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Kant on Freedom of the Will
Abstract
Although there can be no doubt regarding the centrality of the concept of freedom in Kant's thought, there is considerable disagreement concerning its proper interpretation and evaluation. The evaluative problem stems largely from Kant's insistence that freedom involves a transcendental or non-empirical component, which requires the resources of transcendental idealism in order to be reconciled with the “causality of nature.” There is also, however, a significant interpretive problem posed by the number of different conceptions of freedom to which Kant refers. In addition to “outer freedom” or freedom of action, and a relative, empirically accessible or “psychological” concept of freedom, which admits of degrees, Kant distinguishes between transcendental and practical freedom, both of which seem to involve indeterminism in the sense of an independence from determination by antecedent causes. Moreover, within this sphere he conceives of freedom as both absolute spontaneity (negative freedom), which is a condition of rational agency as such, and as autonomy (positive freedom), which is a condition of the appropriate moral motivation (acting from duty alone). Given this complexity, the present discussion must be highly selective. Specifically, it will focus initially on the nature of and relation between freedom as spontaneity and as autonomy. But since both of these senses of freedom affirm (albeit in different ways) an independence from natural causality, this necessitates a consideration of the relationship between freedom (in both senses) and transcendental idealism. And to situate Kant's views in their historical context, I shall frame the discussion with a brief account of the treatment of free will by some of his predecessors, on the one hand, and his idealistic successors, on the other.
I present a historical solution to the so-called Arbitrariness Objection (AO). The AO has been leveled against contemporary libertarian conceptions of free will and says that freedom of the will, conceived as freedom of indifference, implies that choices can be made for no reason. If successful, the AO would undermine the rationality of libertarian views, which is why a rebuttal of it is of systematic interest. I discuss the attempt of Christian August Crusius (1715–75) in order to explain that Crusius rejects the AO by showing that there is no choice without a reason.
The central question posed in this paper is whether (and how) it is possible to defend Kant?s concept of transcendental freedom. In order to provide an answer to this question, the argument of the third antinomy is examined, as well as the application of the solution of this antinomy to the sphere of human action. Comparative analysis of the most common interpretations of Kant?s position leads to the conclusion that the idea of transcendental freedom is plausible, but only if we accept the basic concepts on which Kant?s philosophy rests, in the first place the doctrine of transcendental idealism, and if we adequately interpret the arguments Kant gives us.
The present article intends to review the discussion between causalists and finalists in Criminal Law from the analysis of the freedom that Kant makes in the third antinomy of his Critique of Pure Reason, in order to bring to light the underlying theme in this discussion and to review its attainment.
Brown and Levinson's Theory of Politeness (1978, 1987) has been criticized for its concept of negative face, a notion related to the idea of negative cult (Durkheim, 1982 [1912]) and to the idea of territory (Goffman, 1972 [1967]). The concept of freedom - freedom of action and freedom from imposition - however, which is actually a part of the definition of the theory, has so far not been taken into account by its critics. This idea of freedom is peculiar to Anglo-Saxon culture, and corresponds to the notion of negative liberty espoused by the historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin (2004). Later theories of politeness -those of Watts (2003), for example- are not based on a concept of freedom, but rather on a peculiarity of Brown and Levinson's theory that explains some of the criticism it has received.
This book is a comprehensive commentary on Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). It differs from most recent commentaries in paying special attention to the structure of the work, the historical context in which it was written, and the views to which Kant was responding. It argues that, despite its relative brevity, the Groundwork is the single most important work in modern moral philosophy and that its significance lies mainly in two closely related factors. The first is that it is here that Kant first articulates his revolutionary principle of the autonomy of the will, that is, the paradoxical thesis that moral requirements (duties) are self-imposed and that it is only in virtue of this that they can be unconditionally binding. The second is that for Kant all other moral theories are united by the assumption that the ground of moral requirements must be located in some object of the will (the good) rather than the will itself, which Kant terms heteronomy. Accordingly, what from the standpoint of previous moral theories was seen as a fundamental conflict between various views of the good is reconceived by Kant as a family quarrel between various forms of heteronomy, none of which are capable of accounting for the unconditionally binding nature of morality. Kant expresses the latter by claiming that they reduce the categorical to a merely hypothetical imperative.
