Kant’s Journey on Evil

This reflection offers an overview of the development of Kant’s thought on evil from a Leibnizian starting point to his definitive stance in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. It was a journey with two significant milestones along the way. First, his recognition that what he termed “physical evil” was not evil at all but rather just the workings of nature with harmful consequences. Second, that evil, despite its negative results, is ontologically positive. The journey’s final destination was reached when Kant concluded that there is only one real evil, moral evil—the evil that we do to each other and which comes from within.