Kant as the Starting Point

This chapter follows Heidegger’s critical engagement with Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of freedom in a lecture course in 1930, The Essence of Human Freedom. While this has been discussed in part in other scholarship, the significance has been overlooked, and it has been seen as a development of Heidegger’s thinking since Being and Time was published in 1927. In fact, it is a clarification of the earlier text. The full conclusion of my argument will be given in Chap. 3 , with Chap. 2 focussing on explaining Kant’s philosophy of freedom and Heidegger’s interpretation of it, as the foundation for the arguments of the later chapters.