1 Postulate of

Immanuel Kant
st

Ysabelle Anne Estoya

Mary Josephine Briones
Jenny Babe Barrera
Amabelle Mazel Agrabio

TERMS
POSTULATE- a statement that is accepted as being true and that is
used as the basis, theory, argument, etc.
FREEDOM- the quality or state of being free: as the absence of
necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.

FREEDOM
existed because of our experience of moral obligation, that is,
because I must, I can. The first moral postulate therefore is that
freedom must be assumed.
is an apriori that we do not understand but we know it as the condition
of the moral law which we do know.
It is because of freedom that God and Immortality gain objective
reality and legitimacy and subjective necessity.
Freedom then can be considered as the keystone of the structure of
pure reason.

THREEFOLD PHASE in carrying out an act or

decision indicates that there is freedom:
1. Before the act, we are conscious that we deliberate about the reasons in
favor or against a definite action; unless our will is free, this deliberation
would be absurd.
2. During the decision, we are conscious that we are giving consent freely,
and so we perform our actions with great cautions, realizing we are assuming
responsibility.
3. After the decision, we are conscious that we could have made a different
decision, and we blame or praise ourselves alone for any regret or credit
accruing from the actions.

 Unless our will is free to act with regard to these actions, the
deliberation, the decision, and the assumption of merit and
demerit would have been absurd.
On the contrary, the determinist upholds that one is not free
insofar as one is determined by socio-cultural factors, such as
religion, custom, and family upbringing.

 The way one thinks, reasons and behaves has been molded by
ones socio-cultural orientations. Thus, one is acting under illusion
of freedom. One thinks one is free, but actually one is not.
We have to postulate that the individuals will is free; otherwise,
we cannot account for personal responsibility. For unless one is
free in the performance of a particular act, one cannot be held
morally responsible for it.

Freedom
Is one of the conditions of a deliberate act for which a person is
held morally answerable.
Rewards and punishments would be absurd, unless everyone were
free.

Example Situation
example of a man who commits a theft. Kant holds that in order
for this man's action to be morally wrong, it must have been
within his control in the sense that it was within his power at the
time not to have committed the theft.
If this was not within his control at the time, then, while it may be
useful to punish him in order to shape his behavior or to influence
others, it nevertheless would not be correct to say that his action
was morally wrong.

 Moral rightness and wrongness apply only to free agents who

control their actions and have it in their power, at the time of
their actions, either to act rightly or not. According to Kant, this is
just common sense.

Compatibilism
comparative concept of freedom
I am free whenever the cause of my action is within me. So I am
unfree only when something external to me pushes or moves me,
but I am free whenever the proximate cause of my body's
movement is internal to me as an acting being .

Example situation
Between involuntary convulsions and voluntary bodily movements,
then on this view free actions are just voluntary bodily
movements.

 Assimilates human freedom to the freedom of a turnspit, or a

projectile in flight, or the motion of a clock's hands. The
proximate causes of these movements are internal to the turnspit,
the projectile, and the clock at the time of the movement. This
cannot be sufficient for moral responsibility.

 The reason, Kant says, is ultimately that the causes of these

movements occur in time. Return to the theft example. A
compatibilist would say that the thief's action is free because its
proximate cause is inside him, and because the theft was not an
involuntary convulsion but a voluntary action. The thief decided to
commit the theft, and his action flowed from this decision.

 According to Kant, however, if the thief's decision is a natural

phenomenon that occurs in time, then it must be the effect of
some cause that occurred in a previous time. This is an essential
part of Kant's Newtonian worldview and is grounded in the a priori
laws (specifically, the category of cause and effect) in accordance
with which our understanding constructs experience: every event
has a cause that begins in an earlier time.

 If that cause too was an event occurring in time, then it must also
have a cause beginning in a still earlier time, etc. All natural
events occur in time and are thoroughly determined by causal
chains that stretch backwards into the distant past. So there is no
room for freedom in nature, which is deterministic in a strong
sense.

 InGroundworkKants attempt was to give a theoretical proof of

the reality of our freedom but he was not successful and coming
toCritique of Pure Reasonhe held that we could infer the reality
of our freedom from the consciousness by means of the principle
that ought implies can.

 Kants thought on freedom of the will can be seen to be going

through five phases. In his first position he takes the stand that
free human actions are those that have internal rather than
external causes. As the second position, we have Kant stating that
we cannot prove the existence of free human actions which are
not dictated by deterministic laws of nature.

 This is explained in theCritique of Pure Reason. The third phase

can be seen inGroundworkwhich was published in 1785, where he
states that it is possible to prove the existence of human freedom
and thereby also prove that moral law applies to us. In the fourth
phase we see Kant stating that we can prove the freedom of our
will form the indisputable fact of our religion.

 This can be seen in theCritique of Practical Reasonthat came out

in 1788. As the final and fifth position inReligion(1793) Kant is no
longer concerned with proving the existence of free will but rather
showing that its existence simply implies the in escapable
possibility of human evil but equally the concomitantly
indestructible possibility of human conversions to goodness.

 We are not free in the same way that you or have brown or blond
hair.
Freedom is not an attribute, but anideawhich motivates my actions.
It is very important that we keep separate ethical and ontological
language, and no more so than when we speak about God.
I am free not because I am free, in the same way that I tall, short,
beautiful or ugly, rather I am free, because I canthinkthat I am.
This is why Kant can say, in his lectures on education, that we do not
consider children to be free, because they do not yet understand the
meaning of freedom.

 But what has freedom to do with morality? The reason why we do not
think children are moral at an early age is that we do not expect
them to be responsible for their actions, no more than we would
expect a dog to be responsible or lion for eating an antelope.
The reason that we tell a child for acting immorally is because we
expect, as they mature, that that they will begin to understand what
it means to act morally. When I say that you are responsible for your
action, I mean that you ought to be able to givereasonsfor them.