Wolfgang Ertl

Wolfgang Ertl is Professor of Moral Philosophy at Keio University, Tokyo. He is working on topics at the juncture of metaphysics and ethics such as free will and determinism, mainly in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Currently, he is engaged in research on Kant’s indebtedness in this regard to the legacy of the so-called "Second Scholasticism”. Philosophical theology, meta-ethics, and moral theory are further fields of research, with an eye to both contemporary debates and an interest in classic authors of the history of philosophy. Wolfgang is the author of Kants Auflösung der dritten Antinomie, David Hume und die Dissertation von 1770, and, most recently, The Guarantee of Perpetual Peace, in the series Cambridge Elements in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Previously, he held visiting positions at University College London, Humboldt University of Berlin, St Andrews, and Princeton.

Abstract: The aim of this project is to continue identifying Molinist elements at the heart of Kant's thought and thereby to advance my manuscript of a monograph on this topic. After clarifying the concept of Molinism at issue, a core and a penumbra of Kant's Molinism are distinguished. The core concerns Kant's position on the problem of the compatibility of causal determinism and free will, more specifically, his conception of the intelligible character of a finite free agent, and his theologically inflected altered-laws compatibilism. My key claim is that these ideas can be rendered intelligible with the help of Molina's notions of counterfactuals of freedom, and divine middle knowledge of them respectively. Three topics adjacent to Kant's doctrine of compatibility make up the penumbra of Kant's Molinism. These are his doctrine of a universal, or nearly universal, but freely acquired propensity towards evil, his doctrine of grace, and the foundational assumptions of his philosophy of history.