Kant: Phenomenon, Noumenon, Freedom, Soul

Kant's Distinctions: Phenomenon and Noumenon

Kant presented in detail the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon, and on the other hand, the distinction between knowing and thinking.

1. Only phenomena we know, what appears to us in sensible intuition:
   1. Our knowledge of phenomena is the result of a double synthesis: the first level of sensitivity between the data of experience (sensory impressions) and the a priori forms of sensibility: Space and Time; the second between the spatially and temporally organized data and understanding, the concepts or categories.
2. Our theoretical knowledge is limited to objects of experience, to what is shown to us, so that any application of the categories to that of which I have no experience does not produce knowledge.
3. The thing in itself, the noumenon, independent of our way of knowing, is unknowable. But "the same objects as things in themselves, though we cannot know them, we can at least think about them."

Freedom and the Third Antinomy

Kant stated in the text that human freedom can be defended only if the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon has been made, and thus, the third antinomy would be resolved:

1. All phenomena, and man as such, are subject to the "principle of causality", i.e., are determined, so there is no freedom.
2. Thus, if there is no distinction between man as a phenomenon and man as a noumenon, no one could say of the same being, "the human soul", that "his will is free" and that "while he is subject to natural necessity, i.e., that he is not free, without falling into a manifest contradiction."

Soul, Freedom, and Theoretical Reason

Kant argues in the text that although soul and freedom cannot be known by theoretical reason, they can be thought, and freedom can be thought without contradiction if the distinction between man as a phenomenon and man as noumenon was previously made.

1. We do not know the soul by theoretical reason and therefore freedom, a property of the soul, is an Idea of Reason that has no empirical correlate.
2. The analysis undertaken by Kant of theoretical reason has led to the fundamental difference between phenomenon and noumenon, so that "one and the same will is conceived, in the phenomenon (...) under the law of nature and in this sense as not free, and yet as part of a thing in itself, and not subject to that law (...) as free, without committing contradiction."