DHARMARAM VIDYA KSHETRAM
Pontifical Athenaeum of Philosophy, Theology and Canon Law
FREEDOM AND MORAL LAW
Lonesh Mathew
(Reg. No. M10402)
Director
Dr. Saju Chackalackal
An Assignment on Kantian Ethics
Bangalore,
December 2010.
FREEDOM AND MORAL LAW
INTRODUCTION
Kant’s moral theory is integrally related to the understanding of freedom. Understanding of one without the other is incomplete and untenable. Freedom is important because, on Kant's view, moral appraisal presupposes that we are free in the sense that we have the ability to do otherwise. Why? Consider Kant's example of a man who commits a theft. Kant holds that in order for this man’s action to be morally wrong, it must have been within his control in the sense that it was within his power at the time not to have committed a theft. Moral rightness and wrongness apply only to free agents who control their actions and have it in their power, at the time of their actions, either to act rightly or not.
In Critical Ethics freedom either as an idea or a fact, or a postulate, is the central notion in the writings of Kant. The First Critique points at the possibility or conceivability of freedom as a spontaneity. Kant’s Practical Philosophy is an attempt to feature freedom in terms of autonomy (self legislation). The first critique establishes the possibility of transcendental freedom while the second critique establishes its reality by showing its necessary connection with the moral law. The freedom of pure reason includes the freedom of practical reason as well as of theoretical reason.
The question now we can ask is ‘Are we free?’ For Kant we are free only with regard to moral law. We are free with regard to practical reason. We are not free with regard to theoretical reason because not given to us in sensible experience.
PHENOMENA AND NOUMENA
It is necessary to distinguish between ‘Phenomena’ and ‘Noumena’. Phenomenal is what speculatively known. Here everything is causally determined and causal spontaneity is unthinkable. Here knowledge remains in appearance. Noumena means thing ‘in itself’. It is the world of things in themselves outside nature, outside space and time. We can practically know noumena not theoretically.
At Phenomenal level we are not free because we are bound by causality. At noumenal level we are free because here we spontaneously originate causality/ causal series. In the Phenomenal world we are restricted by laws of nature. In the noumenal world we have laws of self legislation and it is grounded in reason because human beings are naturally endowed with rationality. The realm of Phenomena is the empirical world and the realm of noumena is intelligible world.
RECIPROCITY
The basis of Kant's moral law is ‘reciprocal’. The reciprocity is a mutual entailment between the following propositions;
1. The rational will is free
2. The moral law is unconditionally valid for the rational will
This reciprocity is emphasized in the ‘Critique of Practical Reason”. In the ‘Groundwork’, the emphasis on the inference from freedom of will as a presupposition of the practical standpoint to the validity of the moral law. In the ‘Critique of Practical Reason’ Kant holds that moral law needs no “deduction” of any kind, but must be accepted as a self-evident fact of reason. The rational will is free is considered to be the indispensible presupposition of all rational judgment.
TRANSCENDENTAL FREEDOM AND PRACTICAL FREEDOM
Kant distinguishes between transcendental freedom and practical freedom. Transcendental freedom is the capacity of a cause to produce a state spontaneously or ‘from itself’. Kant also contends that freedom, so constructed, is a pure transcendental idea, neither derivable from nor referable to any object that can be given in experience. A transcendentally free cause, in other words, is a first cause, one that can be effective independently of any prior cause. Practical freedom is that which we attribute to ourselves as agents. Kant’s metaphysical contention is that the will can be practically free only if it is transcendentally free. The Transcendental freedom could exist only in a Noumenal world, not in the empirical world.
Practical freedom is in turn taken into two distinct senses. In the negative sense, a will is practically free if it acts independently of external causes determining how it acts. In the positive sense, it is practically free if it has the power to determine itself in accordance with its own law (G 4.446). The key to understand the ‘reciprocity’ is Kant’s conception of freedom as a special kind of causality. From this Kant infers that it must operate according to a law. In the case of a free cause the law must be ‘of a special kind’ (G4.446). A natural cause is a state of a substance upon which another state of some substance follows in accordance with a necessary rule; this rule is the pertinent causal law. Since a will acts not only according to the laws but according to their representation (G4.412), the ‘law’ of a free cause must be one it represents itself.
