More than a Postulate: Kant on the Actuality of Freedom (original) (raw)

Freedom on This and the Other Side of Kant Unabridged August 2019

represent a tendency to trace the "archaeology" of the notion of freedom either to G.W.F. Hegel's Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts 4 or to Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty. 5 " Without claiming to be an exhaustive investigation of the discussion of freedom since or prior to Immanuel Kant, this paper proposes, however, that the meaning of freedom since Kant has for all intents and purposes overlooked the tradition of autonomous freedom prior to Kant that stems from Pico della Mirandola and influenced Leibniz, Sulzer, and Tetens-all of whom shaped Kant's understanding of freedom. 1 Many thanks to James Cochrane for the careful reading and helpful suggestions for improving an earlier draft of this paper! All errors, of course, are my mistakes.

Autonomy, Freedom, and the Summum Bonnum: Kant’s Practical Postulates

2015

In this paper, I attempt to give an explanation for why Kant thought he needed to supply two practical postulates in addition to freedom in his 2nd Critique. On the face of the work, it seems that freedom, known by the "fact of reason," is all that is needed in order to establish that subjects endowed with reason are ethically responsible for their actions. However, Kant was right to see that there is more to the picture, and we can track his recognition of this between his treatment of the matter in the earlier Groundwork and the later 2nd Critique. By the time of the 2nd Critique, Kant's intention was not to merely say that we are responsible for our actions and we have a duty to uphold the moral law; rather, he was more concerned with analyzing how rational agents experience ethical responsibility as a duty. In order for this to be so, freedom is not enough, for freedom, supplied by reason, cannot tell us why we should act in this or that way. This must be supplied by a further postulate, the "supreme good," which for Kant is twofold: the agent must believe in God, and the agent must believe in the immortality of his/her soul, in order to act ethically. This does not sit well with contemporary commentators, given the theistic overtones, so I attempt to analyze away the religious connotations and sort out what work he believes these two additional postulates are doing for the overall picture of ethics he lays out in the 2nd Critique.

Kant’s Metaphysics of Freedom (1775-1782): Theoretical and Practical Perspectives

Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics. A Critical Guide, ed. Courtney Fugate, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 179-193., 2018

Kant’s lectures on metaphysics are an important source when we want to understand the development and the sources of his thinking. Among the surviving lectures those from the mid-1770s and from 1782/83 stand out. They document not only Kant’s endeavours to redefine the contents and the methods of previous metaphyiscs as part of a critique of pure reason. Eventually, they also testify to the close connection between his published writings and his lectures in the shape they were passed on to us. This is also true of Kant’s remarks on the concept of freedom. While the transcripts are an indispensable source for our knowledge of Kant’s thoughts on the concept of freedom in the 1770s because he did not publish anything relevant during this period of time, the Metaphysics Mrongovius does not include anything important that we cannot also look up in the "Critique of Pure Reason".

Bolstering the Keystone: Kant on the Incomprehensibility of Freedom

Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 2020

In this paper, I give an explanation and defense of Kant's claim that we cannot comprehend how freedom is possible. I suggest that this is a significant point that has been underappreciated in the secondary literature. My conclusion has a variety of implications both for Kant scholars and for those interested in Kantian ideas more generally. Most notably, if Kant is right that there are principled reasons why freedom is beyond our comprehension, then this would lift an undesirable explanatory burden off the shoulders of his ethical and metaethical views. It would be a boon for Kantians if they could ground their lofty claims about the unique, elevated status of rational agency without committing to an implausible view of libertarian freedom. On the negative side, there are certain debates concerning moral motivation and transcendental idealism that might have to change in response to Kant's claims about the incomprehensibility of freedom.

Freedom Immediately after Kant

European Journal of Philosophy, 2019

Kant's effort to defend the coexistence of transcendental freedom and natural necessity is one of the crowning achievements of the first Critique. Yet by identifying the will with practical reason in his moral philosophy, he lent support to the view that the moral law is the causal law of a free will-the result of which, as Reinhold argued, left immoral action impossible. However, Reinhold's attempt to separate the will from practical reason generated difficulties of its own, which Maimon was quick to point out. By identifying freedom with indifferent choice, Maimon argued, Reinhold had no resources to explain why a free will acts at all. My aim in this article is to show how Fichte's theory of freedom seeks to reconcile these two commitments: The key lies in what I call Fichte's Genetic Model, according to which indifferent choice is the original condition of the will, but a condition we must actively overcome.