Independence

This chapter concerns human freedom, a topic that Kant remarkably struck from the list of main topics in rational psychology, although right before the Critique, he had given it pride of place. Hence, it is crucial to see why the Critique neither presents nor directly criticizes the rationalist arguments for our freedom with which Kant was extremely familiar. Kant's views here must be understood in terms of clues from his lectures, and especially in the light of the different kinds of arguments to freedom, which he presents in his Groundwork (a ‘deduction’) and second Critique (a ‘fact of reason’). I connect the changes in his presentation there with the clearer expression, in the second ed. of the first Critique, of his anti‐rationalist doctrine of self‐knowledge (as dependent on knowing spatial things). In this way, I show how—to appreciate the full interconnection and development of Kant's theoretical and practical views on freedom—we need to go beyond readings by Beck, Paton, Henrich, and others.

Doctrine · Epistemology · Independence (probability theory) · Presentation (obstetrics) · Pride · Sociology · Theology · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Mathematics · Philosophy

• Kant on Common Sense and Scepticism

  Open Access•Paul Guyer•Kantian Review•2003

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