Freedom: a relationship between canon and dialectic in the Critique of Pure Reason

Abstract

The current study investigates the consistency between the claims of the Dialectic and those of the Canon concerning the problem of freedom, and does so through a comparative analysis of three interpretations, showing why two of them (Carnois and Allison) would be mistaken, and a third (Esteves), defensible. Carnois points out that there would be an incompatibility between Dialectic and Canon in considering that the freedom of the Canon would be a limited and empirical freedom, whereas in the Dialectic it would have an absolute spontaneity. Allison believes that the texts would be compatible, although both present relative and ambiguous practical freedom (dependent on a sensitive incentive), and therefore there would be a pre-critical morality in KrV. Esteves's interpretation seems to us to be more sustainable and allows us to understand the coherence and contemporaneity of texts (both present freedom with absolute spontaneity), showing that, although practical freedom is a relational freedom (applied to human beings and therefore in contact with the empirical), it is not an empirical but hybrid concept.