Kant's Compatibilism

by Hud Hudson

The philosophy of Immanuel Kant has simultaneously embraced a thoroughgoing causal determinism and proclaimed the freedom of the human will. Examining Kant's compatibilist resolution of that apparent inconsistency, Hud Hudson identifies in Kant's work a philosophically respectable view of the metaphysics of determinism and human freedom.
Hudson first examines Kant's pre-critical writings on compatibilism and reviews the particulars of the Third Antinomy from the Critique of Pure Reason, in which Kant explicitly addresses the issue of compatibilism. After analyzing readings of Kant's compatibilistic resolution by Allen Wood, Jonathan Bennett, Lewis White Beck, Robert Butts, Ralf Meerbote, and Henry Allison, Hudson proposes his own interpretation. Hudson ascribes to Kant a token-token identity thesis regarding natural events and transcendentally free human actions as well as a type-type irreducibility thesis regarding the distinct sorts of descriptions with which we characterize natural events and transcendentally free human actions. The explicitly compatibilist resolution of Hudson's account neither endangers the epistemological scope of Kant's causal determinism nor requires an impoverished sense of freedom of the will. In the light of current debates regarding free will and philosophy of mind, Hudson concludes that Kant's compatibilism can be aligned with the views of certain contemporary philosophers.

196 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1994

Reviews

[Álvaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Mike E. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Technical, academic work arguing that:

1) Causal determinism obtains.

&

2) The human will is free – – capable of both autonomous and heteronomous spontaneity of action.

Hudson sees Kant’s compatibilism as relevant today, not obsolete. This book defends causal determinism, not theological determinism. But his thesis is relevant to theological determinists.