In the case of an imperfectly rational will, which doesn't always act as reason directs, the law is represented as a principle according to which it ought to act. We could describe such law, in contrast to a natural law, as an imperative, or a normative law. We often explain human actions by reference to norms the agent recognizes. E.g., a chess player moves the bishop only diagonally because that is the rule in chess. In constructing the sentences we speak or write, we choose words that accord with the rules of grammar, and we use these rules to explain why sentences are formed as they are.
Explanations of actions according to the agent’s intentions are normative law explanations. Intentions are constituted by the normative principles the agent adopts in forming the intention. We might think that normative law explanations could make no sense, depending on what ‘ought’ to happen rather than what does happen. But these normative law explanations are highly appropriate to voluntary, rational actions because rational actions are by their very concept freely chosen and norm guided. We should be careful to distinguish between Kant’s theories of freedom. Kant doesn't mean to say that the moral law stands in the same relation to actions as a natural causal law to its effects.
FREEDOM AS A NECESSARY PRESUPPOSITION
In the ‘Groundwork’ Kant adopts a position according to which to act as if we are free is equal to be free. In Groundwork Kant considers freedom as a presupposition; a necessary presupposition; a transcendental principle. Kant arrives at the possibility of morality adopting freedom as a presupposition. Presupposing freedom becomes a regulative idea necessary for morality. In ‘Lectures on Ethics’ he states that “the freedom of the human being must be presupposed if it is to be an end in itself. So such being must therefore have freedom of the will. I don't know how I comprehend it; yet it is a necessary hypothesis if I am thinking of rational beings as ends-in-themselves.
Though Reason cannot prove that freedom is a fact of objective reality, the common experience of a moral agent willing is taken to be an exercise of the free will. Kant doesn't think that the freedom of the will can be theoretically demonstrated. In the CPrR, Kant argues that the idea of a free will is a transcendent idea to which no experience can ever be adequate. Two conclusions can be drawn; 1. That freedom cannot be attributed to the will as an object of experience.
2. That it can never be shown that the will is not free, if it is considered as a noumenon or thing in itself.
What is common to both the groundwork and the critique of practical reason is the claim that morality and freedom are reciprocal concepts.In the Groundwork Kant claims that “freedom must be presupposed as a property of the will of all rational beings” (G4:447). Freedom is not proved theoretically, but it is claimed to be a presupposition.
“Now one cannot possible think of a reason that would consciously receive direction from another quarter with respect to its judgments, since the subject would then attribute the determination of his judgment not to reason but to an impulse. Reason must regard itself as the author of its principles independently of alien influences; consequently, as practical reason or as the will of a rational being it must be regarded of itself as free”. (G 4:448) The assurance of freedom that we can have derives from our own consciousness of duty which according to Kant is apriori in origin and inconceivable if we were not free already to some extent. A moral agent is said to fulfil his duty implies that he or she is conscious of freedom. That means moral agent must admit that it is possible for him to do what ought to be done and hence he is conscious of freedom.
FREEDOM A TRANSCENDENTAL CONDITION
The freedom that Kant introduces in the second critique is not ‘practical translation of a natural law’, but transcendental freedom.
No determing ground of the will except the universal legislative form can serve as a law for it, such will must be conceived as wholly independent of the natural law of appearences in their mutual relations, i.e., the law of causality. Such independence is called freedom in the strictest sense, i.e., trannscendental ssense. Therfore, a will to which only the legislative form of the maxim can serve as a law is a free will (CPrR Ak.V,29(Beck 28).
This transcendental freedom is involved in the autonomous legislation of moral law. Hence, it is not a postulate but a fact of reason. It is this transcendental freedom as directed to moral disposition and action in the world and to the promotion of the highest and complete good. However, freedom as a fact of reason, as content of our consciousness, is the basis of the moral agent’s attempts to translate the moral law into his own maxim.
