Volume 1, No. 2:

In Praise of Ignorance
Liberal Education and Literature
Eurocentrism and Pluralism
Socrates and the Homeric Gods
Freedom and the Supersensible
On Private and Public Values
The Epistemology of Panic

Freedom and the Supersensible
The Ontology of Practical Reason

by Harold W. Brogan

The basic themes of Kant’s transcendental philosophy converge in The Critique of Judgment. Seemingly disparate moments of Kant’s philosophy are drawn together to reveal their sustaining source in one unified principle. Beauty, nature, the sublime, morality, taste, culture, feeling for life all become co-expressive of a common ground. For Kant this is the ground of human freedom. Freedom is not to be viewed as other than the modes of its elaborated expression but rather as the most illuminating amongst them; it is as if freedom were the chief monad which somehow more brilliantly offered a perspective on the whole.

In the Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, Kant sets the mood for what he intends to achieve. The quest for unity is his grand theme. Kant views the domains of the concept of nature and of freedom as being ultimately or architectonically enjoined in the notion of the supersensible (das Übersinnliche). Kant is very specific in distinguishing between the supersensible and a thing-in-itself. The supersensible for Kant is imbued with a purposivity, the amplification of which expresses a common ground between the two worlds - that of nature and that of legislative reason. The supersensible emerges as a concept that brings the Critique of Pure Reason into harmony with the Critique of Practical Reason.

There is a very important distinction between the philosophic scope of the first two Critiques that Kant presses upon in the Introduction. The Critique of Pure Reason, which is concerned with the concept of nature, never allows us to discuss things in themselves; rather, we are limited to discussing appearances as they are given in intuition. This is to be viewed in contrast to the claims of the Critique of Practical Reason, which deals with the concept of freedom and is thereby concerned with its object as a thing in itself, but not as an object given in intuition. Thus, Kant in a preliminary way concludes that we require an idea of a supersensible which would bring into unity both domains: We do need the idea of the supersensible in order to base on it the possibility of all those objects of experience, but the idea itself can never be raised up and expanded into a cognition" (CRJ, 5:175).

In this way the supersensible is seen as being a richer ontological thematic than almost anything which has come before. While epistemologically it remains outside the domains of cognition, we come to enjoy the presence of the idea of the supersensible in the experience of the beautiful and the sublime. Through such moments we feel the instancing of the whole - we sense in the experience an intended purposiveness in our faculties that points beyond a cognizable moment, but is imbued with much that calls for great thought. This is the concept of freedom. For Leibniz freedom must be understood as the ground thought of his metaphysics, for it is God acting freely who brought into being that set of compossible substances which constitute the world as we know it. This is the ground thought for Leibniz out of which all being emanates. For Kant, this is the ontological principle he has taken transcendentally as the source of his critical philosophy. Kant views the concept of freedom as having implications for the domains of pure and practical reason. Freedom is a ground thought for Kant upon which all intelligibility must be based. As Kant states, The concept of freedom is to actualize in the world of sense the purpose enjoined by its laws. Hence, it must be possible to think of nature as being such that lawfulness in its form will harmonize with at least the possibility of (achieving) the purposes that we are to achieve in nature according to laws of freedom" (CRJ, 5:176).

Freedom is thus taken up and appropriated transcendentally. The unity Kant demands requires that freedom - the source of the a priori determination in the Second Critique - be examined as the ultimate principle by which the natural world is viewed. Kant continues to develop this theme in the Introduction:

This is the basic claim that profiles the ontological intent of the Critique of Judgment. Kant wants to demonstrate how it is possible to think philosophically even though we are restrained from specific determinative cognitive advances. We may not be able to have knowledge of the thing-in-itself; but this is not the intent of the supersensible as it ‘underlies nature’. Kant is making a transcendental claim when he refers to the supersensible. He is referring to the way in which imagination forms its presentations. Consistent with Kant’s transcendental method, this is the source of the self-evidence of his claims about the supersensible. The supersensible is not to be viewed as the thing-in-itself or noumenon. This would violate the tenets of his Copernican Revolution. The supersensible is to be viewed as a transcendental concept of the substrate of nature.

