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Abstract
Perhaps nothing Kant wrote has proven as shocking to his contemporaries an as perplexing to present day readers as his account of radical evil in Part One of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. The very idea that there could be such a thing as a propensity to evil in human nature proved shocking to his contemporaries because of its suggestion of the doctrine of original sin, the feature of Christian orthodoxy that was most inimical to the ideals of the Enlightenment. In current times, the puzzlement derives partly from the apparent metaphysical excesses of Kant's account, particularly the idea of a timeless choice of disposition, and partly from the ethical rigorism underlying his analysis, which seems offensive to modern sensibilities. In spite of its language, Kant's account need not be understood in a metaphysically objectionable way. It constitutes a deepening of, rather than a break with, the moral psychology of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason.