2025.05.7 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Markus Kohl, Kant on Freedom and Rational Agency, Oxford University Press, 2023, 399pp., $115.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780198873143.
Reviewed by Frederick Rauscher, Michigan State University
That freedom in Kant is linked to rationality is clear, but how it is linked is obscure. Markus Kohl offers a thorough argument that our moral freedom is centrally dependent upon the freedom of our cognitive faculties. He sees Kant giving a strongly ontological reading of a dual requirement for freedom of thought and freedom of will, with the former being primary. Our ability to make knowledge claims requires transcendental freedom, and our ability to make moral choices at all requires moral knowledge. Kohl sees this link as not merely showing that moral choice depends upon a transcendental freedom of thought but also on a transcendental freedom of will simply to be able to respond to the transcendental freedom of thought. Kohl’s project sets to…
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