| Phi 110 Fall 2015 |
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In his final section, Kant finally takes himself to establish the possibility of a categorical imperative, resting this on a concept of freedom he had developed in his Critique of Pure Reason and that he later went on to discuss further in his Critique of Practical Reason (a work whose title he spoke of in his preface). Freedom is a difficult concept for Kant because he takes all events (including human actions as part of the natural world) to be determined fully by preceding causes; indeed, he regards this determinism not merely as universally true of our experience but as a requirement for experience to even be possible. His solution is to move freedom and morality outside our experience (something that is in keeping with his claim at the beginning of section II that acting from duty is not something we can experience).
• On pp. 52-53 (Akad. pp. 450-2), Kant both identifies freedom and the autonomy of self-legislation and sketches his solution to the problem of freedom via two “standpoints” or “points of view” from which we may regard ourselves.
• He uses the two “worlds” of sense and reason that are associated with these standpoints to provide his answer to the question of the possibility of the categorical imperative on pp. 54-55 (Akad. pp. 453-5).
• The final part of the book (pp. 56-62; Akad. pp. 455-63) somewhat qualifies this answer. Our relation to the “intelligible world” is different from our relation to the sensible world of experience and doesn’t provide the basis for answering the twin questions ‘How is freedom possible?’ and ‘How can pure reason be practical?’—i.e., ‘How can reason apart from sensible inclinations determine actions?’ or ‘How can we act from a categorical imperative?’ (see p. 58, Akad. pp. 458-9).