Freedom and Autonomy in Schiller

Journal of the History of Ideas

Volumn 64, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 119-134

  Roehr, Sabine ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0141768139     PISSN: 00225037     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3654299     Document Type: Review

References (83)

1. Jerome B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, 1998).
2. See, W. M. Calder, "Schiller on the Will and the Heroic Villain," Oxford German Studies, 2, (1967), 41-53; Paul Menzer, "Schiller und Kant. Zum 150. Todestage Friedrich von Schillers am 9. Mai 1955," Kant-Studien, 47, (1955/56), 113-47, 234-72; R. D. Miller, Schiller and the Ideal of Freedom: A Study of Schiller's Philosophical Works with Chapters on Kant (Oxford, 1970).
3. See, W. M. Calder, "Schiller on the Will and the Heroic Villain," Oxford German Studies, 2, (1967), 41-53; Paul Menzer, "Schiller und Kant. Zum 150. Todestage Friedrich von Schillers am 9. Mai 1955," Kant-Studien, 47, (1955/56), 113-47, 234-72; R. D. Miller, Schiller and the Ideal of Freedom: A Study of Schiller's Philosophical Works with Chapters on Kant (Oxford, 1970).
4. See, W. M. Calder, "Schiller on the Will and the Heroic Villain," Oxford German Studies, 2, (1967), 41-53; Paul Menzer, "Schiller und Kant. Zum 150. Todestage Friedrich von Schillers am 9. Mai 1955," Kant-Studien, 47, (1955/56), 113-47, 234-72; R. D. Miller, Schiller and the Ideal of Freedom: A Study of Schiller's Philosophical Works with Chapters on Kant (Oxford, 1970).
5. Dieter Henrich, "Beauty and Freedom: Schiller's Struggle with Kant's Aesthetics," Essays in Kant's Aesthetics, ed. Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer (Chicago, 1982); Lesley Sharpe, "Schiller's Aesthetic Letters: A Theory of Beauty in a Revolutionary Age," talk given at a workshop on Schiller's Aesthetic Letters in January 1999 at the Institute of Germanic Studies, London.
6. Dieter Henrich, "Beauty and Freedom: Schiller's Struggle with Kant's Aesthetics," Essays in Kant's Aesthetics, ed. Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer (Chicago, 1982); Lesley Sharpe, "Schiller's Aesthetic Letters: A Theory of Beauty in a Revolutionary Age," talk given at a workshop on Schiller's Aesthetic Letters in January 1999 at the Institute of Germanic Studies, London.
7. Dieter Henrich, "Beauty and Freedom: Schiller's Struggle with Kant's Aesthetics," Essays in Kant's Aesthetics, ed. Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer (Chicago, 1982); Lesley Sharpe, "Schiller's Aesthetic Letters: A Theory of Beauty in a Revolutionary Age," talk given at a workshop on Schiller's Aesthetic Letters in January 1999 at the Institute of Germanic Studies, London.
8. Schiller, "Kallias oder über die Schönheit," Kallias oder über die Schönheit. Über Anmut und Würde (Stuttgart, 1971), from now on quoted as Kallias-Briefe.
9. Kallias-Briefe, 38.
10. Ibid., 40.
11. Kant introduces the concept of "heautonomy" in the introduction to his Critique of Judgment. Apparently, he made it up in order to distinguish between moral autonomy and the particular autonomy of the faculty of judgment that judges nature according to a subjective principle of purposiveness. "The judgment has therefore also in itself a principle a priori of the possibility of nature, but only in a subjective aspect, by which it prescribes not to nature (autonomy), but to itself (heautonomy) a law for its reflection upon nature." See Critique of Judgement, tr. J. H. Bernhard (London, 1951), 22. The added prefix "he," as in the Greek "heauton," is probably meant to draw attention to the purely reflexive character of such law.
