Free Will in Transcendent Wisdom and Transcendental Idealism: ‎A Comparison of the Views of Kant and Mulla Sadra

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Official Researcher, Research Institute of Islamic Philosophy and Theology, Islamic Sciences and Culture ‎Academy, Qom, Iran.

2 PhD Student Moral Philosophy, Faculty of Theology, University of Qom, Qom, Iran.

Abstract

Freedom, in Kant’s view, is a general concept that encompasses his three Critiques and many of his writings. He introduces freedom as the foundation of ethics and considers it a fundamental characteristic of the subject. In contrast, Mulla Sadra, while accepting the general necessity of causality, clearly explains free will within the scope of causality and as a positive (affirmative) matter, by citing the philosophical foundations of his Transcendent Wisdom. Despite believing in the unity of the identity of the soul and the body—considering them to be of one existence—Mulla Sadra considers the soul to be the true agent of moral behavior among the various causes and influential factors surrounding it, and describes the soul’s mode of agency regarding moral behaviors as a monophonic and radiative (emanationist) agency. From the perspective of Kant’s dual-aspect view, freedom exists in two senses: negative and positive. Of these two, Kant chooses the latter and makes it the basis of his thought. Although Mulla Sadra has a single-aspect anthropological foundation and Kant has a dual-aspect one, they share similarities in the analysis and explanation of free will. The present article has been compiled with the aim of describing and analyzing freedom in the thought of Kant and Mulla Sadra, pointing to some fundamental similarities and differences between these two prominent thinkers, using an analytical method. From the philosophical analysis of freedom in both perspectives, it was concluded that in Kant’s strategy, firstly, freedom is related to the noumenal (trans-phenomenal) realm and not the phenomenal and external realm; in the phenomenal, causal necessity reigns, but the noumenal realm is governed by the rules of pure reason. Secondly, freedom is the independence of the will from being determined by the laws of nature, and it also consists of its determination by unchanging laws of a special kind, the origin of which is within pure reason. Mulla Sadra agrees with Kant on the point that the soul’s agency is independent of the laws of nature for the issuance of moral behavior, as he considers the soul to be the true agent. However, unlike Kant, he does not remove the soul’s sphere of agency from the orbit of the laws of causality.

Keywords

References

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Theosophia Islamica
Volume 6, Issue 1 - Serial Number 11
January 2026
Pages 95-116

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