Can Free Will Escape Causation?

In this lecture, Reed Winegar walks through Kant's theory of knowledge, beginning with the fundamental distinctions between analytic and synthetic judgments and between a priori and empirical knowledge. He explains why Kant believed that synthetic a priori knowledge, such as mathematics and causation, is possible, drawing on the famous example of how we judge causal connections to be necessary, even though experience alone could never show them to be more than regular. Winegar then traces the limits of this framework: while knowledge applies reliably to objects of possible experience, it cannot reach beyond those bounds to things in themselves. This limitation, however, opens a surprising door. Through the Third Antinomy, Kant reveals a paradox in causal reasoning that leaves room for a special kind of uncaused freedom. Winegar concludes by exploring how this gap between appearances and things in themselves allows Kant to argue that humans might possess genuine moral autonomy, choosing between morality and desire in a way that escapes thoroughgoing causal determination.