Phenomenizing Freedom. Heidegger’s Interpretation of Kant’s Concept of Freedom in the Lecture Course of the Summer Semester of 1930

This paper shows how Kant’s idea of freedom is crucial for Heidegger’s thinking between the end of the ‘20s and the beginning of the ‘30s. Precisely, in the lecture course of the summer semester of 1930, dedicated to the essence of human freedom,310 Heidegger seems to radicalize the account of the meaning of “phenomenon” that he gave in Being and Time, since he now recognizes the distinctive structure of freedom as it is thought by Kant, especially in his Critique of Practical Reason. This structure involves a «phenomenization of freedom», which means both that freedom is taken to be a phenomenon (in a specific sense) and that the phenomenon of Heidegger’s phenomenology is free. In the first two sections of this paper, I thus try to explain the transformation of Heidegger’s concept of Erscheinung referring to his reading of Kant, while in the last part I show that this phenomenization of freedom paves the way to Heidegger’s Kehre and beinghistorical thinking.