Freedom as the Site of the Kehre. Rethinking Heidegger’s Engagement with Kant’s Practical Reason

In a 1930 lecture course, Heidegger claims that the question of being is rooted in the problem of human freedom. Yet his engagement with practical reason has often been underexplored, in contrast to the attention devoted to other aspects of his dialogue with Kant. My paper aims to demonstrate that, despite its brief treatment in the Kantbuch, practical reason exerts a profound influence on Heidegger from the very outset. Focusing on the 1930 course and the 1943 essay on the essence of truth, I will highlight how the inversion of human freedom toward a freedom of Being depends on resolving a tension in the Kantian conception of freedom, conceived as an object of either knowledge or faith. This paves the way to rethinking the phenomenological and hermeneutical dimensions of freedom, their distinctive role in the Kehre, and their essential contribution to a history of practical reason yet to be written.