The Epistemological Interpretation of Transcendental Idealism and Its Unavoidable Slide into Compatibilism

2019

This paper consists in two major parts. In the first part, I explain and defend Kant’s explicit rejection of compatibilist theories of freedom in the Critique of Practical Reason. I do this by a careful analysis of some contemporary compatibilist theories. In the second major part, I explain how the epistemological interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism inevitably degenerates into a compatibilist version of freedom. The upshot will be that epistemological interpretations of transcendental idealism are not viable because of their connection with compatibilism, which Kant rejected.