Nature is itself a transcendental principle inasmuch as we understand the meaning of nature" to be the composite of all possible empirical presentations taken as a systematic whole. Underlying this is the principle that the presentation of nature has a purposiveness with respect to our cognitive powers. Kant presents the point as follows:

With this the basic concept of the supersensible becomes clearer. We are speaking of the sensible, but not the mere sensible whose cognition will be guaranteed by a schematized concept. We are talking of the Übersinnliche, the sensible as it is presented to consciousness with ontological intent.

The supersensible is thus cast within the form of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. The sensed purposiveness for our cognition engendered by certain experiences yields claims of taste which are characterized by the criteria of universality and necessity of synthetic a priori judgments. To quote his own words in 1787, I am now at work on a critique of taste, and I have discovered a kind of a priori principle different from those heretofore observed…giving me ample material for the rest of my life, material at which to marvel and if possible explore." The supersensible is the foundation of Kant’s transcendental epistemology in the Third Critique. Kant requires this concept if he is to provide a satisfactory account of the philosophic claims that are central to the Third Critique. Such claims as genius, common sense, and feeling for life demand philosophic justification that is only possible as a result of a transcendentally amplified concept of the supersensible. Since it is a transcendental concept, we must show that the supersensible is basic to the way in which we think.

It is tempting to view the supersensible as granting access to the transcendent. However, the supersensible does not claim any identity with the noumenon or the thing-in-itself. Such commentators as Paul Guyer in his provocatively titled the Metaphysics of Taste" claim that the supersensible substratum leads Kant directly back into metaphysics. In the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment, Kant re-opens the question of inter-subjective validity of aesthetic judgment. This time he attempts to solve it by postulating a supersensible substratum, or noumenal reality, underlying both the subjects and the objects of taste." Guyer dangerously misreads Kant’s attempt to engender a transcendental argument for the supersensible. Kant insists that the concept of the supersensible is not determinant, but rather an indeterminable concept which makes no noumenal claims.

Contrary to being a transcendent claim, claims of taste find their validation precisely in the elaboration of the way in which the mind encounters the given world. Dieter Henrich captures the intent of Kant’s transcendental argument: For Kant, accordingly, the beautiful is above all else a form in which the theoretical mind encounters the given world. In the experience of the beautiful the subjective functions necessary for knowledge of objects, imagination and understanding, are brought into harmony. The imagination indulges itself freely; it plays with the form of an object according to its own preference and law, yet it is still drawn to the sort of unity the understanding must look for in a concept appropriate to this object." This is how the mind encounters the given world. Henrich stresses that there is no world of the beautiful without reason to form it; there is no matter of taste without reason making present a law-like interest; there is no supersensible without reason infusing a unity onto the perspective of the given.

This will become clearer as we examine Kant’s presentation of the Antinomy of Taste" in the Dialectic." The antinomy of the principle of taste is stated as follows:

As is the case with any dialectical account of antinomies, Kant demonstrates that the antinomies of taste result from a failure to adequately appropriate a transcendental motif. The resolution is discovered when we expose the ground of the claims transcendentally. Kant sees an equivocal employment of the notion of concept in the antinomy. There are two distinct senses of ‘concept’ being asserted in the respective judgments of taste. Thus, Kant wants to resolve the conflict by restating the antinomy with differently specified meanings of the term ‘concept’: Hence the thesis should instead read: a judgment of taste is not based on determinate concepts; but the antithesis should read: a judgment of taste is indeed based on a concept, but on an indeterminate one (namely, that of the supersensible substrate of appearance); and then there would be no conflict between the two" (CRJ, 5:341). The importance of this distinction cannot be over emphasized. The success of the Critique of Judgment rests upon Kant’s ability to justify this position.

Kant requires the employment of concepts because the claims of taste are universal and necessary and call for assent by everyone. These are judgments about sensible objects, even though the objects make present a meaning that is not co-extensive with the sensible object. Kant employs the term concepts" because these sensible objects have cognitive content that must be identified and explored to have a meaningful theory of taste. Kant recognizes that he must delineate the distinction between a concept of the supersensible and an idea of the supersensible. While it may appear as if this distinction were an ad-hoc device to justify claims of taste as having cognitive content, it emerges from the central principles of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Kant argues for this distinction in discussing Beauty as the Symbol of Morality."

