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The phenomenology of freedom in the German philosophical tradition: Kantian origins

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References

  1. Cassirer's intellectual history generally took on the appearance of a brilliant escape into the world of Ideengeschichte. More on this anon, but Cassirer's elective affinity for Cusanus, Leibniz and Kant is relevant here.

  2. I would, however, agree with Hajo Holborn that Meinecke was more willing to allow for the influence of the “mode of production” upon ideas, so long as the ideologue was foreign, e.g., Voltaire and the French bourgeoisie.

  3. For a classical statement of this approach, f. Lovejoy's “The Historiography of Ideas” (1938), in Essays in the History of Ideas (Baltimore, 1948).

  4. Hajo Holborn's “Der deutsche Idealismus in sozialgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung,” Historische Zeitschrift, 174 (1952), represents an attempt to overcome the abstractions of Geistesgeschichte and demonstrate this influence. I have translated it for a forthcoming book on German intellectual history in its political and social context; and the translation will also appear in a collection of Mr. Holborn's essays (Double-day).

  5. Berlin, 1955. There is also a French translation of high calibre.

  6. Engels was most subtle when it came to demonstrating the role of speculative philosophy (e.g. Hegel and Feuerbach) and literature in modern history. He was far from vulgar determinism regarding the origins of ideas, and was not hesitant about admitting that they could occasionally have an autonomous influence upon social history.

  7. Cf. Lukács, op. cit., pp. 417–431 as an example of this interpretation.

  8. Ibid. in particular the discussion of Dilthey.

  9. I am, of course, referring to conceptualizations theoretically devoid of Wertmaesse. So was Kant- in 1781.

  10. Ernst Cassirer (who wrote of the Enlightenment as if it was the prelude to Kant's critical philosophy) is outstanding in his discussion of Condillac. Cf. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Boston, 1955), pp. 18–19, 102, 117–118. Diderot remarked that Condillac “adopted Berkeley's principles, but tried to avoid his consequences.” Kant's first Kritik is what I would call an epistemological Freiheitslehre that came to grips with Diderot's dilemma. On Kant's revolt against sensationalism, cf. Wilhelm Windelband's acute point in Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie (Tuebingen, 1903), p. 440, note 4.

  11. Cf. H. A. Korff, Geist der Goethezeit: Versuch einer ideellen Entwicklung (Leipzig, 1964), I, 49.

  12. This was implied by Cassirer fifty years ago. Cf. Freiheit und Form: Studien zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte (Berlin, 1918), pp. xi, 224.

  13. Russell enunciated this view in many ways and many times. For an example of Russell on Kant's “deflection” of empirical philosophy, see, inter alia, A History of Western Philosophy and its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (New York, 1945), p. 759.

  14. Die deutsche Katastrophe: Betrachtungen und Erinnerungen (Wiesbaden, 1955), pp. 160–177. “Wird es gelingen, den deutschen Geist zu retten?”

  15. Autobiography of John Stuart Mill (New York, 1960), pp. 157–158. “The German, or a priori view of human knowledge, and of the knowing faculties, is likely for some time longer (though it may be hoped in a diminishing degree) to predominate among those who occupy themselves with such inquiries, both here and on the Continent.”

  16. Cf. John Stuart Mill, On Bentham and Coleridge (New York, 1962), pp. 107–111, et passim.

  17. The influence of the German intellectual complex upon Carlyle is best discussed in Eric Bentley, A Century of Hero-Worship (Boston, 1957), Part One.

  18. For a comment on the place of Green's neo-Hegelian. liberalism, cf. Guido de Ruggiero, The History of European Liberalism (Boston, 1959), pp. 148–149.

  19. Bruce Mazlish, The Riddle of History: The Great Speculators from Vico to Freud (New York, 1966), p. 123.

  20. Quoted by Carl J. Friedrich, ed., The Philosophy of Kant (New York, 1949), p. xi.

  21. Heinrich Heine, Werke (Berlin, n.d.), IX, 247 (Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland).

  22. “Vorrede,” in Kritik der reinen Vernunft, in Werke, ed. E. Cassirer, III (Berlin, 1913), 5–9.

  23. The edition I am using is in Kants gesammelte Schriften (Berlin, 1903: ed. Koeniglich Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften), IV.

  24. Ibid., p. 394. The translation is that of Lewis White Beck in his edition of Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (Indianapolis, 1959), p. 10.

