudence or from inclinations to more limited goods.
In the Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Arendt borrows Kant’s term ‘radical evil’ to describe the evil of the Holocaust. However, Arendt does not mean what Kant means by ‘radical evil’ (see section 2.2 for Kant’s view of radical evil).
But radical evil on this third conception is different: it involves an intentional refusal to acknowledge that some group of persons has any moral standing at all—the kind of moral standing that would prohibit us from instigating or complying with their humiliation, degradation, or extinction.
Kant’s use of Pietist terminology such as the “change of heart” (Herzensänderung), classic theological language such as “radical evil” (radix malorum), his detailed engagement with Augustinian themes throughout the Religion, and focus on Pietist and Moravian models of grace (AK 7:54–57 [1798]), which were prevalent in ...
Yet, a principled rejection of morality, Kant claims, is not possible for a human will. Evil for Kant is defined in terms of the universal principle of self-love, which critics maintain is too shallow and tame to express the depths of harm that characterize genocide.