12. Kallias-Briefe, 47. See also Ernst Cassirer, Freiheit und Form: Studien zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte (Darmstadt, 1961), 286.
13. Kallias-Briefe, 47. See also Ernst Cassirer, Freiheit und Form: Studien zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte (Darmstadt, 1961), 286.
14. Kallias-Briefe, 17.
15. I b i d.
16. See Sigbert Latzel "Die ästhetische Vernunft: Bemerkungen zu Schillers 'Kallias' mit Bezug auf die Ästhetik des 18. Jahrhunderts," Friedrich Schiller: Zur Geschichtlichkeit seines Werkes, ed. Klaus Berghahn (Kronberg, 1975), 247.
17. Kallias-Briefe, 32.
18. See Dieter Henrich's "Beauty and Freedom: Schiller's Struggle with Kant's Aesthetics."
19. Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie, in Der Teutsche Merkur (Weimar, 1786), III and (Weimar, 1787), I, II, III.
20. E.g., his "Briefe über Don Carlos" and his poem "Die Götter Griechenlands" (Teutsche Merkur, 1788), his "Was heißt und zu welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte?" and "Die Künstler" (1789).
21. Letter 97, to Körner, Weimar, 29 August 1787. Schillers Werke Nationalausgabe (NA), XXIV, ed. Benno von Wiese (Weimar, 1963), 143.
22. See Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie (Leipzig, 1790), I and (Leipzig, 1792), II.
23. Karl Ameriks, "Kant's Deduction of Freedom and Morality," Journal of the History of Philosophy, 19 (1981), 54.
24. Ibid., 59.
25. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith (London, 1933), A533/B561.
26. Critique of Pure Reason, A534/B562.
27. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, tr. and intro. L. W. Beck (London, 1959), [440], 59 (page numbers in brackets refer to the Akademie-Ausgabe).
28. Ibid., [458], 77.
29. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, tr. and intro. L. W. Beck (London, 1956), [32], 32.
30. Critique of Practical Reason [43], 44.
31. Through the criticisms of J. A. H. Ulrich and C. C. E. Schmid.
32. Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, tr. John Silber (New York, 1960), BA7/ 17.I changed the translation of "Willkür" from "will" to "choice."
33. John Silber, "Introduction: The Ethical Significance of Kant's Religion," Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 127-28.
34. Alien W. Wood, Kant's Moral Religion (Ithaca, N.Y., 1970), 245.
35. Prauss, Kant über Freiheit als Autonomie (Frankfurt, 1983), 98f.
36. th Brief).
37. th Brief).
38. Ibid., 437.
39. th Brief)
40. Kant's answer in The Metaphysics of Morals to his critics contains some surprising, if only apparent, similarities between his and Reinhold's accounts of freedom and will. Kant, for the first time, explicitly separates the will (Wille) from choice (Willkür), reminiscent of Reinhold's distinct capacities of practical reason and free will. The will now gives the laws and thus "cannot be called either free or unfree, since it is not directed to actions immediately but immediately to giving laws for the maxims of actions (and is, therefore, practical reason itself). Hence the will directs with absolute necessity and is itself subject to no necessitation. Only choice can therefore be free." (Metaphysics of Morals, tr., notes Mary Gregor [Cambridge, 1991], [226], 52). But then Kant immediately proceeds to disclaim the possibility of a theoretical concept of free choice. "But freedom of choice cannot be defined - as some have tried to define it - as the capacity to make a choice for or against the law (libertas indifferentiae), even though choice as & phenomenon provides frequent examples of this experience" (ibid.). The "some" obviously refers to Reinhold, and this is Kant's last word on the matter: free choice cannot be defined as a separate capacity; he even characterizes it as an "incapacity" "Only freedom in relation to the internal lawgiving of reason is really a capacity; the possibility of deviation from it is an incapacity" (Ibid., [227], 52). Thus, Kant was clearly aware of the intentional, self-determinational aspects of heteronomous acting, but he could not accommodate it within the strict dualism of autonomy and heteronomy, freedom and natural causality. I will forgo discussing here Reinhold's answer to Kant in his "Einige Bemerkungen über die in der Einleitung zu den metaphysischen Anfangsgründen der Rechtslehre von I. Kant aufgestellten Begriffe von der Freiheit des Willens," Auswahl vermischer Schriften, vol. 2 (Jena, 1797).