Recent interpreters of Kantâ__s moral philosophy and contemporary advocates of neo-Kantian moral theories generally minimize the importance of Kantâ__s metaphysical beliefs. This volume re-evaluates these minimizing approaches, exploring Kantian positions on such topics as sin, the relation between God and ethics, the metaphysics of human freedom and the possibility of knowledge of God. This volume is the first to examine all of these topics within the context of Kantâ__s ethical writings.
The book presents Kant's theory of the cognitive subject. It begins by setting the stage for his discussions of the unity and power of 'apperception' by presenting the attempts of his predecessors to explain the nature of the self and of self-consciousness, and the relation between self-consciousness and object cognition. The central chapters lay out the structure of the transcendental deduction, the argument from cognition to the necessary unity of apperception, and the relations among his theories of the unity and power of apperception, the 'psychological ideal,' and the 'noumenal' self. Later chapters draw on this material to offer a more precise account of his criticism that the Rational Psychologists failed to understand the unique character of the representation 'I-think' and to defend Kant against the charges that his theory of cognition and apperception is inconsistent or psychologistic. The concluding chapters present Kantian alternatives to recent theories of the activities of the self in cognition and moral action, the self-ascription of belief, knowledge of other minds, the appropriate explananda for theories of consciousness, and the efficacy of 'transcendental' arguments.
This volume contains a collection of seventeen essays which have been previously published on Kant and an addendum to one of these essays that is here published for the first time. Although these essays cover virtually the full spectrum of the author's work on Kant, ranging from his epistemology, metaphysics, and moral theory to his views on teleology, political philosophy, the philosophy of history, and the philosophy of religion, most of them revolve around three basic themes: the nature of transcendental idealism, freedom of the will, and the purposiveness of nature. The first two of these have been the foci of the author's work on Kant since its inception and the essays dealing with them in this volume are intended as clarifications, elaborations, and further developments of what the author has said on these topics elsewhere. Among their major new elements is the introduction of a significant comparative dimension, which is intended both to place Kant's views in their historical context and to explore their contemporary relevance. To this end, Kant's views are contrasted with those of his major predecessors and immediate successors, as well as present-day philosophers. The concept of the purposiveness of nature is the major contribution of the third Critique (Critique of the Power of Judgment) to Kant's "critical" philosophy and one the main concerns of the essays dealing with it is to demonstrate its central place in Kant's thought.
Se reflexiona sobre las fuentes de la normatividad según el neokantismo contemporáneo que ha dividido a los neokantianos en realistas y constructivistas. Se analiza el kantismo constructivista de Christine Korsgaard, para mostrar sus alcances y limitaciones, y se propone como alternativa fundar la normatividad en la sola idea de libertad, en cuanto valor interno o absoluto no normativo, como la entiende Kant. Esta propuesta que permite esbozar las líneas de un neokantismo que articule los modelos constructivistas y realistas a partir de la sola idea de libertad.
It is standardly assumed that, in Kant, "free agency" is identical to moral agency and requires the will or practical reason. Likewise, it is often held that the concept of "spontaneity" that Kant uses in his theoretical philosophy is very different from, and much thinner than, his idea of practical spontaneity. In this paper I argue for the contrary view: Kant has a rich theory of doxastic free agency, and the spontaneity in empirical thought (which culminates in judgments of experience) is essentially the same sort of spontaneity found in the practical use of reason. Accordingly, the faculties of understanding and practical reason both possess genuine autonomy.
This paper gives an account of the argument of Schopenhauer's essay On the Freedom of the Human Will, drawing also on his other works. Schopenhauer argues that all human actions are causally necessitated, as are all other events in empirical nature, hence there is no freedom in the sense of liberum arbitrium indifferentiae. However, our sense of responsibility or agency (being the ‘doers of our deeds’) is nonetheless unshakeable. To account for this Schopenhauer invokes the Kantian distinction between empirical and intelligible characters. The paper highlights divergences between Schopenhauer and Kant over the intelligible character, which for Schopenhauer can be neither rational nor causal. It raises the questions whether the intelligible character may be redundant to Schopenhauer's position, and whether it can coherently belong to an individual agent, suggesting that for Schopenhauer a more consistent position would have been to deny freedom of will to the individual.
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