kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca wrote:
> The unpardonable sin? - blasphemy against God? It is still
> a radical evil... but in Kant's view, an unforgivable one.
> But it still isn't diabolical evil. Kant is relying on
> Augustine's privation of the good argument.
This is a distinction without a difference -- as are most distinctions that exist only in thought and are not a serious *and* self-conscious attempt to summarize practice.
Kant was of course in fact summarizing practice -- the practice of a ruling power attempting to silence dissent. Yoshie's earlier reference to the Thrasymachus debate in the *Republic* is on the mark. The dynamic informs even the most advanced bourgeois thought. One of the leading Jacobins (perhaps Robespierre himself) said something like the people should concentrate on private happiness and not interfere with the large questions of state. (Sorry I can't give a source and a more accurate paraphrase. I came across it decades ago, I think in one of the brief page fillers in MR.)
Carrol