41. Kant's answer in The Metaphysics of Morals to his critics contains some surprising, if only apparent, similarities between his and Reinhold's accounts of freedom and will. Kant, for the first time, explicitly separates the will (Wille) from choice (Willkür), reminiscent of Reinhold's distinct capacities of practical reason and free will. The will now gives the laws and thus "cannot be called either free or unfree, since it is not directed to actions immediately but immediately to giving laws for the maxims of actions (and is, therefore, practical reason itself). Hence the will directs with absolute necessity and is itself subject to no necessitation. Only choice can therefore be free." (Metaphysics of Morals, tr., notes Mary Gregor [Cambridge, 1991], [226], 52). But then Kant immediately proceeds to disclaim the possibility of a theoretical concept of free choice. "But freedom of choice cannot be defined - as some have tried to define it - as the capacity to make a choice for or against the law (libertas indifferentiae), even though choice as & phenomenon provides frequent examples of this experience" (ibid.). The "some" obviously refers to Reinhold, and this is Kant's last word on the matter: free choice cannot be defined as a separate capacity; he even characterizes it as an "incapacity" "Only freedom in relation to the internal lawgiving of reason is really a capacity; the possibility of deviation from it is an incapacity" (Ibid., [227], 52). Thus, Kant was clearly aware of the intentional, self-determinational aspects of heteronomous acting, but he could not accommodate it within the strict dualism of autonomy and heteronomy, freedom and natural causality. I will forgo discussing here Reinhold's answer to Kant in his "Einige Bemerkungen über die in der Einleitung zu den metaphysischen Anfangsgründen der Rechtslehre von I. Kant aufgestellten Begriffe von der Freiheit des Willens," Auswahl vermischer Schriften, vol. 2 (Jena, 1797).
42. Kant's answer in The Metaphysics of Morals to his critics contains some surprising, if only apparent, similarities between his and Reinhold's accounts of freedom and will. Kant, for the first time, explicitly separates the will (Wille) from choice (Willkür), reminiscent of Reinhold's distinct capacities of practical reason and free will. The will now gives the laws and thus "cannot be called either free or unfree, since it is not directed to actions immediately but immediately to giving laws for the maxims of actions (and is, therefore, practical reason itself). Hence the will directs with absolute necessity and is itself subject to no necessitation. Only choice can therefore be free." (Metaphysics of Morals, tr., notes Mary Gregor [Cambridge, 1991], [226], 52). But then Kant immediately proceeds to disclaim the possibility of a theoretical concept of free choice. "But freedom of choice cannot be defined - as some have tried to define it - as the capacity to make a choice for or against the law (libertas indifferentiae), even though choice as & phenomenon provides frequent examples of this experience" (ibid.). The "some" obviously refers to Reinhold, and this is Kant's last word on the matter: free choice cannot be defined as a separate capacity; he even characterizes it as an "incapacity" "Only freedom in relation to the internal lawgiving of reason is really a capacity; the possibility of deviation from it is an incapacity" (Ibid., [227], 52). Thus, Kant was clearly aware of the intentional, self-determinational aspects of heteronomous acting, but he could not accommodate it within the strict dualism of autonomy and heteronomy, freedom and natural causality. I will forgo discussing here Reinhold's answer to Kant in his "Einige Bemerkungen über die in der Einleitung zu den metaphysischen Anfangsgründen der Rechtslehre von I. Kant aufgestellten Begriffe von der Freiheit des Willens," Auswahl vermischer Schriften, vol. 2 (Jena, 1797).