This represents a very significant expansion of a transcendental claim. We have the a priori determination of a sensible object by showing how a rule or concept applies to a sensible intuition. Here Kant is making the further claim that this gives rise to the capacity of judgment to draw an analogy based on its rule appropriating character. Kant is laying the ground for maintaining that the ideas of reason have a transcendental warrant to show how they can be significant for sensible intuition. With this Kant provides the basis for considering the supersensible transcendentally. On the occasion of applying a determinant concept to a sensible intuition, judgment is capable of reflecting upon that rule with the intent of illuminating insight upon a different order: Symbolic exhibition uses an analogy (for which we use empirical intuitions as well), in which judgment performs a double function: it applies the concept to the object of a sensible intuition; and then it applies the mere rule by which it reflects on that intuition to an entirely different object, of which the former object is only a symbol" (CRJ, 5:352).

This I view as one of the more basic moments in the Critique of Judgment. Kant has taken up the supersensible and provided a transcendental framework through which the concept" can be explored. Unfortunately, Kant does not provide the elaboration necessary to sustain this argument based on analogical terms. However, when we recognize that rules are always indices of unity, or epistemological instances of unity, then the posture for analogical reasoning begins to form. While the object of a determinant judgment is not identical with that of the object of reflective judgment (the supersensible), they co-express transcendentally a common mental activity. While the domain of determinant judgment may well be a specific sensible object, the ultimate intelligibility of the object must be seen in terms of a supersensible substrate.

This Leibnizian motif was explicit in the Prize Essay of 1788, where Kant, in arguing for a transcendental appropriation of the metaphysics of Leibniz and Wolff, sees the supersensible at the foundation of the three basic ideas of the Dialectic" but has still not discovered the transcendental means for making them cognitively significant. That means, in other words, that we can cognize absolutely nothing of the nature of supersensible objects - of God, of our own capacity for freedom, and of the nature of our soul - that could make even slightly cognizable to us what pertains to this internal principle of everything that belongs to the existence of these things." Kant is suggesting the common ground of these three basic objectives of human reason, other than their being dogmatic postulates of practical reason. As late as 1788, Kant has yet to formulate a theory through which he could show how a concept of the supersensible could be meaningfully attached to sensible intuitions.

By showing that judgment is capable of functioning in a symbolic manner, Kant introduces the fundamental theme of the Critique of Judgment: Now I maintain that the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good..." and, equally striking, Kant immediately follows with the required principle of apodicity, and only because we refer [Rücksicht] the beautiful to the morally good...does our liking for it include a claim for everyone’s assent" (CRJ, 5:353).

This is a very dramatic moment in the argument of the Critique of Judgment. The beautiful as a philosophic claim finds its justification within the morally good. The concept of the supersensible evoked upon the presentation of the beautiful brings consciousness to a state of awareness that points beyond the sensible object. When Kant calls upon the aesthetic presentation to function in terms of its power to elicit a cognitive claim, he is maintaining that symbolic hypotyposis" can yield a synthetic a priori claim that has the same epistemic status as do claims generated from schematic hypotyposis."

The most striking contrast between symbolic and schematic concepts is that the latter are always determinations of pure concepts through time. While Kant does not develop this point, it is clear that he intends the concept of the supersensible, as a non-schematized concept, to be a concept of the imagination, which is non-temporal. A concept of the supersensible is a concept of an object which stands outside of time; or a concept of an object whose reality is not determined by the formal conditions of human sensibility. A symbolic concept is a product of the imagination but it is a concept which exhibits its object in a manner which is ontologically reflective. Again, in symbolic hypotyposis" the object of the concept of the supersensible is exhibited in the sensible intuition. The function of imagination when symbolically relating a concept to sensible objects is to give cognitive presence to consciousness, and not merely to specifically determine an object.

