Three Kinds of Contingency in Kant’s Pre-Critical Theory of Freedom (1755-1763)

Kant’s earliest conception of freedom has usually been understood as building on the compatibilism of Leibniz and Wolff: free action is compatible with the principle of sufficient reason because its occurrence is not absolutely but instead merely hypothetically necessary and hence contingent. But recent scholarship has challenged this consensus. Scholars have made compelling cases not only that Kant, in the Nova dilucidatio of 1755, advocated a freedom without contingency, but also, to the contrary, that he acknowledged freedom to involve a more radical contingency incompatible with the principle of sufficient reason—if not already in the Nova dilucidatio, then at least in the Beweisgrund essay of 1763. But a reexamination of the role the concept ‘contingency’ plays in these two texts confirms the more standard view that the Nova dilucidatio defends a compatibilism in the Leibnizian tradition and that the Beweisgrund essay is at least consistent with this compatibilism. The 1755 Nova dilucidatio addresses an objection to the Leibnizian principle of sufficient reason by Christian August Crusius: actions antecedently determined by grounds would happen with a necessity that would make them “unavoidable” and hence unfree. Kant’s response appeals, at least implicitly, to two different conceptions of contingency. (1) Absolute or in se contingency: the opposite of a free action is excluded not by an essence (and hence does not involve a contradiction) but rather by antecedently determining grounds. Here, Kant draws on Leibniz’s account, as developed by Christian Wolff and Alexander Baumgarten, of an absolute or in se contingency compatible with the principle of sufficient reason. (2) Physical contingency or physical indifference: the opposite of a free action is not excluded by any non-appetitive or physical antecedent determining grounds, i.e., by any determining grounds outside willing and desiring; hence a free action occurs if and only if the agent prefers it. Here, Kant is likely drawing on the account of physical contingency or indifference introduced by Friedrich Wagner and developed by Baumgarten. Finally, the Beweisgrund essay of 1763 attributes yet a third kind of contingency to freedom: (3) free actions appear to be contingent in the sense that they contain the inherent possibility of deviating from the laws of nature that direct everything in creation toward perfection. This “teleo-nomologically contingency” (as we might call it) is neutral on the question of compatibilism: it neither affirms nor denies that the opposite of a free action is excluded by antecedently determining grounds.