Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 467 writings were too pedantic and tedious, and that his empirical and materialistic science was overtaken by eighteenth-century Newtonianism. His disciple, Frangois Bernier, sought to overcome some of these difficulties with his seven-volume Abr~g~ de la Philosophic de Gassendi (Lyon, 1674-75, and Lyon, 1684). (This work has just been republished, edited by Silvia Murr, by Fayard in Paris in 1992. ) Even if these explanations for the neglect of Gassendi are correct, still in many ways his combination of scepticism, empiricism, hypothetical Epicureanism (somewhat truncated to eliminate the features that were incompatible with Christianity), and a nonsuperstitious religious view, provide one of the more interesting and intriguing new philosophies of the seventeenth century. This catalogue is a wonderful way of entering into the many facets of the Gassendian world. RICHARD H. POPKIN Washington University Universityof California, Los Angeles Gordon E. Michalson, Jr. Fallen Freedom:Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. xii + 172. Cloth, $34.5o. Recent Anglo-American scholarship is showing increased interest in the deeper, richer dimensions of Kant's moral thought beyond the characterization of Kant as the merely formal, deontological ethicist. Therefore, as Michalson's study exemplifies, attention is being given to other conceptions central to Kant's complete account of morality and virtue. Focusing on Kant's notions of radical evil and moral regeneration in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Michalson's stated purpose is twofold: (1) to explicate Kant's position in regard to these two terms; (2) to "highlight the vacillation in Kant's thinking" as a manifestation of the "historical transition" from medieval theology to the Enlightenment (5, 7). At stake is "humanity's self-understanding" made problematic after 175~ by the challenge to the old views of transcendence by the new mechanistic, Newtonian view of nature. It is "Kant's genius," writes Michalson, to "show how to have both science and religion," but he concludes that the solution presents a deep ambivalence in Kant's position on 'other-worldliness' (1-3). The two-part study raises questions crucial to the issue of the inner coherence of the Kantian text and interprets Kant's whole problematic in light of postmodern discourse. The central problem is the apparent tension between the reliance on human capacities and the appeal to supernatural cooperation, a tension understood as the product of incompatible vocabularies---ofethical rationalism and Biblical imagery. The whole conception of radical evil, by casting doubt on the actualization of a moral universe, the study further claims, poses a "genuine threat to Kant's entire outlook" (6). Opening the first part with a description of pervasive human concern about the enigma of moral evil, Michalson outlines Kant's position in general toward this problem--highlighting the parallel between his notion of radical evil and the doctrine of original sin and the affirmed inscrutability of evil. Specifically analyzing and critiqu- 468 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3~:3 JULY ~993 ing central conceptions of Kant's definition of moral evil--maxim-making, propensity to evil, disposition (Gesinnung)--Michalson concludes that the key concepts have no explanatory power. The lack of an explanation as to why the primary act is freely undertaken, leaves us, on his analysis, with a sense of the pure contingency of the act which, furthermore, threatens the Kantian account of moral agency. The study's conclusions from the first part set up the dilemma from which the second part begins. The fundamental problem for Kant's account of moral regeneration is stated as follows: either "if radical evil is a corruption of the underlying disposition , and if the disposition is itself the source of moral regeneration, then the obligation to undertake moral regeneration appears to rest on an impossibility," or "if we simply admit our moral incapacity and put our trust in divine grace, then any resulting regeneration would not be a genuinely moral regeneration by Kant's standards, for the crucial element of autonomy would be missing" (73). Finding Kant's entire account a "nest of tangles," Michalson emphasizes two issues: How does the agent in need of moral regeneration actually effect the turn to virtue? and...