The Idea of Evil
Chapter One
Kant:
The Perversion of Freedom
Towards the end of his lecture course on the history of philosophy, delivered
in Berlin during the 1820s, the dominant thinker of the age paid homage to
the achievement of a great predecessor. It was Immanuel Kant's decisive
insight, Hegel declared, that
for the will ... there is no other aim than that derived from itself, the aim of
its freedom. It is a great advance when the principle is established that freedom
is the last hinge on which man turns, a highest possible pinnacle, which allows
nothing further to be imposed upon it; thus man bows to no authority, and
acknowledges no obligations, where his freedom is not respected.
Hegel's encomium still succeeds in conveying the original impact of Kant's
thought, the sense of a new philosophical dawn which the Critical Philosophy
aroused amongst contemporaries. From the first, Kant's philosophy was recognized
as revolutionary - and in a more than merely metaphorical sense. For
as Hegel, with thirty years' hindsight, insisted in hi ... read full excerpt from The Idea of Evil ebook
