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stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

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freedom as the objectification <strong>of</strong> itself. “The practical a priori concepts in relation to the supreme<br />

principle <strong>of</strong> freedom at once become cognitions and do not have to wait for intuitions in order to<br />

receive meaning, and this happens for the noteworthy reason that they themselves produce the<br />

reality <strong>of</strong> that to which they refer (the disposition <strong>of</strong> the will), which is not the business <strong>of</strong><br />

theoretical concepts” (CPrR5:66). Thus Kant talks about “the grand disclosure brought to us<br />

through practical reason by means <strong>of</strong> the moral law, the disclosure, namely <strong>of</strong> an intelligible<br />

world through realization <strong>of</strong> the otherwise transcendent concept <strong>of</strong> freedom…” (CPrR 5:94). I do<br />

not know freedom because I observe it. Freedom is not something to be observed. Freedom is<br />

something to be done. We can put this in stronger terms. Kant argues that “life is the faculty <strong>of</strong> a<br />

being to act in accordance with laws <strong>of</strong> the faculty <strong>of</strong> desire. The faculty <strong>of</strong> desire is a being’s<br />

faculty to be by means <strong>of</strong> its representations the cause <strong>of</strong> the reality <strong>of</strong> the objects <strong>of</strong> these<br />

representations” (CPrR 5:10n). Freedom is life. Life is not something to be observed. Life is<br />

something to be lived. Even if that living takes the form <strong>of</strong> observation as it does in the<br />

paradoxical case <strong>of</strong> the philosopher.<br />

137

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