A practical account of Kantian freedom

Matthew C. Altman

pp. 211-242

in: The Palgrave Kant handbook, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

Altman examines and evaluates competing interpretations of Kant's theory of freedom and concludes that the only way for us to be free as noumena and causally determined as phenomena is to conceive of our actions in two different ways, either from the practical standpoint or the theoretical standpoint. That is, we can commit ourselves to causal determinism with regard to objective claims about the world, but in acting we must conceive of ourselves as free agents. This "practical account" of Kantian freedom has several explanatory advantages over both the compatibilist and the libertarian interpretations of Kant's theory, and it is more consistent with the epistemic limitations that Kant establishes in the Critique of Pure Reason.

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel