Kant’s Complaint of a Wretched Subterfuge

Abstract

Jan Srzednicki is not the only one to have found Kant’s discussion of freedom unconvincing but his diagnosis of the problem suggests a construal that makes Kant’s position defensible. Srzednicki writes:

• The puzzle of freewill arises squarely on the level of appearances and needs to be solved there; to say that there is a possibility of freedom on another level does not face the question at all.¹

• The thing which is of importance here is the fact that the empirical and transcendental level each generate questions of their own and the questions are naturally of a different order. It is not at all obvious that a question generated on one level can be solved on the other.²