Kant's conception of freedom has two distinct aspects. The First Critique introduces the concept of freedom as spontaneity (that faculty which initiates a new causal series in time, unconstrained by any alien forces). In the Groundwork and other ethical works Kant brings out the concept of freedom as autonomy (the capacity of self legislation and independence from any pre-given law). These may be distinguished as a freedom from any form of dependency, and a freedom to legislate for oneself. They stand for a negative and a positive understanding of freedom. In the negative freedom, “the will is a kind of causality belonging to living beings so far as they are rational”. Here a will is practically free if it acts independently of external causes determining how it acts. Negative freedom is, then, the power to restrain and overcome inclination by reason. This is possible through our will which exercises freedom of choice to bring about our independence from sensuous impulse in our rational determination.
In the positive sense “the will is in all its actions a law to itself’ expresses. Here freedom is the power of causal determination ensuing from our own reason that enables us to judge and act autonomously. It is moral law which leads us directly to the concept of freedom. The assurance of freedom that we can have derives from our own consciousness of duty. Duty according to Kant is apriori in origin and inconceivable. It is a transcendental condition. The fact is that a moral agent is said to be fulfil his duty implies that he or she is conscious of freedom
To have freedom and to exercise it in acting morally is to be responsible moral agent, whose actions are not merely free actions but which acts as a free agent under moral law. A free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same. The will itself is the source of moral laws, is the faculty of autonomous self legislation that is pure reason in its ability to be practical. Freedom is thus the inner value of the world. Autonomy and self legislation are complementary dimensions at the basis of human freedom.
TWO SENSES OF FREEDOM
1. Freedom of Spontaneity
2. Freedom as Autonomy
Freedom as spontaneity is the negative understanding of freedom. Freedom as autonomy is the positive understanding of freedom. Freedom as spontaneity is in the First Critique. This refers to unconditioned by alien forces. This is “freedom from”. It is negative in the sense that it has the power to restrain and overcome inclination by the exercise of rationality, independence from whatever is empirical. In Positive sense it means that the exercise of our own rationality to bring about a moral maxim that we give unto ourselves; a new power of causal determination which originate from our own reason. This power enables us to judge and to act autonomously.
KANT’S NATURALISTIC UNDERSTANDING OF FREEDOM
There is a possibility of combining Kant’s ethical theory with a naturalistic picture of human beings. In Kant's historical and anthropological writings there is an attempt t integrate human freedom to a naturalistic understanding of human being as a biological species. A few statements in his writings indicate Kant’s conception of natural or empirical study of human nature and conduct (anthropology).
All actions of human beings in the domain of appearence are determined in conformity with the order of nature,... and if we could exhaustively investigate all the appearences of the wills of human beings, ther would not be found a single human action we couldnot predict with certainity and recodnize as proceeding necessarily from antecedent conditions. So far, then... there is no freedom. (KrV A550/B578)
Kant never pretends to seek empirical proofs of human freedom. His anthropology proceeds on the fundamental presupposition that human beings are free.
CONCLUSION
We think of ourselves in two different ways; we are free and we are physical beings. Now the Problem is physical beings are causally determined and all their actions are caused by earlier events. When we think of ourselves as physical beings we are NOT thinking of ourselves as free beings. Our ‘inclinations’ (desires and emotions) are part of our physical existence. So these are not part of our freedom. When we think of ourselves as free, we think of ourselves as rational beings. To be free is to guided by reason Not by inclination. Acting morally is acting freely. How do we work out what the moral law is? The answer is Use the Categorical Imperative.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allison, Henry E. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Intrapretation and Defense. London: Yale Univeristy Press, 1983.
Chackalackal, Saju. Unity of Knowing and Acting in Kant: A Paradigmatic Integration of the Theoretical and the Practical. Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications, 2002.
Thuniampral, Shibin. Through Freedom to the Real: A Study on the Basis of a Triadic Unity of Freedom, Action and God in Kantian Ethics. Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications, 2007.
Wood, Allen W. Kant’s Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Canbridge University Press, 1999.