By referring to the supersensible object, Kant is making reference to the whole. There is only one supersensible - only one substrate that binds the sensible world in an integrated togetherness that we recognize as nature with the moral world as it coherently expresses an integrated togetherness of rational maxims that we realize in freedom. Kant’s basic advance in the Third Critique is to argue that this unity is transcendentally realized. When beauty is seen as the symbol" of the moral, Kant is suggesting that the moral provides a common ground for all rational beings - human or divine. This is expressed or symbolized in the presentation of a sensible intuition that brings our consciousness into a state of reflecting on, or appreciating, how nature intends our cognitive powers to be brought into unity or harmony. The sensible object that brings about such an awareness is found to be beautiful.

The underlying claim in this account of Kant’s critical philosophy is that the concept of the supersensible is the transcendental expression of the whole. From this ground we can ultimately examine Kant’s theory of culture, taste, the highest good, and feeling for life (Lebensgefühl). But first I want to briefly reconstruct the problem in terms of Kant’s stated objective of providing an apology for Leibniz. It is from this historical foundation that Kant’s transcendental ontology is brought into clearest relief.

The concept of the supersensible is at its foundation the single unified principle of being. For Leibniz, it is the genetic principle that gives determination to the created world. Since Leibniz thematizes that this ‘supersensible’ is neither in time or space, he thus distinguishes between the ordered world as perceived by humans, and the world which is viewed by God as the best of all possible worlds. However, God himself must be thought of as being outside of time inasmuch as he conceives every possible configuration and any possible contingency prior to his creating the best of all possible worlds. The immensity of God is independent of space, as his eternity is independent of time. These attributes signify only in respect to these two orders of things, that God would be present and co-existent with all things that should exist. And therefore I don’t admit what’s here alleged, that if God existed alone, there would be time and space as there is now; where as then, in my opinion, they would be ideas of God as mere possibilities." Space and time have real status for Leibniz inasmuch as they take the forms of presentation though which created things are discerned. In fact, there is a sound epistemological base for maintaining that the way in which substances can be individuated is to understand the way in which they reflect through space and time the best of all possible worlds. As Martin Guerolt effectively argues, space and time are both ideal and objective for Leibniz, and are required for an account of the natural world. However, this does not entail an absolute notion of space and time. God is not contained within space, or limited by time. As Leibniz captures the argument, For since God does nothing without reason, and no reason can be given why he did not create the world sooner; it will follow, either that he created nothing at all, or that he created the world before any assignable time, that is that the world is eternal." Thus, the principle of sufficient reason is summoned in service of fundamentally distinguishing the real experienced world as it is presented through the forms of space - time and the awareness of a transcendent ground that is ontologically prior" to that experience.

This distinction, which I find crucial for understanding Leibniz, is centrally appropriated by Kant. For Kant, the supersensible is that non-schematized, symbolically realized concept of the whole which is never grasped, but is reflected in the awareness of how it is that judgment is operative. For Leibniz, the ground principle is the generative ‘moment’ of God creating the ‘best of all possible worlds’. This is to say that God acts freely to bring into being a world that has the most possible goodness or perfection. This is the world of reason. This is a world which brings into being rational principles whose identity is determined by the integrating unity that this principle reflects. God, whose creative moment is not constrained by space-time limitations, brings into being an aggregate of substances that mutually reflect the moral purposiveness of the whole.

For Leibniz this is the freedom of God; this is a freedom that brings into being an aggregate of rationally procreative creatures whose composite activity will necessarily reflects the best of all possible worlds. The vision of the whole in Leibniz finds its transcendental parallel in Kant when he recognizes that, Judgment finds itself referred to something that is both in the subject himself and outside him, something that is neither nature nor freedom and yet is linked with the basis of freedom, the supersensible, in which the theoretical and practical power are in an unknown manner combined and joined into a unity" (CRJ, 5:353).

The underlying tenet of this point of view is that the practical is the driving force of the created world. Even the natural world, the world understood as the intelligible composite of possible sensible impressions taken as a systematic unity, must be derived from this basic ontological point. I think this position holds for Leibniz, and hold likewise that it is the fundamental driving force in Kant’s transcendental appropriation of Leibniz’ metaphysics. As Kant thematizes in the Critique of Judgment, after all, everything we do with our powers must in the end aim at the practical and unite in it as its goal" (CRJ, 5:206). Bearing this in mind, I would like to examine Leibniz’ moral philosophy to show how Kant took up the problem in the Critique of Judgment.

