Kant and Heidegger on the freedom that eludes ‘the political’

By considering the transcendentalism of Kant and Heidegger as primarily oriented towards the concerns of practical philosophy, this paper explores some of the similarities in their notions of political community and their relation to freedom. It argues that, despite the differences in their philosophical registers, these similarities lead both of them to hold that ‘the political’ is a deficient mode of community. Certain transcendence of experience allows them both to change how a human being relates to another. Heidegger follows Kant’s lead in separating the concern of freedom from goodness and distances it even further from the means-ends reasoning by exiting the subject-object paradigm. The alternatives to the deficient political community, the kingdom of ends in Kant and the authentic community in Heidegger, too have potentially comparable facets. The paper concludes that their arguments leave an account of freedom that ‘must’ remain elusive for political action.