Freedom and Responsibility in Understanding of Plato and Kant

In the works of Plato and Kant we can find both similarities and differences in how they understood the concepts of freedom and responsibility. This essay presents the points in which they converge and also the points in which they diverge in their understandings.

Both Plato and Kant give the paramount importance to a person’s ability to reason; they both acknowledge that only through reasoning that is not hindered by prejudices and biases can true knowledge be obtained and enlightenment be achieved.

Kant maintains that all people need to be free in reasoning without being dependent on another who will guide him through life and make decisions for them. He also claims that people should be totally unrestrained in publicly announcing their opinions and feelings about any subjects and questions thus participating in changing laws and legislations. Nonetheless, Kant asserts that people should obey the law of the State. If they find one particular law unjust, they should express their feelings about this law without interfering in the current state of affairs, and the law will be changed if that view undergoes a trial of time, and is approved by majority. For that reason, Kant brings in the notions of “private use of reason” and “public use of reason”. By “private use of reason” he understood the use which one applies carrying out one’s duty on a particular civil post, and by “public use of reason” – the use which one applies as a “scholar before a reading public”. Kant writes that private use of reason should be “narrowly restricted”, because if it is not it might result in revolution which will create chaos in the state. But “public use of reason” must be totally unconstrained because only that way will enlightenment follow. Plato, in his turn, does not think that for a state to be good there should be absolute freedom of expression. He claims that it will bring a