Hume and Kant on Free Will

Paper Summary:

This paper is an attempt to show how Kant's ideas concerning practical and transcendental freedom of the will were a significant correction to the parallel theories of David Hume. The writer starts out by clarifying Hume's critique of free will, and how he arrives at the conclusion that the will is properly beyond analysis. For this reason Hume declares metaphysics to be impossible. The writer notes that Kant's task is to rescue metaphysics from this crisis. He does not deny that metaphysics is impossible, yet he sets out on the task of analyzing the will. The writer then discusses that Kant does not aim to provide metaphysics, but only to restore faith in the act of thinking. His explicit aim is for clarity in thinking. The essay goes on to outline the metaphysics of Kant in some detail and assesses how far it is successful in its aim.

From the Paper:

"After impact with the first ball the second could have taken any one of an infinite number of trajectories. But it takes only one, and indeed we expect it to take only that one. A physicist may come along and try to convince us that it could not have taken any other trajectory because the laws of motion stipulates that, with the initial conditions given, the path it takes is the only possible one. But this is not an answer to the observer of the billiard ball, because he doesn't care what the laws of physics are. If nature had followed another mathematical law then another outcome would have been just as valid. The observer could then have framed his conundrum differently: Of the infinite possible mathematical laws why just that one? There is nothing in the inner logic of the situation that dictates that the first ball should produce exactly the prescribed trajectory in the second."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Cassirer, E. (1951). The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. Trans. Fritz C. A. Koelln and James P. Pettegrove. Boston: Beacon Press.
• Hume, D. (1993). An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. E. Steinberg (Ed.) Boston: Hackett Publishing.
• Kant, I. (1999). Critique of Pure Reason. W. S. Pluhar (Trans.), E. Watkins (Ed.) Boston: Hackett Publishing.
• Kant, I. (2005). Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing.
• Kant, I. (2005). The Moral Law: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Translated by H. J. Paton. New York: Routledge.

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