Questions Are humans good by nature?The crooked timber and radical evil: a seed of good that nothing destroys, a propensity to evil one has given oneself

Are humans good by nature?Both at once

The crooked timber and radical evil: a seed of good that nothing destroys, a propensity to evil one has given oneself

The crooked timber; radical evil; "Aus so krummem Holze…"; disposition to good and propensity to evil

Immanuel Kant 1724 · 1804Set the limits of reason; act from duty.

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What it claims

Man is, by nature, the bearer of a seed of good that nothing destroys and of a radical propensity to evil that he has given himself: he is neither innocent nor condemned, and can only come closer to the good.

Why

Man has a seed of good that nothing destroys and a propensity to evil he has given himself, universal even in the best.

The same idea through history

Augustine of Hippo400Augustine holds that the propensity to evil is universal and comes from the will. Kant keeps the idea of a universal propensity to evil, but refuses to see in it an inheritance or an instinct: for him it is an act of freedom.

Blaise Pascal1660Pascal also describes a man both great and wretched, but his "double nature" concerns the whole human condition; Kant's concerns the orientation of the will.

Immanuel Kant1784In the sixth proposition of the Idea for a Universal History, Kant writes that from wood as crooked as that of which man is made nothing perfectly straight can be built. He speaks of politics: even the best head of state is a man.

Immanuel Kant1793In the first part of Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant studies "radical evil in human nature": he describes three original dispositions to good and a universal propensity to evil.

In short

"The crooked timber and radical evil: a seed of good that nothing destroys, a propensity to evil one has given oneself" is an argument by Immanuel Kant (Idea for a Universal History, 1784 (sixth proposition); Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, 1793, book I, 1784) on the question "Are humans good by nature?" (answer: both at once). Its claim: Man is, by nature, the bearer of a seed of good that nothing destroys and of a radical propensity to evil that he has given himself: he is neither innocent nor condemned, and can only come closer to the good. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P6). AskPhilosophy presents 5 objections, 4 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Idea for a Universal History, 1784 (sixth proposition); Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, 1793, book I

Valid with an implicit premise

Must we choose between "man is good" and "man is bad"? Kant answers that both are true, but not at the same level. At the level of dispositions, every person has a seed of good (animality, humanity, and above all personality, that is respect for the moral law) that nothing can destroy. At the level of the will, every person also has a propensity to put inclinations before the law, even when his acts are correct: this is "radical evil", radical in the sense of root. This propensity is not an instinct: if it were, one could not blame man for it. It is an act of freedom, for which no further cause can be given. Hence the image of the crooked timber: from man as he is, nothing perfectly straight will ever be built, but one can come close to the straight. The P1 to P6 form is our reconstruction. Kant refuses a "half and half mixture": see the last objection. We cite the German text; the translation is ours.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P6, the computer finds a case where man has ineradicable good dispositions, a universal propensity to evil, and where one must come close to the straight, but where his propensity to evil is not "by nature" but only frequent: one can no longer speak of a double nature.

With its six premises, the conclusion follows. Three points call for attention. First P3: Kant himself sees the difficulty of saying both "innate" and "freely chosen". His answer is that this choice is an "intelligible" act, outside time (see the internal objection). Then P4, which relies on experience while Kant says elsewhere that maxims cannot be observed, even one's own: this is why the proof is mostly a priori. Finally P5 belongs to politics: the crooked wood speaks of a head of state, not of moral nature. We link it to the same idea, but Kant does not do so in these terms.

Analogy. A mountain tree, bent by the wind since its birth. A carpenter cannot make a perfectly straight beam from it. But he can make a fine frame by taking its curve into account. Kant says we are that wood: neither useless nor straight, and that wisdom is learning to build with it.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1793 · attacks premise 2

Summary: in a letter to Herder and his wife of 7 June 1793, just after the book appeared, Goethe mocks Kant: after a long life spent cleaning his philosopher's cloak of all sorts of prejudices, he has stained it with "radical evil", so that Christians too will come and kiss its hem. This is usually read as the charge of going back to original sin.

Kant replies

We have not yet found a direct reply by Kant in the texts.

Kant What Kant himself says of the origin of this propensity (book I, 3)

Summary: Kant writes that sensibility and natural inclinations cannot explain the propensity to evil, because they have no direct relation to evil and we cannot be held responsible for them. The propensity to evil, on the other hand, must be imputable to us as a fault of which we are the author, despite its deep root in the will. It is therefore neither a heredity nor an instinct.

The debate goes on (our summary) Goethe targets the word, which recalls original sin. Kant does not contest the resemblance, but refuses to explain it by the transmission of a fault: he wants the propensity to be an act of freedom. It remains that saying "radical evil, innate and yet due to our freedom" requires accepting a notion of an act outside time, which Goethe, like many others, finds hard.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Open disagreement on the status of the thesis: pure philosophy (Kant) or a religious doctrine taken up (Goethe)? Commentators have defended both readings, and the text contains elements for each.

