The Third Antinomy is not only the locus of the major discussion of the problem of freedom in the Critique of Pure Reason, it is also the basis for Kant's subsequent treatments of the topic in his writings on moral philosophy. His central claim is that it is only because the resolution of this antinomy leaves a conceptual space for an incompatibilist conception of freedom that it is possible to give the claims of practical reason a hearing. The antinomy itself, however, is ostensibly concerned with a conflict between cosmological ideas (ideas of totality), which seems to have nothing directly to do with what is generally regarded as the “free will problem.” Consequently, it is not surprising that many commentators tend to gloss over the cosmological dimension of Kant's account, either ignoring it completely or dismissing it as one more example of Kant being deflected from his proper philosophical course by architectonic considerations.

Although certainly understandable, this wholesale neglect of the cosmological dimension of Kant's account of freedom is nonetheless misguided. As I shall argue in the present chapter, the cosmological conflict can best be seen as one between two generic models or conceptions of agency that can and, in the history of philosophy, have been applied both to rational agents in the world and to a transcendent creator of the world. Thus, although the conflict cannot be identified with the familiar debate between libertarianism and determinism, it does provide the conceptual framework in terms of which Kant analyzes this debate.