Abstract

In Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone Kant claims that human beings are radically evil and that this evil is to be regarded as both freely chosen and universal. Scholars have long struggled to makes sense of this paradoxical notion. In this paper I propose that the regulative concept of the supersensible as presented in the third Critique can be legitimately extended to cover the mysterious “subjective ground” of radical evil. More specifically, I argue that the symmetry between radical evil and purposive nature warrants the notion of a common supersensible principle underlying both phenomena that is neither nature nor freedom but that motivates their mutual incursions. I call this doctrine of reflective judgment “supersensible monism.”