In a letter of 1702 to Queen Sophia, Leibniz remarked: It is generally agreed that what God wills is good and just. But there remains the question whether it is good and just because God wills it or whether God wills it because it is good and just." This raises the most basic question posed by Leibniz. Were goodness and justice a mere consequence of God’s action, or a mere description of the fact of God’s action, then there would lack a sufficient reason why God would choose to bring into being this or any other set of compossible substances. Indeed, as Leibniz goes on to point out, God would not be worthy of praise if the concept of justice adds nothing to his act." The concept of moral goodness is not a predicate of identity, or a concept whose object is co-extensive with the concept of God. God freely chooses to bring into being a world that is most good and most just. Yet it is logically possible that God could have acted differently. Expressed in Leibniz’ terminology, the predicate of this actually created world is not contained necessarily in the concept of God. It is possible for this world not to exist and still have God.

The fact that Leibniz saw his ontology as being fundamentally united with his moral philosophy is identified from the outset of the Discourse on Metaphysics. Leibniz says, Whence it follows that God who possesses supreme and infinite wisdom acts in the most perfect manner not only metaphysically but also from the moral standpoint." For Leibniz, the moral standpoint is always co-expressive of the metaphysical. In recognizing that God could have acted other than he had, we realize that the created world is a world whose concept stands outside of God, as a mere logical possibility and not as a necessary consequence of his being. From this ground, Leibniz’ metaphysics and thus his ethics emerge.

Macdonald Ross exposes a particularly important principle in developing the significance of this ground. Leibniz, he maintains, sees the universe essentially in mathematical, and specifically in binary terms. Ross argues that for Leibniz ultimately there is being and not being: Just as the whole of arithmetic could be derived from 1 and 0," so the whole universe was generated out of pure being (God) and nothingness. God’s creative act was therefore at one and the same time a voluntary dilution of his own essence, and a mathematical computation of the most perfect number derivable from combination 1 and 0. It is very significant for Leibniz in that giving ontological status to not-being or nothingness," we recognize the logical possibility that the created world is not in fact identical with God, and thus allow a theory of creation that has the capacity to account for a world that is less perfect than God; for a world that manifests genuine evil both naturally and morally; and, from our immediate concern, a world that has genuine human freedom. Ross cites a particularly poignant claim by Leibniz:

This is the background required for understanding how the principle of sufficient reason operates as a source of moral necessity without being framed in terms of logical necessity. God must be viewed as acting in his freedom to bring into being the best of all possible worlds. Freedom is seen as co-expressive of the principle of sufficient reason. As Leibniz expresses the point in one of a multitude of places, Whence at the same time it is evident that the author of the world is free, although he makes all things determinately, for he acts according to a principle of wisdom or of perfection." The Enlightenment concept of freedom begins to take form in Leibniz. Freedom is never a random selection of compossible substances, but is rather seen as the determined realization of reason.

Leibniz thematizes this concept of freedom early in the Discourse, when he argues against those who would claim that God could have created a world other than he has. They think, indeed, that they are thus safeguarding the liberty of God. As if it were not the highest liberty to act in perfection according to sovereign reason. For to think that God acts in anything, without having any reason for his willing, even if we overlook the fact that such action seems impossible, is an opinion which conforms little to God’s glory." While the arguments for the principle of sufficient reason are well known in Leibniz, it is important to expose this basic relationship between freedom and reason. This ontological principle for Leibniz is taken up and given transcendental clarification by Kant. Leibniz views God as acting morally in that he freely chooses to bring into actuality the best of all possible worlds. Standing at the fundament of this world is man, the other being who is capable of realizing rational possibility. The best of all possible worlds is one which expresses the greatest possible freedom for man. Without man, there would be no sufficient reason for creating any world. All possible worlds would simply be ordered configurations of events, lacking a distinguishing principle, and thus a reason to be.

