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desartetion topic of freedom of the will according to kant
immanuel kant on evil
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Evil and the Possibility of the Conversion into Good
According to Kant, radical evil is the deep inherent blemish of our species that does not spare even the best of people. Despite judging the extirpation of such evil as an impossibility, Kant holds out the possibility of converting evil into good by means of human forces. But how can this be given the radical evil of human nature? I articulate various problems that arise from Kant’s conception of conversion while exploring certain resources in his thinking in order to clarify and resolve this difficulty. The difficulty nears an aporia when Kant asks: how can a bad tree bear good fruit? Two arguments will be presented as answers. The first maintains that free will is not definitely committed to any maxim generally accepted. The second points out the possibility of compromise between free will and a good ground maxim as the way to build up a coherent system of maxims. This would be clearly impossible if a bad ground maxim were chosen. While undecisive, the second argument is relevant because it leads to the overcoming of a certain incoherence in Kant's thought. In this way, I argue that the thesis of an existing intrinsic deficiency of the radical evil enjoys the status of a "quasi foundation" of human behavior.
According to Kant, radical evil is the deep inherent blemish of our species that will not spare even the best of men. In spite of judging it impossible the extirpation of such evil, the German master deems it possible the conversion into good by means of human forces themselves. The purpose of our present work is to raise the following question: How can this conversion be possible, given the radical evil of human nature?
To our mind, this problem brings a difficu...
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...tte University Press, 1995, vol. II, part 2.
Kant, I. Werkausgabe, herausgegeben von Wilhelm Weischedel, vierte Auflage, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, 1982, Bänder VII, VIII
_____. "Fundamentação da Metafísica dos Costumes", Os Pensadores, trad. Paulo Quintela, S. Paulo, Abril Cultural, 1980
_____. Crítica da Razão Prática, trad. Artur Morão, Lisboa, Edições 70, 1994
_____. Métaphysique des Moeurs, trad. A Philonenko, Paris, J. Vrin, 1995
_____. La Religion dans les Limites de la Simple Raison, trad. J.Gibelin, Paris, Vrin, 1983
Murgueza, J.; Aramayo, R. orgs. Kant después de Kant: en el Bicentenario de la Critica de la Razon Práctica; Madrid, Tecnos, 1989
Quillien, J. & Kirscher, G. Cahiers Éric Weil III: Interprétations de Kant, Lille, Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1992
Weil, E. Problèmes kantiens, Paris, J. Vrin, 1982.
The American Revolution saw the rise of the American spy, and the father of these spies was George Washington, commander in Chief of the Continental Army. The siege of New York demonstrated the importance and dire need for an intelligence to General Washington. Unfortunately, the difficulty, at least initially, lay with finding people willing and able to serve in this manner.
The Cocaine Kids and Dorm Room Dealers are two very different, but yet similar books. Cocaine Kids are about a group of kids, primarily of Hispanic race, with one kid of the Black race. The kids were raised in the inner city of New York. Dorm Room Dealers are about White, middle to upper-middle class college students, who was selling drugs for their status. The purpose of this paper is to prove that there are racial disparities among drug users. There will be examples from the texts that show the different takes on the drug markets and how race plays a factor. There also will be how these experiences shape the kids drug dealing and using. The paper will conclude how all the kids either remained in the drug career or left the drug career.
Prados, John. Safe for Democracy The Secret Wars of the CIA. Chicago, IL: Ivan R Dee, Publisher, 2006.
Rose, Alexander. Washington’s spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring. New York: Bantam Books, 2006
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kempsmith. New York: The Humanities P, 1950.
Many people have different views on the moral subject of good and evil or human nature. It is the contention of this paper that humans are born neutral, and if we are raised to be good, we will mature into good human beings. Once the element of evil is introduced into our minds, through socialization and the media, we then have the potential to do bad things. As a person grows up, they are ideally taught to be good and to do good things, but it is possible that the concept of evil can be presented to us. When this happens, we subconsciously choose whether or not to accept this evil. This where the theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke become interesting as both men differed in the way they believed human nature to be. Hobbes and Locke both picture a different scene when they express human nature.
...to change of youth treatment outcome measures: A comparison of the CBCL, BASC-2 and Y-OQ. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 67, 11-125.
Kant, Immanuel. "The Foundations of Ethics." Moral Philosophy: a Reader. Ed. Louis P. Pojman. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Company, 1993. 194-213.
What really shocked the United States was that the North Vietnamese was just as supplied and trained as the United States. The Troops of the United Sates could not trust anyone. Rather it be children, women, or men. My grandpa said “A child as sweet as pie could walk up to you and ask for help, and kill you with a grenade the next second”. With this information it was true, that soldiers could not trust the men and women in many of the towns that they went to. The troops of the United States were being forced to kill civilians of the Vietnamese, for they had no proof if they were the enemy or were on the side to stop communism.
...haviors he so wishes to comprehend are those whom he labels as The Cocaine Kids. Now that examples of these drug sellers’ behaviors have been provided, the criminological theories that can explain such behaviors have been made visible to the unseen eye. Criminological theories including the theory of Differential Association, the Subculture of Violence Theory, and the Social Learning Theory can be viewed as methods for developing a knowledgeable understanding of how and why such behaviors introduced individuals to the drug-selling world, kept them submerge deep within it, and allowed for them to leave it.
Immanuel Kant’s theory of Radical Evil presents a secular position defining evil in away of which the agents performing evil acts can be held accountable. It centres around the concept that evil, specifically evil is performing acts of atrocity rooted from placing self-love ahead of duty. Therefore right action is acting out of duty in obedience with the Universal moral law, and in contrast what can be seen as an evil act is an act carried out with the motivation being self-love or self centred tendencies. Furthermore, choosing to perform an evil act in order for superiority or even evil for the cause of being evil is seen by Kant as diabolical evil, but he denied its possibility in accordance with moral agents. Kant believes that all moral
People have constantly attempted to understand what evil truly is, and, if possible, how to eliminate this evil from their lives. However, first it must be known what it is that is being eliminated. Different people, cultures, and eras have all had a different view of what evil is, and how it affects their lives, and there is no true answer. Because of this, discussing the idea of whether people are born or can be evil is meaningless. The idea of what evil is, and whether people can be evil, is relative and cannot be applied to human nature in a universal way.
Tidd, J. M. (2008). From revolution to reform: A brief history of U.S. intelligence. The SAIS
Johnson, Robert, Johnson,. "Kant's Moral Philosophy." Stanford University. Stanford University, 23 Feb. 2004. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.
The energy industry is beginning to change. In today’s modern world, governments across the globe are shifting their focuses from traditional sources of power, like the burning coal and oil, to the more complex and scientific nuclear power supply. This relatively new system uses powerful fuel sources and produces little to no emissions while outputting enough energy to fulfill the world’s power needs (Community Science, n.d.). But while nuclear power seems to be a perfect energy source, no power production system is without faults, and nuclear reactors are no exception, with their flaws manifesting in the form of safety. Nuclear reactors employ complex systems involving pressure and heat. If any of these systems dysfunctions, the reactor can leak or even explode releasing tons of highly radioactive elements into the environment. Anyone who works at or near a nuclear reactor is constantly in danger of being exposed to a nuclear incident similar to the ones that occurred at the Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi plants. These major accidents along with the unresolved problems with the design and function of nuclear reactors, as well as the economic and health issues that nuclear reactors present serve to show that nuclear energy sources are not worth the service that they provide and are too dangerous to routinely use.