Freedom and Obligation

Abstract

This chapter has three aims. First, it gives an overview of the reception of Kant’s project of moral justification up to the twentieth century, showing that Kant’s first readers detected no great rift between the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason. A consensus that Kant reversed or rejected the argument of Groundwork III only takes shape in 1960. Second, this chapter returns to the details of Groundwork III and argues that Kant appeals to the idea of an intelligible world to warrant our possession of a free will. Third, this chapter argues that, while the second Critique is mostly continuous with Kant’s earlier argument, it goes further by including a theory of moral sensibility.