Leibniz’ und Kants Anthropozentrierung des Bösen und das neue Böse bei Nietzsche und Musil

Leibniz’s metaphysics already justifies evil not only through the normative power of God, assuming that it is simultaneously the omnipotence of reason. For Kant, evil becomes definitively the sole problem of the rational being, human. While for Leibniz, the divine will had organized all practical relations of humans and movements of the physical world in such a way that the practical reason of all individuals is metaphysically constituted and evil is justified, Kant shifts the focus to the practical reason of humans as autonomous subjects. In this paradigm, God loses his metaphysical power, retaining only a moral role. Nietzsche and Musil build upon this context, yet surprisingly, they do not further advance this development. Instead, they reject the power of pure reason, which becomes absolute for Kant. Simultaneously, they draw on God’s metaphysical power over evil to formulate their concept of the new evil that confronts us in the practical contexts of modern life.