ABSTRACT
Kant’s most distinctive ideas about free will are the ones he develops with his “critical turn” towards the doctrine he calls “transcendental idealism,” which begins with his Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. Kant’s most striking claim is that it is possible for human beings to have an incompatibilistic sort of free will even if determinism is true. Scholars have been intrigued and confounded by this claim ever since, and there is still little consensus on how it should be understood. Isn’t this claim a straightforward contradiction? Was Kant really offering a compatibilist view in a confused way? The controversy is in part due to the fact that his views on free will are tied in tightly with the theory of transcendental idealism and its distinction between phenomena (things as they appear) and noumena (things as they are in themselves), which has divided scholars from the moment Kant rst advanced it. I will begin with a brief explanation of transcendental idealism and its connection to free will, and go on to provide a brief overview of three important interpretations of Kant’s free will theory, which I will call compatibilism, de ationism, and libertarianism. I will go on to discuss libertarianism in more detail, because it is the most textually accurate interpretation.
