Idealism and Freedom: Essays on Kant's Theoretical and Practical Philosophy

by Henry E. Allison

Henry Allison is one of the foremost interpreters of the philosophy of Kant. This new volume collects all his recent essays on Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy. Special features of the collection are: a detailed defense of the author's interpretation of transcendental idealism; a consideration of the Transcendental Deduction and some other recent interpretations thereof; further elaborations of the tensions between various aspects of Kant's conception of freedom and of the complex role of this conception within Kant's moral philosophy.

Genres: Philosophy

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 26, 1996

Reviews

[Dan DalMonte · Rating 4 out of 5]

This an excellent collection of essays by Henry Allison. He discusses transcendental apperception as well as a comparison of Kant's notion of radical evil with Arendt's notion of the banality of evil. He defends his interpretation of Kant's theory of freedom against the objections of Stephen Engstrom. Allison's view of freedom is incompatibilist, in virtue of the fact that the deliberative agent must think of itself in terms of the idea of freedom as it incorporates inclinations into maxims. However, Allison does not want to embrace a noumenal power. Ultimately, I think this commitment to a reductive, merely conceptual version of freedom, which is instrumental also in the refutation of materialism, ends up in instability. Unless this idea of freedom can exist as a real power, it is defeasible in light of the pervasive conditionedness of empirical reality.