  25. Gesammelte Schriften, IV, 396. Emil Hohne's Kant's Pelagianismus und Nomismus (1881) was not available to me, but I believe that Kant's “Pelagianism” bears investigation.

  26. Ibid., 447.

  27. See, for instance, Ernest Barker's brilliant discussion in Social Contract (New York, 1962), pp. xxxii–xl; for a viewpoint more favorable to Rousseau, see Alfred Cobban's summary in Rousseau and the Modern State (Hamden, Connecticut, 1964) pp. 166–170.

  28. Such as was later to be embodied, for example, in the eudaemonism of Heinrich Heine or Ludwig Boerne.

  29. Prof. Peter Gay has brilliantly demonstrated the role of his Genevan experience in the formulation of certain of Voltaire's libertarian concepts. Cf. The Party of Humanity: Essays in the French Enlightenment (New York, 1964), pp. 65–96. Gay sees Voltaire as a conscious Erlebnispolitiker; what Kant rejected was, in effect, Erlebnisphilosophie. This became clear in 1785.

  30. Paul Menzer, Kant's Lehre von der Entwicklung in Natur und Geschichte (Berlin, 1911), analyzes this dichotomy and emphasizes its significance. Cf. pp. 301, 376. “Das Uebersinnliche wurde zum gemeinsamen Urgrund von Natur und Freiheit” (p. 378).

  31. Cf. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, in Gesammelte Schriften, V, 3.

  32. Ibid., 4.

  33. Loc. cit.

  34. Ibid., 5.

  35. Ibid., 8.

  36. Cf. Gesammelte Schriften, IV, 396.

  37. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, in Gesammelte Schriften, V, 121.

  38. Grundlegung, in Gesammelte Schriften, IV, 394; ibid., V (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft), 27–29.

  39. Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Transcendentalism in New England: A History (New York, 1959), well described this enthusiasm in his Preface.

  40. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, in Gesammelte Schriften, V, 21.

  41. I am referring in particular to one of Marx' notes on Feuerbach: “Feuerbach, mit dem abstrakten Denken nicht zufrieden, will die Anschauug; aber er fasst die Sinnlichkeit nicht als praktische menschlich-sinnliche Taetigkeit.” Marx-Engels Gesamtaugabe, One, V, 534. The form of the Left Hegelian (i.e., Bruno Bauer and colleagues) consciousness cult was Kantian, though its content and meaning stemmed from Hegel.

  42. John H. Randall, Jr. asserts that the German tradition (“where Kant has been gospel”) baffles Anglo-Saxons largely due to the role it assigns to “duty” in its ethical constructs. The Career of Philosophy (New York, 1965), II, 156 ff.

  43. Of course, this happiness need not be devoid of a continuing element of struggle: Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Leben, Der taeglich sie erobern muss. (Goethe)

  44. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, in Gesammehe Schriften, V, 27.

  45. Cf. Holborn, op. cit., 377–379; Ernst Troeltsch, “The Ideas of Humanity and Natural Law in World Politics,” in Otto Gierke's Na Theory of Society, 1500–1800 (Boston, 1957); Leonard Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom: History of a Political Tradition (Boston, 1957), pp. 86–88, 124–125.

  46. Lukács, it might be mentioned, castigates Schelling, Dilthey et al. for what he calls their “aristocratic, élitist epistemology.” That Kant had more respect for the common man was largely due to his reading of Rousseau. Cf. Harold Hoeffding, A History of Modern Philosophy (New York, 1955), II, 72.

  47. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, in Gesammelte Schriften, V, 122.

  48. Cf. William Wallace, Kant (Philadephia, 1882), p. 40.

  49. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, in Gesammelte Schriften, V, 25, 130.

  50. “Die deutsche Idee von der Freiheit,” in Deutscher Geist und Westeuropa: Gesammelte kulturphilosophische Aufsaetze und Reden (Tuebingen, 1925).

  51. Freiheit und Form, p. xi.

  52. Cassirer made many suggestive statements in this area. Cf. “Deutschland und West-Europa im Spiegel der Geistegeschichte,” in Inter Nationes. Zeitschrift fuer die kulturellen Beziehunger Deutschlands zum Ausland, 1, 3 and 4 (1931), p. 84.

  53. Cf. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy (Garden City, New York, 1963) IV (Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Leibniz), 304 et passim.

  54. In addition to Cassirer, cf. Friedrich Ueberweg, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (Berlin, 1924), III, 454.

  55. I believe that this concept of the “organic totality” of a perceptual situation deeply influenced German historiography, and later, German historical sociology. One might recall von Ranke's comment in 1859, that he viewed events in their “political and religious totality,” rather than allowing an abstract doctrine to atomize his approach to the past.

  56. Cf. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, in Gesammelte Schriften, V, 21–22.

  57. Cf. Johannes Janssen, Schiller als Historiker (Freiburg, 1879), pp. 29–30, and Eduard Fueter, Geschichte der neueren Historiographie (Munich, 1911), p. 400.

  58. Quoted by Cassirer in Freiheit und Form, p. 476.

  59. Ibid., p. 229.

  60. My translation of Schiller's poem as quoted in Cassirer, op. cit., p. 475.

  61. Ibid., p. 235.

  62. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, in Gesammelte Schriften, V, 131.

  63. Cf. Das tragische Lebensgefuehl (Munich, 1925), pp. 4–5.

  64. Cf. Wallace, op. cit., pp. 1–7.

  65. Die philosophischen Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus: Ein Ruf zu den Waffen deutschen Geistes (Breslau, 1935), p. 23.

  66. Immanuel Kant: Die Persoenlichkeit als Einfuehrung in das Werk (Munich, 1905).

  67. See, for example, “Der Mensch ‘als Natur’” in Politische Ideale (Munich, 1915) and “Deutsche Freiheit,” in Kriegsaufsaetze (Munich, 1915). On p. 17 of the latter we read that “Freiheit ist ein gar zartes Wesen und flieht oft erschreckt das oeffentliche Leben, um sich im still-energischen Dasein des Einzelnen zu behaupten.” A classic Statement of the uses of Kant for German escapism.

  68. Cf. “Der Mensch ‘als Natur’”, p. 22.

  69. Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Auflkaerung? in Gesammelte Schriften, VIII, 40–41.

  70. Werke (Stuttgart, 1855), I, 724.

  71. These words are to be found in Goetz von Berlichingen (1774), Werke (Insel Verlag, n.d.), II, 160.

  72. Cf. Ernst Cassirer, Freiheit und Form, pp. 486–487; and Ernst Troeltsch, “Die deutsche Idee von der Freiheit,” op. cit., p. 103.

  73. Cf. Preserved Smith, A History of Modern Culture (New York, 1962), II (The Enlightenment, 1687–1776), 202–211.

  74. On Goethe's misgivings about history as his age understood it, see the profound and relevant essay by Friedrich Meinecke, “Goethe: Das negative Verhaeltnis zur Geschichte,” in Die Entstehung des Historismus (Munich, 1959), pp. 504–525.

  75. Op. cit., p. 301.

  76. Kritik der Urtheilskraft, in Gesammelte Schriften, V, 436.

  77. Cf. Lewis W. Beck, ed., Kant on History (Indianapolis, 1963), p. xviii.

  78. Kant's concept of the citizen and his famous Zum ewigen Frieden should be approached in the light of this vision.

  79. I use this term in the fashion of Karl Loewith. Cf. his Meaning in History (Chicago, 1957), p. 225, note one of the Preface.

  80. Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbuergerlicher Absicht, in Gesammelte Schriften, VIII, Vierter Satz, esp. 20–21.

  81. Ibid., 26. Bruce Mazlish deals with this problem from a different viewpoint in op. cit., p. 109.

  82. Thomas Mann's Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (Berlin, 1920) is a classic statement of this dichotomy. Its Kantian origins have too seldom been recognized. Cf. my forthcoming “German Intellectuals and German Reality, 1789–1933,” Art and Sciences (New York University, Spring, 1967).

  83. Cf. Discours sur l'Origine et les Fondements de l'Inégalité parmi les Hommes (1755), in Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Political Writings, ed. C.E. Vaughan (New York, 1962) I, especially 177 ff.

  84. Cf. Benno von Wiese, Schiller: Eine Einfuehrung in Leben und Werk (Stuttgart, 1955), p. 41. “Geschichte ist fuer Schiller - darin bleibt er dem Zeitalter der Auflkaerung verhaftet - Universal-geschichte, Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechtes... zu einem hoeheren Ziel.”

  85. Janssen, op. cit., p. 29.

  86. Von Wiese, op. cit., p. 47 on the former, and Cassirer, Freiheit und Form, p. 475 et passim on the later.

  87. Quoted in Wallace, op. cit., p. 82.

  88. Friedrich, op. cit., p. xl.

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Herzstein, R. The phenomenology of freedom in the German philosophical tradition: Kantian origins. J Value Inquiry 1, 47–63 (1967). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00149465

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