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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Elevating though man's privilege is, of being capable of such an idea as freedom of choice – [those who are accustomed only to physiological explanations] are stirred up by the proud claims of speculative reason, which feels its power so strongly in other fields. They are stirred up just as if they were allies, leagued in defense of the omnipotence of theoretical reason and roused by a general call to arms to resist the idea of freedom of choice and thus at present, and perhaps for a long time to come (though ultimately in vain), to attack the moral concept of freedom and, if possible, render it suspect.
Immanuel Kant (MPV 378)Kantian ethical philosophy has often been criticized for its dependence on an untenable conception of the freedom of the will. Kant is supposed to have asserted that we are morally responsible for all of our actions because we have free will, and that we have free will because we exist in a noumenal world in which we are uninfluenced by the temptations of desire and inclination. If we existed only in the noumenal world, we would invariably act as the categorical imperative requires, but because we are also phenomenal beings we sometimes go wrong. The view so understood gives rise to several problems. First, the claim that purely noumenal persons would act as the categorical imperative requires may be questioned.
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