Hannah Arendt 1963 · attacks the conclusion

Summary: in a letter to Gershom Scholem of 24 July 1963, Arendt writes that evil is never "radical", only extreme, and that it has neither depth nor demonic dimension. It can lay waste to everything precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. She thus goes back, after the Eichmann trial, on the phrase "radical evil".

no reply

No reply possible: objection raised in 1963, after the author's death (1804).

The debate goes on (our summary) Arendt herself had spoken of "radical evil" in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), before giving up the word. She targets the idea of a deep and demonic evil, which Kant, who writes that a will evil in itself would be a diabolical being, does not assert either (6:35). The two agree on one point: evil is not diabolical. They differ on depth: a rooted propensity (Kant) or an absence of thought (Arendt).

Where the debate stands (our summary)A debate of interpretation still open: does "radical" mean "rooted" in Kant (hence compatible with banality), or "deep" (hence contradicted by Arendt)? Specialists are divided.

An objection Kant raises himself attacks premise 3

Summary: Kant asks how a propensity can be both innate and "our own act". A propensity precedes action, so is not yet an act, and what is morally evil must be a free act. There seems to be a contradiction in speaking of an innate propensity to evil that is imputable to us.

Kant replies

Kant Kant's answer (book I, 2)

Summary: Kant answers that the word "act" has two senses. The propensity is an act in the first sense: the adoption of the supreme maxim, which is the first use of freedom. It is also the formal ground of every act contrary to the law in the second sense (vices). The first is an "intelligible" act, knowable by reason without condition of time; the second is sensible, empirical, given in time. The propensity is called innate because it cannot be uprooted, the supreme maxim being itself evil.

The debate goes on (our summary) The answer shifts the difficulty: an act "outside time" that determines our whole life cannot be observed and seems rather postulated. Kant himself says (book I) that no further cause can be given for this first choice. His defenders see in it the limit of any philosophy of freedom, his critics an obscurity.

Where the debate stands (our summary)A question still discussed among Kant's commentators: does the notion of an intelligible act save freedom, or make it unverifiable? Neither reading is accepted by all.

Rousseau 1755 · attacks premise 2

Summary: Rousseau grants that people are wicked, a sad and continual experience spares the need for proof. But he holds that man is naturally good, and that what depraved him is the changes in his constitution, the progress he made and the knowledge he acquired. The propensity to evil would not be "radical": it would come from society.

Kant replies

see the argument

Kant What Kant says of the moralists "from Seneca to Rousseau" (book I, introduction)

Summary: Kant writes that the opinion that man is naturally good probably does not come from experience, when moral good and evil are in question: the history of all ages speaks far too strongly against it. He sees in it rather a benevolent supposition of moralists, from Seneca to Rousseau, to urge us to cultivate the seed of good that may lie in us.

The debate goes on (our summary) Kant does not cite the Discourse on Inequality, and Rousseau could not answer a book that appeared thirty-eight years later. Kant grants these moralists' good intention a useful aim (cultivating the seed of good). Rousseau might reply, as he writes of peoples observed by travellers, that the peoples Kant cites later in the same chapter are already far from the first state of nature. Neither has proof about man before any society.

Where the debate stands (our summary)A basic disagreement: one cannot observe man before society. Each reads history and travellers' accounts according to his thesis. Kant admits, however, like Rousseau, that education and institutions can make people progress.

Helvétius 1773 · attacks premise 1

Summary: Helvétius writes that mind and talents are never in men but the product of their desires and their particular position, and that the science of education perhaps comes down to placing men in a position that forces them to acquire the talents and virtues desired in them. Applied to Kant: nothing moral is given at the start, and the "disposition to personality" would be the product of education.

Kant replies

see the argument

Kant Kant, twenty years later: the refusal of a neutral state (book I, note on the disjunction)

Summary: Kant writes that it matters greatly for morals not to admit any moral middle, either in actions or in characters, as long as that is possible, because in this ambiguity all maxims risk losing their precision and firmness. He ranks those who say that man is by nature neither good nor bad among the "latitudinarians of neutrality". In a note, he adds that since the moral law is an incentive in us, lack of agreement with it can come only from a real opposition.

John Dewey 1922

Summary: Dewey observes that, since Locke, reformers have minimised native activities and insisted on acquired habit, and he cites Helvétius as having made the complete malleability of a "wholly empty and passive" nature the basis of the omnipotence of education. He judges this position excessive, and the opposite one too: for him all conduct is an interaction between elements of human nature and the environment.

Where the debate stands (our summary)The disagreement is basic: is the moral sense given from the start (Kant) or built by upbringing and circumstances (Helvétius)? Dewey proposes a third term, interaction. None of the theses is decisively established.