Kant and the Categories of Freedom

In the second chapter of the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason Kant introduces the ‘table of categories of freedom in regard of the concepts of good and evil’. is table has baffled many interpreters and has been described as one of the most obscure parts of Kant’s critical system. Kant does not seem to give any detailed explanation of what the categories of freedom are supposed to do and how they are to be derived. Moreover, he does not appeal to or refer to these categories in the rest of his works despite the fact that the table of the categories of freedom is supposed to allow us to survey ‘the whole plan of what has to be done, even every question of practical philosophy that has to be answered, and also the order that is to be followed.’ (:) It is not even always clear what the individual categories are since he only describes them by means of incomplete sentences. While leaving things unexplained in this way he states that he is not going to provide anything more ‘for the elucidation of the present table, since it is intelligible enough in itself.’ (:) In this paper I will provide an account of the different categories, explaining how they fit together and what role they are supposed to play. I will try to make the table as intelligible as possible by explaining the categories in terms of wellknown Kantian terminology. is analysis will place particular emphasis on the structural features that the table of the categories of freedom shares with the table of judgements and the table of categories laid out by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason. e key to an understanding of the categories lies in the realisation that the categories falling under each heading must form a synthetic unity whereby the