Immanuel Kant Theory Of Freedom

It was interesting to see in all presentations, that the discussion went always in one direction: an amazing controversy between believers and realists, spirituals and materialists, theorists and pragmatics. Only one thing was common between all of us: we felt free to discuss any sensitive subject and show up our opinion about Hitler, Islam, God, Destiny etc. Freedom was an essential factor to the success of this course. But, what is freedom? Isn’t the comprehension of freedom relative to other factors? Is there an absolute freedom?

Reading the book Zizek's Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity, chapter 10 “the terror of freedom” inspired me to think about what is freedom. According to Oxford Dictionaries (1) ("Freedom

Kant is a German philosopher, considered as a central figure in modern philosophy (2) ("Immanuel Kant"). Kant’s argued that the two major historical movements in the early philosophy, which are Empiricism and Rationalism, contains serious flaws: these two methods of thinking had made a distinction between priori and posteriori reasoning. Kant believed that making such distinction was inadequate to understand metaphysics. This leads us to discuss what is freedom according to Kant.

Kant believes (3) that the systematic knowledge in reason can only be fulfilled with assumptions that empirical observation cannot support. In other words, when we think about the nature of things, we still thinking through the limits of what we know, because the empirical word and metaphysics constraints our reason in its transcendental structure

So, to get the knowledge beyond the limits of reason, Kant argued that freedom is the key. We cannot understand the world if we think that our reason is predetermined and that our acts are the results of other causes. Freedom is an essential assumption so that reason can act.

But what makes the difference of freedom’s perception between people? Could this assumption of freedom differ from a group to

An American citizen, living in a country that claims freedom as a value that contributed to the rise of USA, cannot act with an absolute freedom, as he is obliged to comply with the U.S federal laws. Another aspect of the limits of freedom is “the freedom of press”. We saw that the caricatures of Prophet Mohamed in Denmark caused the anger of the Muslim community, because what is considered as a freedom in Denmark, is seen as an offence to the Muslim’s values. And that is the point: Freedom is an assumption that is limited by constraints that differs from a group to another regarding its religion, ethics and morals. This differences lead to a conflictual situation between nations as everyone has his own perception of freedom. Absolute freedom does not exist and will not, because freedom is what we make, the result of our perception of how far limits could be pushed