Diligently working on my project for that week, the steady din of laughter, rummaging paper and frantic footsteps kept my mind keenly focused on the paper in front of me. In the midst of adding the final touches to the page, a loud thud echoed throughout the room sounding as if a brick had been dropped to the tiled ground. I looked up in time to see the victim’s face gnarl into what could only be excruciating pain, as he opened his mouth to let out a piercing wail. Standing a foot away from him was the perpetrator, my fellow preschool classmate, Spencer, with a red building block in his hand and his face—the same fire engine red as the block—staring at the ground in shame. I quickly put down my Cerulean crayon and inched my way through the waddling huddle of toddlers to get a closer look at the crime scene.
Although at age four I did not concern myself with Kantian ethics, I knew that hitting any human being with a block was intrinsically bad—not just bad, but evil. Sixteen years later, the memory of this incident paints Immanuel Kant’s explanation of evil as a failure of applying the Categorical Imperative to one’s actions: “I ought never to proceed except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become universal law." Though I should not hit anyone because I do not want to be hit, I also deeply do not even have the desire to anyone. According to Kant, “Like a jewel, [a good will] would still shine by itself, as something that has its full worth in itself." Thus, this desire to do good and avoid evil is valuable in and of itself. Spencer hit him because he did not want to share his blocks, but Kant poses the root of his evil act stems from every human’s innate propensity to evil and our own free will to decide whether to act on the impulse or not. He explains, “We call a human being evil, however, not because he performs actions that are evil, but because these are so constituted that they allow the inference of evil maxims in him." Spencer allowed evil to interfere between his individual maxim and own good, resulting in an action of moral evil.
Spencer’s actions resulted in a harsh reprimanding and time out in the corner of the classroom, along with the victim being sent to the nurse to get an ice pack, but Kant states, “The moral worth of the action does not lie in the effect that is expected from it." Therefore, the effects of Spencer’s actions (i.e. the pain the victim endured) does not qualify hitting someone as a moral evil, but rather the action of hitting an innocent human is wrong in itself because no one desires it to become “a universal law." Unlike our teacher who scolded him for hurting another student, Kant claims that only by deviating from the principles of duty, his action is evil. Kant’s deontological approach surpasses the simple conditional Golden Rule we all learn in preschool, replacing it with the categorical imperative and offering insight concerning good and evil.