43. Kant's answer in The Metaphysics of Morals to his critics contains some surprising, if only apparent, similarities between his and Reinhold's accounts of freedom and will. Kant, for the first time, explicitly separates the will (Wille) from choice (Willkür), reminiscent of Reinhold's distinct capacities of practical reason and free will. The will now gives the laws and thus "cannot be called either free or unfree, since it is not directed to actions immediately but immediately to giving laws for the maxims of actions (and is, therefore, practical reason itself). Hence the will directs with absolute necessity and is itself subject to no necessitation. Only choice can therefore be free." (Metaphysics of Morals, tr., notes Mary Gregor [Cambridge, 1991], [226], 52). But then Kant immediately proceeds to disclaim the possibility of a theoretical concept of free choice. "But freedom of choice cannot be defined - as some have tried to define it - as the capacity to make a choice for or against the law (libertas indifferentiae), even though choice as & phenomenon provides frequent examples of this experience" (ibid.). The "some" obviously refers to Reinhold, and this is Kant's last word on the matter: free choice cannot be defined as a separate capacity; he even characterizes it as an "incapacity" "Only freedom in relation to the internal lawgiving of reason is really a capacity; the possibility of deviation from it is an incapacity" (Ibid., [227], 52). Thus, Kant was clearly aware of the intentional, self-determinational aspects of heteronomous acting, but he could not accommodate it within the strict dualism of autonomy and heteronomy, freedom and natural causality. I will forgo discussing here Reinhold's answer to Kant in his "Einige Bemerkungen über die in der Einleitung zu den metaphysischen Anfangsgründen der Rechtslehre von I. Kant aufgestellten Begriffe von der Freiheit des Willens," Auswahl vermischer Schriften, vol. 2 (Jena, 1797).
44. Schiller, Kallias-Briefe, 13, 16.
45. See Menzer and Wolfgang Düsing, in his "Ästhetische Form als Darstellung der Subjektivität: Zur Rezeption Kantischer Begriffe in Schillers Ästhetik," Friedrich Schiller: Zur Geschichtlichkeit seines Werkes, ed. K. Berghahn; and Jeffrey Barnouw in his " 'Freiheit zu geben durch Freiheit': Ästhetischer Zustand - Ästhetischer Staat," Friedrich Schiller: Kunst, Humanität und Politik in der späten Aufklärung. Ein Symposium, ed. W. Wittkowski (Tüingen, 1982). Schiller himself draws attention to it in his "Über Anmut und Würde."
46. See Menzer and Wolfgang Düsing, in his "Ästhetische Form als Darstellung der Subjektivität: Zur Rezeption Kantischer Begriffe in Schillers Ästhetik," Friedrich Schiller: Zur Geschichtlichkeit seines Werkes, ed. K. Berghahn; and Jeffrey Barnouw in his " 'Freiheit zu geben durch Freiheit': Ästhetischer Zustand - Ästhetischer Staat," Friedrich Schiller: Kunst, Humanität und Politik in der späten Aufklärung. Ein Symposium, ed. W. Wittkowski (Tüingen, 1982). Schiller himself draws attention to it in his "Über Anmut und Würde."
47. See Menzer and Wolfgang Düsing, in his "Ästhetische Form als Darstellung der Subjektivität: Zur Rezeption Kantischer Begriffe in Schillers Ästhetik," Friedrich Schiller: Zur Geschichtlichkeit seines Werkes, ed. K. Berghahn; and Jeffrey Barnouw in his " 'Freiheit zu geben durch Freiheit': Ästhetischer Zustand - Ästhetischer Staat," Friedrich Schiller: Kunst, Humanität und Politik in der späten Aufklärung. Ein Symposium, ed. W. Wittkowski (Tüingen, 1982). Schiller himself draws attention to it in his "Über Anmut und Würde."