The concept of man is essential for Leibniz’ metaphysics. Man’s special place in the world is assured by the fact that he alone enjoys freedom and, thus, shares with God the capacity for perfection. This is to say that man can hold reason as the determinator of will in a manner that reflects, or is analogous to, God’s willing the most reasonable or the best of all possible worlds. God, in choosing the best possible world, chooses the world which embodies the most reason or has the highest degree of perfection.

Thus, this generative moment, which expresses the unity of the metaphysical and the moral as God freely chooses to realize the best of all possible worlds, simultaneously expresses the autonomy of every individual will. The composite integration of the totality of individual will, is viewed as the final cause of the created world. Thus, each individual will or mind (substance) must in its own way reflect the whole. This leads Leibniz to remark: Minds or spirits are in addition images of divinity itself, or of the author of nature able to know the system of the universe and to imitate something of it by architectonic samples, each mind being like a little divinity in its own department" (MON, #82).

The force of Leibniz’ cognitive claims directly depend upon this insight. Our minds in their unique way must be seen to reflect the whole, however confusedly. Further, the justification of Leibniz’ principle of pre-established harmony rest upon the ability to discern how the world of final causes (The Moral World) reflects (and is reflected by) the world of efficient causes (The Natural World). The philosophic challenge for Leibniz to justify such a claim of pre-established harmony. However, this is precisely where Kant takes up the problem and concretizes the notion of pre-established harmony within the context of a transcendental philosophy. Kant’s resolve to remain faithful to this basic tenet of Leibniz’ metaphysics is obviated by the division of his philosophy into practical and theoretical reason, and the further recognition of the ontological priority of practical reason. Charles Sherover captures the significance of this fundamental point in an especially penetrating manner:

Leibniz’ world view calls for the freedom of man as the ground of his metaphysical system. For Kant, freedom likewise is recognized as the single unifying principle of his transcendental philosophy. However, with Kant, there is a sense in which he appropriates freedom even more fundamentally than Leibniz. The success of Leibniz’ system is based upon the acceptance of a modified version of the ontological argument wherein Leibniz maintains that the possibility of God as a perfect being assures the corresponding reality. For Kant, the concept of God finds its ground within the concept of freedom.

With this Kant transcendentally concretizes the Leibnizian problematic. The noumenal reality of freedom is assured through the transcendental exposition of the a priori condition for the possibility of enacting the moral law. This is Kant’s inheritance from Leibniz that he must take the concept of freedom and show how it is the foundation of his critical ontology, the way freedom was conceived as the generative principle of Leibniz’ metaphysics. As we have seen, Leibniz’ vision of the best of all possible worlds is engendered from God’s determination that the autonomy of man’s will is foundational. This is the sense in which man for Leibniz must be seen as the center of the universe; or, as Leibniz would have it, the sufficient reason why this integrated nexus of monadic substances was actualized. As the Critique of Judgment makes especially evident, Kant likewise sees man as the ultimate purpose of nature: We have shown in the preceding section that [certain] principles of reason give us sufficient ground for judging man - though reflectively rather than determinatively - to be not merely a natural purpose, which we may judge all organized beings to be, but also to be the ultimate purpose of nature here on earth, the purpose by reference to which all other natural things constitute a system of purposes" (CRJ, 5:430).

Kant’s vision of man as the ultimate purpose of nature translates Leibniz’ generative principle into transcendental terms: Man is the only natural being in whom we can nonetheless recognize, as part of his own constitution, a supersensible ability (freedom), and even recognize the law and the object of this causality, the object that this being can set before itself as its highest purpose (the highest good in the world)" (CRJ, 5:435). Kant adds that from a teleological perspective, this embodies the notion of a final purpose that has no other purpose as a condition of its possibility (CRJ, 5:435). Thus he persists in recognizing the primordial roles of practical reason in giving an account of the world. In fact, Kant suggests that an account of the natural world must be viewed in the light of this primordial moral determination: Only in man, and even in him only as moral subject, do we find unconditioned legislation regarding purposes. It is this legislation, therefore, which alone enables man to be a final purpose to which all of nature is teleologically subordinated" (CRJ, 5:436).

