Kant’s Third Critique: Freedom, Norms and Normative Political Theory

This paper examines the relationship between Kant’s conception of freedom within the Critique of the Power of Judgement and his normative political theory. This is done by arguing that normative political theory, a normative activity as such, can be rendered possible within nature in the first instance via freedom, and then have its content positively substantiated. Freedom is conceived as an instance of super-sensible teleological lawgiving that is instantiated by us when we make ourselves and nature purposive for ends not pertaining to nature. Accordingly, normativity is generated, from which morality and normative political theory are examples. First, the paper tries to establish the possibility of this freedom being congruent with nature under a Kantian paradigm. This, by extension, enables the possibility for normative activities like morality and normative political theory to also be congruent with nature. Second, the paper tries to establish Kant’s reasoning as to how we are to collectively proceed given this freedom. For Kant, we ought to proceed under a political context, specifically by ordering our society in accordance with a republican civil constitution, the content of which is furnished by the universal principle of Right, the freedom-affirming principle derived from the categorical imperative. In this way, Kant’s normative political theory is constituted, via freedom as conceived within the Critique of the Power of Judgement.