Kant's Solution to His Circular Problem

The hidden circle which Kant references in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals refers to the inference his argument makes from freedom to autonomy, and from there the moral law. The nature of this circle is problematic; Kant's arguments implied the validity of his own conclusions in analytic a priori propositions which by their definition were taken to be true. The circle moves from presupposing freedom, in the negative sense, to derive at an idea of positive freedom - which follows that a free will under these definitions is therefore the same thing as a will which conforms to the moral law (95). Here, Kant has made the connection from freedom to morality. Next, Kant continues that all rational beings, under their necessitation to the moral law, which is itself derived from the property of freedom; must consider themselves under the idea of freedom for which the will could not be determined externally, but also must see itself as its own lawgiver: "reason must regard itself as the author of its principles independently of alien influences" (96). Kant's circle ends where it began where he holds that, "freedom and the will's own lawgiving are both autonomy" (96). Having admitted this, Kant offers a solution to the problem which I will examine and assess now.

Kant finds a way out of this circle by making two major distinctions: one between the phenomenal and noumenal worlds; the second between practical and theoretical reason. Kant states that there exists one resource available to us for which we can move forward into a grounding of metaphysics of morals. As soon as the distinction is made between the phenomenal world of sense and the noumenal world of understanding; we move towards admitting that behind the world of appearances as we cognize them, there must be something else. However, we cannot know these things in themselves (98). The limits of our understanding make it impossible even to know our nature in itself, only its appearance, and ways in which our consciousness is effected by the natural world. We assume something else out of our own self-activity, and from here we deduce that reason is what separates human beings from other non-rational creatures who act only on impulse and sensation. Since man recognizes this distinction between a world of appearances and a world of things in themselves, he must then regard himself as rational. A rational being has a will, and which could never believe his will to be under the laws of nature once he has cognized his presence in the noumenal world, and is forced to ascribe freedom to his own will (100). From this transition into the noumenal we are able to think ourselves as possessing an autonomous will, which is the necessary condition for the possibility of having moral experiences (100). To elaborate further-- the idea of freedom as the absence of natural necessity determining our will is the very basis of autonomy. Autonomy then requires our wills to be determined by reason, and from here we lay the groundwork for our understanding of morality - from our presence in the noumenal world of things in themselves.

Kant then moves towards depicting a contradiction between the idea of freedom and natural necessity. The idea of freedom is one which can never be proved through experience, and often times experience shows us that the opposite is true, but it is necessarily true on our own judgments of what we ought to do, even though we don't always follow moral imperatives. The contradiction rests on natural necessity and how all things within it must take place in accordance to natural laws. This necessity of nature takes place a priori as well, but it is proved through experience. So while natural necessity is a concept of the understanding, freedom is only an idea of reason (102). As it stands, freedom of the will contradicts natural necessity, but this contradiction can be amended if we distinguish between our faculties of reason: theoretical (speculative) and practical. Practical reason is thus the only way in which to bring reason in line with our actions and conduct, even though we can not know or prove this, it's the only way to extinguish the aforementioned contradiction. The contradiction which holds that natural necessity is at odds with freedom of the will occurs only when we fail to distinguish a different relation when one takes himself to be free but at the same time subject to the natural laws in his course of action; but when we think of freedom of the will of any rational being then it is in a different sense than when we place him under the laws of nature. In order to do this we must separate the boundaries of theoretical reason in terms of knowing, and practical reason dictating our willing of actions.

If we take human beings to be in possession of reason we have already moved from a mere existence within the phenomenal world to the noumenal. If this in fact does occur, as Kant believes, then man must inevitably consider himself intelligence endowed with reason and a will with causality, for if he did not then he would subject himself and his will to the external causality of the world of sense. But since we already hold that human beings do in fact possess reason then we can see that this really isn't a contradiction at all - for their part in the phenomenal world human beings are subject to the natural laws but at the same time exist in the noumenal world in which the will is independent. In the latter man is merely an object affected through sensation, but in the former he is free of sense-impressions and is guided by reason in conformity to the moral law (103).

In terms of limitations, Kant explicitly states that practical reason does not "overstep its boundaries" when thinking itself into the world of understanding, and in fact, must do so with regards to both a positive and negative idea of freedom if reason is to have any causal impact on our will in accordance to actions and conduct(104). It is by thinking itself into the world of understanding that makes possible a causal rationality of the will capable of bringing its maxims in accordance with the supreme moral law. We cannot know this, nor try with relation to objects of the will, but it opens up the possibility of another determination of our wills other than nature, which is the only means of freedom ever being possible in the first place (104). Thus, by our own admission into the noumenal world we impose ourselves with the faculty of reason which is now "constrained to take outside appearances in order to think itself as practical" (104).

By dividing the world of sense from the world of understanding (phenomenal and noumenal) and dividing the boundaries of practical and theoretical reason, Kant has attempted to break his previous petitio principii. Instead of using our experience of morality as the grounding for our freedom in only analytic a priori propositions, Kant has strengthened his argument by necessarily introducing synthetic a priori propositions in comparison of the noumenal/phenomenal, and through the distinction and boundaries of practical reason in contrast to our theoretical use of reason. As to how successful this argument is, I am doubtful.

While his proposed argument has certainly moved us away from the obvious circle which we encounter on pages 94-96, it is unconvincing on grounds that the we must lend the idea of freedom without ever knowing, which follows that we cannot prove our own freedom of experience it. Thus, he hasn't really moved outside of the circle but rather elaborated on it and positioned it in better standing to the reader. The relative success of this lies in that he has laid out the grounding for a metaphysics of morality, but in something that we must assume, not know definitively, so we are no more at the heart of truth in regards to morality except that we know we must assume freedom as the necessary condition for the possibility of having moral experiences, if moral experiences are to be taken as having any basis in reason at all. For Kant this is a closed system all within the realm of the world of understanding (if we are to be moral), and the bridge that he was supposed to build for us is there in illusion, but still a weak one and not one in which most would be willing to cross with confidence.

Morality based on the rational will is problematic because it doesn't take into account how truly deterministic human existence is, and does not move us any closer to the truth but seems only appropriate in trying to explain our own moral experiences while providing a transcendental argument for what is necessary to have them (which is what Kant sought anyways). The problem is not so much any internal conflict within Kant's proposed system, but rather, that our own moral experiences may not even be justified to begin with, much less something that may be accredited solely to reason. If every rational being is in possession of a will and then accordingly must lend itself freedom, then there is something absent in explaining that much of our moral attitudes and conditions are imparted upon us through outside deterministic means. Are we really supposed to believe then that we are all irrational?

Finally, taking Kant's own conclusion that we can never experience our freedom nor prove its existence, then I fail to see why such questions are important, and after reading his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals I have not climbed out of the abyss of skepticism. Our own moral intuitions don't adequately explain much of our own lives, and I do not regard morality has having any other purpose than social utility; so it does not fit that our moral understandings stem from the aspect of our own freedom of the will and autonomy, and that this would have any relevance unless the latter could be proved. Without proof, we have moved only elaborated speculation and hypothetical possibilities for a grounding of morality in metaphysics. Sources:

Kant, Immanuel. The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. (1785). From the Cambridge Edition of Kant's Works in Practical Philosophy. Ed. Paul Guyer & Allen W. Wood. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996 (37-108).