Article published in: Thinking in Value (No 2) Agathology, pp. 203–228
The analyses conducted here on the structure of the thinking subject, whose final accomplishment is supposed to be the realization of goodness, have led us to the thesis that the experience of evil makes it necessary for thinking to open up to a new dimension. Further, we have concluded – noting an interesting parallel on this issue between Kant’s and Tischner’s philosophy – that this new type of thinking should, in the broadest possible sense, be religious in character. Kant, after discovering that “a man of good will can be an instrument of evil,” postulates that man enter the sphere of religious community life; Tischner, faced with the “death of man” after Auschwitz and Kolyma, finds that man is a being in need of grace. We have already presented the most important points of Kant’s philosophy of religion in the previous chapter; now we would like to elaborate on Tischner’s religious thinking, also rooted in the experience of evil. But first, one important remark must be made.
