Volume 111, Issue 2

The relation between Kant’s conception of modalities in the  Postulates of Empirical Thought  and Hegel’s conception in the  Logic of Essence  has not been addressed in the current scholarship. I argue that there is in fact a close connection that becomes visible if the desideratum which is implied by Kant’s conceptions is understood. Thus, after an analysis of the Kantian modal postulates, the article shows that they are sufficient to characterize the necessity of Kant’s Grundsätze  and, hence, a specific form of synthetic propositions a priori. However, I will prove that they are insufficient to characterize Kant’s synthetic propositions a priori  about  transcendental philosophy. This insufficiency in the characterization of transcendental philosophy itself brings into the arena Hegel, who supplements the Kantian modalities with a self-reflexive form of transcendental modality.

The concept of human freedom developed by Schelling in the Freiheitsschrift (1809) prompted him to explore a new concept of time in his Weltalter project. Schelling proposes the ‘generic subjectivity of time’: Time must be understood not as a precondition of dynamism, but rather as an effect of dynamic agency. The articulation of time into its moments, ‘presence’, ‘past’, and ‘future’, is realized through the dynamic contributions (motion, causality, and action) of every single causally involved being. Schelling’s concept thus fundamentally differs from Kant’s concept of time. For Kant, change and dynamism are located in the sensible world, whereas time (as well as space) is the subjective form of our sensible intuition. As such, time must be seen as a precondition of change and dynamism for Kant.

In his treatment of a Kantian concept of moral freedom, Schiller argues for two kinds of freedom: freedom in the spirit of autonomous practical reason and freedom in which man is considered a mixed (sensual and rational) being. It is apparent that Schiller is on a Reinholdian path. He follows Reinhold’s theory of free will in conceiving of moral freedom primarily as the capacity to decide between the material drive as a sensible, self-interested drive and the formal drive as a rational, unselfish drive. But it is also obvious that Schiller modifies Reinhold’s results in order to obtain a concept of aesthetic freedom. This project is important in view of a deeper understanding of the concept of aesthetic consciousness but is of little use in achieving a better understanding of the concept of moral freedom.

In my contribution, I discuss the important role of moral anthropological questions in the development of Schiller’s theoretical thought. I underline the fact that Schiller’s philosophical questions in Jena are much closer to those he confronted in Stuttgart – much closer than is considered to be the case in contemporary Schiller scholarship. I show how this continuity becomes evident when we take into consideration the moral anthropological topics that continued to interest Schiller throughout his life. To ground my argument, I show that the concept of the“whole human being” (i. e. the concept of a human considered in its entirety, as both sensible and rational) constitutes the continuous characteristic of Schiller’s philosophical considerations.

In Schillerʼs On Grace and Dignity  of 1794, his critique of the alleged ‘rigorism’ of Kantian ethics is particularly harsh: Kant has developed an ethic for “servants” that suppresses human nature for fear of it and does not reconcile it. The essay attempts to show that this critique is based on Schillerʼs double misunderstanding: a misunderstanding of the Kantian conception and a misunderstanding of its own alternative model. This analysis and interpretation of Schillerʼs critique of Kant’s ethics also leads to the realization that Schillerʼs idea of morality is ultimately more rigid than Kantʼs theory, which was so harshly criticized.

In the Briefe über die Ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen , the focus of this article, Schiller’s ostensible aim – to complete Kant’s aesthetic theory – is progressively abandoned. The article examines the reasons for this abandonment. On the one hand, Schiller’s original purpose was overtaken by events in France. Schiller found that he could no longer sustain confidence in reason’s capacity to build a durable political republic. On the other hand, the alternative path he favours involves him in the expounding of an anthropology he did not set out to undertake. The Ästhetische Briefe , for this reason, finds itself adumbrating an “unexpected science” with little remaining reference to Kant – an account of the human being whose desirable future state, that of morality, can only be made secure by passage through the aesthetic state. A by-product of this argument, and perhaps its chief consequence, is that it finally settles the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns (in favour of the moderns).

The paper examines Schiller’s argument concerning the subjective experience of adopting a morality based on Kantian principles. On Schiller’s view, such experience must be marked by a continuous struggle to suppress nature, because the moral law is a purely rational and categorically commanding law that addresses beings who are natural as well as rational. Essential for Schiller’s conclusion is the account he has of what it takes to follow the law, that is, the mental states and functions that encapsulate the idea of moral self contained in Kant’s ethics. Focusing on the fundamental psychological elements and processes to which Kant’s theory appeals and on which it depends to have application, the paper defends an alternative idea of moral self to the one Schiller attributes to Kant.