Postulate of Freedom........Lonesh

Kant says in the preface to the Critique of Practical Reason that the concept of freedom is "the key stone of the whole architecture of the system of pure reason and even speculative reason." Kant gives it a special place to freedom among other postulates. In the first Critique Kant considers freedom as logically possible and practically useful.

The special statues given to freedom can be very well read from the 'Critique of Practical Reason'. Freedom, however among all the ideas of speculative reason is the only possibility we know apriori. We do not understand it, but we know it as the condition of the moral law which we do know. The ideas of God and immortality are, on the contrary, not conditions of the moral law, but only conditions of the necessary object of a will which is determined by this law, this will being morally the practical use of our pure reason.

Freedom in its positive conception should not be given a theoretical employment. The role of idea of freedoms and the intelligible world is, rather a practical one. It provides a conception of ourselves which motives us to obey the moral law. As freedom of will can't be theoretically established it is asserted only from the practical standpoint. It is impossible to give empirical or theoretical evidence for freedom.

Kant's thought on freedom of the will can be seen going through five phases. In his first position he takes the stand that free human actions are those that have internal rather than external causes. As the second position, we have Kant stating that we cannot prove the existence of free human actions which are not dictated by deterministic laws of nature. This is explained in the Critique of Pure Reason. The third phase can be seen in Groundwork, where he states that it is possible to prove the existence of human freedom and thereby also prove that moral law applies to us. In the fourth phase we see Kant stating that we can prove the freedom of our will form the indisputable fact of our religion. This can be seen in the Critique of Practical Reason. In the fifth phase Kant is no longer concerned with proving the existence of free will but rather showing that its existence simply implies the in escapable possibility of human evil but equally the concomitantly indestructible possibility of human conversions to goodness.

The concept of freedom, in so far as its reality is proved by an apodictic law of practical reason, is the key stone of the whole architecture of the system of pure reason and even of speculative reason. The other concepts of God and Immortality are mere ideas, and are unsupported by anything in speculative reason. Though freedom is given a special status, it does not mean that it is totally different from other postulates.