7 - Freedom
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Kant's aim in the Groundwork was to search for and establish the supreme principle of morality (G 4:392). At the end of the Second Section, the search (which was “analytical”) is complete, but the “synthetic” stage of the argument has not yet begun (G 4:445). It is only in the Third Section of the Groundwork that Kant proposes to justify morality against the skeptical worry that it might be no more than a “cobweb of the brain.” He intends to do this by arguing that if we have free will, then morality is real and the moral law is valid for us (G 4:445–7). Kant's view about freedom of the will, however, is one of the most unstable areas in his philosophy. It is a topic he frequently revisited, never saying quite the same thing he ever said before. Kant's theory of freedom, and especially the idea that we are free only in the intelligible world beyond nature, has also been the chief stumbling block to the acceptance of his moral philosophy. The scandal has only increased with the passage of time, as fewer and fewer moral philosophers find it tolerable to burden morality with an extravagant supernaturalist metaphysics.
The changes in Kant's own pronouncements on the topic of freedom are so fundamental that it is not possible to offer a single theory that can be squared with all the texts in even a minimal way.
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- Kantian Ethics , pp. 123 - 141Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007