Where Do You Experience Freedom?
Kant vs. Kierkegaard
It’s very odd that Kant thinks the only way we can be free is by being moral and the only way we can be moral is by obeying a law that is universal. But it’s worth considering that he thought this, in part, because he believed that a mechanistic universe precluded human freedom and so the only way to save it was by positing some aspect of our experience isn’t mechanistic.
To the extent that you agree with Kant that freedom means behaving in a way that is not mechanistic, what are the zones in which you find yourself to be free?
Kierkegaard would locate freedom in the decision to commit to something, but rejects Kant’s equation of freedom and universality. Freedom is an idiosyncratic event. Hegel writes that if “one is not free, all are not free.” Kierkegaard seems to reject this, flipping it on its head. I can paraphrase him in this way, “If I am not free, nothing is.”
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