48. See Düsing and Sabine Röhr "Zum Einfluß K. L. Reinholds auf Schillers Kant-Rezeption," Proceedings of the International Karl Leonhard Reinhold Colloquium 1998, ed. Wolfgang Schrader and Martin Bondeli (Stuttgart, forthcoming).
49. Letter 13, to Wolfgang Heribert von Dalberg. Stuttgart, 12 December 1781. NA, vol. 23, 26.
50. Schiller, "On the Pathetic," Friedrich Schiller. Essays, ed. Walter Hinderer and Daniel O. Dahlstrom, tr. Dahlstrom (New York, 1993), 64.
51. Schiller, "Über Anmut und Würde," 114-15.
52. "Über den moralischen Nutzen ästhetischer Sitten," NA, vol. 21, 29. "On the moral usefulness of aesthetic manners/habits."
53. th letter).
54. "Reason possesses a very real reason to think freedom as an absolute cause - that is, self-consciousness, through which the acting of this faculty announces itself as a fact and through which it justifies common sense to make an inference from its reality to its possibility" (Briefe ũber die Kantische Philosophie, II, 511).
55. See "Über Anmut und Würde," 82, 94.
56. "Concerning the Sublime," Friedrich Schiller: Essays, 70.
57. th letter).
58. th letter).
59. Ibid., 128.
60. th letter).
61. Except in the passage from The Metaphysics of Morals quoted above, where he calls practical reason neither free nor unfree.
62. Reinhold, Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens (Attempt at a new theory of the human faculty of representation) (Prague, 1789; repr. Darmstadt, 1963), 561.
63. Schiller adopted this terminology in "On the Art of Tragedy" (1791/92). After this, he employed various terms. It is confirmed that he had read at least half of Reinhold's Versuch, a particularly dry, abstract work (see Reinhold's letter to Jens Baggesen, 23 January 1792).
64. Schiller adopted this terminology in "On the Art of Tragedy" (1791/92). After this, he employed various terms. It is confirmed that he had read at least half of Reinhold's Versuch, a particularly dry, abstract work (see Reinhold's letter to Jens Baggesen, 23 January 1792).
65. See Martin Bondeli, Das Anfangsproblem bei Karl Leonhard Reinhold: Eine systematische und entwicklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zur Philosophie Reinholds in der Zeit von 1789 bis 1803 (Frankfurt, 1995), 85, 91f.
66. See Jeffrey Barnouw, " 'Freiheit zu geben durch Freiheit,' " 139, 147.
67. Schiller, Aesthetic Letters, 106, (8th letter).
68. Ibid., 94, (4th letter).
69. Ameriks, The Gospels Revised, 74.
70. See Reinhold, "Einige Bemerkungen über die in der Einleitung zu den Anfangsgründen der Rechtslehre von I. Kant aufgestellten Begriffe von der Freiheit des Willens."
71. Schiller, Aesthetic Letters, 120.
72. Ibid., 144.
73. Alternatively, it could also be seen as Kant's theoretical concept of comparative freedom of choosing between different courses of action in accordance with theoretical, hypothetical considerations.
74. Ibid., 144n.
75. W. M. Calder, "Schiller on the Will and the Heroic Villain," 47.
76. Reinhold, "Einige Bemerkungen über die in der Einleitung...," 380.
77. A. Lazzari, "System und Freiheit. K. L. Reinholds Bearbeitung der Freiheitsthematik zwischen 1789 und 1792," Proceedings of the International Karl Leonhard Reinhold Colloquium 1998.
78. Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie, 502.
79. Schiller, Aesthetic Letters, 155 n. 3, 156.
80. Henrich, "Beauty and Freedom: Schiller's Struggle with Kant's Aesthetics," 253-54.
81. Ibid., 255.
82. Henrich, "Beauty and Freedom," 254.
83. Sharpe, "Schiller's Aesthetic Letters," 11.