Radical Evil

A dry hut, a warm blanket, and desires simple enough to satisfy: from Seneca to Rousseau, that was the recipe Immanuel Kant refused for keeping human beings out of moral trouble. Paul Guyer reads Book One of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, where the trouble goes deeper than desire, all the way into freedom itself, and a propensity to evil runs through the whole species. Along the way: an argument Kant had with his younger self, a dictionary entry with twenty meanings, and an infamous footnote Guyer refuses to read around. What kind of optimism survives a claim like that?