CEPPA Talk (online) – Carla Bagnoli (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia)

Title: Hope and the Powers of Shared Agency

Abstract: This paper argues that Kant’s theory of radical evil exalts the powers of organized, shared and institutional, agency. In section 1, I illustrate the paradoxicality of radical evil and the novelty of Kant’s “empowering” conception focused on human agency. In section 2, I argue that radical evil entails a normative variety of unintelligibility, signaling lack of self-knowledge and self-alienation. In section 3, I show that the (moral) opacity of maxims does not undermine one’s awareness of the moral law, does not prevent self and co-legislation, and therefore does not preclude the exercise of moral agency. In section 4, I account for the distinctive functions of hope and faith, denying that they are complementary. In sections 5 and 6, I argue that the reliance on hope or faith points to different modes of contrasting evil by organizing human agency in institutional forms. In section 7, I conclude that the most powerful response to radical evil is the organization of shared agency – a communal, ethical, political, and institutional enterprise.

Location: Online but streamed from Edgecliffe G03