 A third conception of “radical evil” takes the term to refer to acts or practices (like slavery and genocide) that do not merely violate rational principles but also constitute an effort to repudiate moral rationality altogether, or at least to transcend it. When we steal or lie, there is a sense in which we might be failing to treat others with the respect that they deserve. And as we have seen, Kant does not hesitate to view such irrational choices as stemming from our propensity to “radical evil”. But radical evil on this third conception is different: it involves an intentional refusal to acknowledge that some group of persons has any moral standing at all—the kind of moral standing that would prohibit us from instigating or complying with their humiliation, degradation, or extinction.