Freedom and Faith Between Kant and Hegel

Abstract

This chapter considers some of the varied responses in Germany to the scepticism of Hume and the transcendental idealism of Kant. It covers Hamann, Jacobi, Schiller, and Fichte. Both Jacobi and Hamann draw on Humean scepticism to vindicate religious faith. Hamann sees sceptical distancing from everyday cognition as a route into mystical religious consciousness of the world. Schiller criticizes the elevation of ‘dignity’ at the expense of ‘grace’ in Kant’s account of autonomy. He proposes instead an ideal of freedom as moral and aesthetic wholeness. The ethical implications of this ideal are discussed. Fichte rethinks the Kantian idea that transcendental idealism is the basis of freedom: philosophy becomes rational insight into a universal content grasped mystically by religion. Influenced by Kant’s discussion of the conditions of self-awareness, Fichte argues that its precondition is mutual recognition of self and other. Mutual recognition is, in turn, the basis of rights.