Freedom, causality and human nature in Immanuel Kant
Freedom. Causality. Reason. Will. Anthropology.
The present dissertation aims to explore three basic paths in Immanuel Kant's work (1724-1804): a) in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), investigating the problem of the conciliation between freedom and nature in the third antinomy, demonstrating how, from a critical solution rooted in Transcendental Idealism (above all through the phenomenon/thing-in-itself distinction), can the criticism's system admit the theoretical possibility of the concept of freedom; b) in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), examining to what extent this same concept of freedom is considered from a practical point of view, thus contributing to the establishment of a reason-based analytic of morality; c) in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), reconstructing the main arguments that evaluate the hypothesis of a pure practical reason, whose law, which guides acting, is considered as a fact immediately recognized by the moral conscience. The dissertation also essays the relationship between a pure moral philosophy (as sustained in the Groundwork and in the second Critique) and what would be a second part of the ethics, called by Kant Practical Anthropology (or, simply, applied moral philosophy), whose task would be mainly to study the subjective conditions (belonging to sensibly based human nature), contrary or favorable to the implementation of the laws of practical reason. In this way, would not be the concept of freedom mere possibility of an immediate (that is, a priori) determination of the will by means of reason, but also that which would allows the moral experience, taken in a concrete sense (this, the object of Anthropology).