The Case for Freedom

Abstract

AbstractKant contrasts the spatio-temporal world of appearances with the world of things as they are in themselves: a form of anti-realism about the world as we experience it. There is no such thing as ‘every event’ in our world, though we may always be able to find causes that we can regard as sufficient for our purposes. Free choices require something like time, if not time as we think of it; but McTaggart showed how a different order might ground time as we think of it. The requirements of Kant’s determinism are satisfied by there being, within the world of appearances, some assignable cause for any choice one makes. But such assignments are always tentative, and the true choice made by the self in itself may well be different. This is a suggestion Kant had himself considered, but he never seems to have explored it seriously.