CfA: Kant’s Concept of Freedom: Transcendental, Moral, Political (Mainz, Germany, 28–29 September 2026)
We are pleased to announce the call for abstracts for the 5th International Doctoral Colloquium of the Kant-Gesellschaft for 2026, on Kant’s Concepts of Freedom: Tran-scendental, Moral, Political. The workshop will take place at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 28–29 September, in collaboration with the Kant-Forschungsstelle Mainz.
Keynote Speakers:
Prof. Pauline Kleingeld (University of Groningen)
Dr. Joe Saunders (Durham University)
The workshop will examine Kant’s multifaceted conception of freedom across his critical and pre-critical works, investigating its transcendental, moral, and political dimensions. Submissions are invited to engage with the following aspects of Kant’s concepts of free-dom:
– Metaphysical and cosmological debates: spontaneity and free causality versus empirical temporality.
– Moral-ethical debates: autonomy and the ability-to-do-otherwise; the possibility of free immoral willing; Willkür/Selbstbestimmung.
– Political and juridical debates: external freedom, the Doctrine of Right, and coer-cion as protection.
– Ethical-theological debates: freedom as a postulate of practical reason; God, im-mortality, and radical evil.
– Sources and reception: historical influences and transmission of Kantian ideas.
– Debates in the secondary literature and contemporary interpretative controver-sies.
The call for abstracts is open to all doctoral students working on Kant’s theory of freedom. The abstracts should be suitable for a 30-minute presentation, with 15 minutes for discussion, and they should be about 500 words in length. The workshop languages are English and German. Abstracts should be prepared for anonymous refer-eeing and be sent to henning.kirschbaum@uni-mainz.de. In the same message, please, include your name, institutional affiliation, email address, and paper title.
We will cover travel expenses up to a maximum of €200 and accommodation costs for the doctoral students giving presentations. Details to follow after decisions.
Deadline for abstracts is 15 January 2026.
We aim to send decision letters by mid-February 2026.
For any further queries, please contact Henning Kirschbaum,
henning.kirschbaum@uni-mainz.de, or Lucia Volonté, lvolont@uni-mainz.de.