The attempt at overcoming the dualism inherent in Kant’s account of the natural and the moral worlds is the guiding force behind the Third Critique. As we have argued this dualism in Leibniz - the world of efficient (natural) causes and the world of final (moral) causes are reconciled in the concept of a God who created the best of all possible worlds. For Kant, this dualism is recast within a transcendental framework, yet the basic question remains: How is it possible to show the compatibility of the two worlds? The Critique of Judgment sets out to show that the natural and the moral worlds are co-reflective when viewed from a transcendental framework.

The central challenge for Kant’s ontology is to show how the freedom of the individual will can be reconciled to the Leibnizian notion of this being the best of all possible worlds. To what extent is the autonomy of the individual will subordinated to the higher ontological requirement of the principle of the best? Any such way of posing the question would require us to either abandon the freedom of the will, or jettison the principle that this is the best of all possible worlds. These principles are co-reflective, and Kant must argue along with Leibniz that the formal intelligibility of a moral maxim finds its meaning only within the context of a whole, or systematic unity. Perhaps Kant could extend the antinomy of practical reason to recognize that space and time are the ideal forms of the perceived world. These forms are inappropriately employed in providing the conditions for a conceptual framework that gives an account of freedom. We approach the question of freedom from a categorically framed perspective formed by space-time as if it were a phenomenon of the natural world. Thus, for example, the question of freedom is cast by the empiricists in terms of cause and effect; or, by the empirical psychologists (the behaviorists) in terms of stimulus and response.

For Kant, the question of freedom is a question of the practical determination of the will, which specifically moves away from material or sensual consideration when providing a ground principle: If a rational being can think of its maxims as practical universal laws, he can do so only by considering them as principles which contain the determining grounds of will because of their form and not because their of matter" (PR, 5:26-7). Since the formal determination of the will is based on reason, its ground must be placed outside the natural order. As Kant says, Now, as no determining ground of the will except the universal legislative form can serve as a law for it, such a will must be conceived as wholly independent of the natural law of appearances in their mutual relations, i.e., the law of causality. Such independence is called freedom in the strictest, i.e., transcendental sense" (PR, 5:28-9).

This distinction between the natural and the rational worlds, the basis of Kant’s practical philosophy, grounds the categorical imperative. There are several formulations of this famous imperative but they all point to the requirement of establishing lawfulness. In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant states the fundamental law of pure practical reason, so act that the maxim of your will could always holds at the same time as a principle giving universal law" (5:30). In the Groundwork, Kant states, I should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become universal law" (4:402). This formal law-giving determination has special interest for us, because it is this formal determination that uniquely binds us to all rational beings. As we recall from our discussion of Leibniz, the moral action has as its only ground the final cause, a ground which is unimpeded by material considerations. In a very parallel claim, Kant maintains that there is no possibility of thinking anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be regarded as good without qualification, except the good will" (4:393). The good will is unimpeded by material considerations and this principle applies for God as well as every other rational being. In the domain of practical reason we share with God a desire to bring into being a rational determination of ends. For Leibniz, this derives from the generative moment when God freely chose to bring about the best of all possible worlds. And for Kant, such a view comes about as a necessary postulate of pure practical reason. This is the critical point of Kant’s transcendental ontology. God’s free action in actualizing this, the most rational of all possible worlds must necessarily reflect and be reflected by the autonomy of each and every free will that comprises the world:

With this outline the pervasive argument of the Critique of Judgment is brought into relief. The ground principles of the created world must be thought of as reflecting the integral coherence of every rational will. The kingdom of ends is viewed as the final purpose of the world in as much as it is seen as an integral whole whose actualization is the unconditioned embodiment of the good will. Freedom is thus understood as the ground principle of being. Every manifestation of our rational will is a direct reflection, an embodiment, of this ultimate ground. The notion of the highest good is seen almost as a transcendental condition which enables reason to demand that the object of its desire reflect an unconditional final purpose. Moreover, the natural world does not stand in a dualistic tension with the moral world. The natural world itself is expressive of this final purpose. Kant succinctly captures the philosophic significance of this realization: