Nature and Freedom from Kant to Hegel

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course will examine the work that arose out of one of the most important periods in the history of philosophy, typically dubbed “German idealism.” These thinkers were obsessed with freedom: freedom of thought and religion, freedom in politics, and going so far to say that human beings are, in their very essence, free. And true to their commitment to the freedom of thought, they imagined humankind rising out of its immaturity, putting aside all traditional metaphysics that was detached from reality, and finally achieving sturdy and reasonable self-assurance of the workings of nature and society. However, in this, a great problem arose: if the world was absolutely determined in some scientifically demonstrable shape, how could humanity, which is a part of that fixed picture, be free? Freedom seems to suggest that a complete science is impossible, and a complete science risks abolishing human freedom. This is the question we will be examining through four important philosophers: Immanuel Kant, J. G. Fichte, F. W. J. Schelling, and G. W. F. Hegel. They each took a novel approach to solving this problem of freedom and nature, and we will examine them in turn. Kant decided reason, a faculty of the mind, had to hold itself back from making any claims about how the world really is in itself, thus making room for freedom. Fichte insisted that a philosophical system of freedom can only be rooted on the self's absolutely free self-relation. Schelling saw the world as one of basic polarity, and against the human subject was the freely developing process of nature, and each limits and intertwines with the other, seeking harmony. Hegel believed that freedom itself has developed through human cultural history and only in recent history has freedom reached its highest phase of development. In examining these thinkers, we will consider their historical context and take a close look at the debates they all had with one another. Each of them was at time a collaborators with another before philosophical disagreements forced them apart. We will draw out these arguments and examine their strengths and weaknesses. By the end, we will consider whether their debates and arguments remain relevant to current manifestations of the freedom-nature debate.