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Is Kant right on freedom?

 

The concept of freedom is crucial for understanding Kant’s philosophy, and is the key to the whole of his philosophical theories. Kant discusses freedom at the metaphysical level, of whom the purpose is to reflect human being character through   freedom. From his perspective, the previous two kinds of understandings about freedom are perceptual and intellectual, and former philosophers lacked actual knowledge about it, who treated perception and intellect as the whole of rationality, which led to a paradox of nature and freedom. Immanuel Kant supposes that only if we live by our own reasons we are free. I think Kant is right about freedom, and his views have instructional significance on our understandings of the good and the evil.

 

 Kant’s view of freedom indicates that two levels should be satisfies in the study of freedom, that is natural fact level and value level. At the natural fact level, utilize the nature and transform the society more rationally, and free people from the constraints of nature and society are the main things to be concerned. At this level, nature is closer related to human material demands and spiritual enjoyment, to the limits of human beings. The external pursuit of humans develops scientific technologies and establishes rational social institutions but it is far from enough, since external pursuit of freedom starts from a certain interest need, targeted on realization of certain experience object. As a result, morality is not guaranteed, and the highest value of existence is not realized, so the development of science technology and social system establishment get trapped and lost. Therefore, it is crucial to pay attention to internal freedom at value level. Internal freedom concerns with how human beings go beyond the natural necessity constraints, and seeks being values and meanings from ultimate and ideal level. It is obvious that internal freedom is higher than external freedom, since Aristotle thinks that slavery is a fitting social role for the certain time of human beings.

  In Episode Ten by Sandel, he puts forward objections to Aristotle’s perspectives of freedom, since he thinks that slavery is a fitting social role for some people at a certain time. In Aristotle’s point of view, justice means everybody gets what his due respectively, but the problem here is on which basis do we measure what a person deserves. Aristotle doesn’t make adequate room for individual freedom, and tensions exists between his theory and Kant’s views. Utilitarians suppose that no matter what creates the largest amount of happiness, it is the right thing to do, while libertarians are not in agreement, in their views, it is not right to violate someone else’s right, no matter how much happiness it produces. Aristotle thinks that if the purpose of a classroom is to study, then the student with best grades gets priority; if the purpose of soccer field is to play soccer ball, then the best player will be admitted; and if human being is to lead a good life, then citizens should be provided with the good life to make sure that human beings are abundant in necessary resources.

 By Kant, freedom has the following characteristics, independence without the influence of otherness; not belonging to any other purpose, only for its own sake; limitless; and spontaneity. Although Kant tightly limits freedom he described to the “ultra perceptual world”, he incisively discussed the substitutive characteristics of freedom. And Marx inherited the basic thoughts of Kant, “practice is better than theoretical theory”, and created historic materialism. In brief, Kant’s theory is the foundation of contemporary orthodox rationalism freedom, Hegel's dialectical reason of transcendence, and Marx’s   dialectical historic solutions freedom and self transcendence based on perceptual practice.