O problema da liberdade na Crítica da Razão Pura: a passagem da teoria para a prática

Abstract

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant states that the concept of freedom, insofar as its reality is demonstrated by an apodictic law of practical reason, constitutes the cornerstone of the entire edifice of a system of pure reason, and even of speculative reason itself. This might seem to suggest that only the second Critique grants centrality to the concept of freedom. However, it must be noted that freedom is already central in the Critique of Pure Reason. According to several of Kant’s own indications, the problem of freedom not only inaugurates critical philosophy as an antinomic problem but also possesses decisive doctrinal significance, for the resolution of this problem concerns the very possibility of a critical understanding of morality. Nevertheless, the concept of freedom in the first Critique presents a substantial difficulty: what Kant affirms about freedom in the Canon of Pure Reason appears to contradict the position expressed in the Transcendental Dialectic. This issue unfolds into two main difficulties. First, (i) the Dialectic maintains that transcendental freedom is an essential part of practical freedom, whereas the Canon asserts that transcendental freedom is irrelevant to “the practical”; and second, (ii) the Canon seems to ignore the results of the Dialectic by suggesting that practical freedom can be known and proven by experience, which seems to reduce it to natural causality. The present work seeks to investigate these difficulties and aims to reconcile the two sections by taking as its guiding thread the practical interest of reason, which directs the treatment of freedom both in the third antinomic conflict and in the Canon. In this way, the study intends to demonstrate, on the one hand, that Kant (i) does not abandon transcendental freedom in the Canon, but merely sets aside the question of its reality as irrelevant to “the practical”; and, on the other hand, (ii) that practical freedom can indeed be known and demonstrated, provided that we take the concept of “experience” in a broad sense. The result of this analysis shows that the concept of practical freedom developed in the first Critique – understood as a theory of the arbitrium sensitivum liberum – cannot be interpreted in the terms of the Critique of Practical Reason. Consequently, the notion of duty employed therein must not be understood in a strictly moral sense, but rather as the capacity to act according to laws in general – whether pragmatic or moral. This result, however, does not undermine the significance of freedom in the Critique of Pure Reason; on the contrary, it reinforces it. Throughout the course of the investigation, it becomes evident that there is a strong practical interest of reason, one that mobilizes virtually the entire critical apparatus toward the establishment of a legitimate practical use for reason itself – an orientation that even justifies the theoretical efforts undertaken in the Transcendental Dialectic.