The Perfection of Freedom: Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel between the Ancients and the Moderns

The Perfection of Freedom seeks to respond to the impoverished conventional notion of freedom through a recovery of an understanding rich with possibilities yet all but forgotten in contemporary thought. This understanding, developed in different but complementary ways by the German thinkers Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel, connects freedom, not exclusively with power and possibility, but rather, most fundamentally, with completion, wholeness, and actuality. What is unique here is specifically the interpretation of freedom in terms of form, whether it be aesthetic form (Schiller), organic form (Schelling), or social form (Hegel). Although this book presents serious criticisms of the three philosophers, it shows that they open new avenues for reflection on the notion of freedom; avenues that promise to overcome many of the dichotomies that continue to haunt contemporary thought – for example, between freedom and order, freedom and nature, and self and other. The Perfection of Freedom offers not only a significantly new interpretation of Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel, but also proposes a modernity more organically rooted in the ancient and classical Christian worlds.Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: On the German Contribution: Giving Form to Freedom1. Friedrich Schiller’s Dramatic Philosophy: Freedom in FormI. On the Significance of StyleII. Biographical BackgroundIII. Nature Speaks to NatureIV. Writing as a Free GiftV. Meaning in MotionVI. Elements of the DramaticVII. FreestyleVIII. Poet or Philosopher?2. An Aesthetics of Freedom: Schiller and the Living GestaltI. Introduction: Schiller’s BreakthroughII. The Analogy of FormIII. Form Overcoming FormIV. Manifest Freedom in NatureV. Heautonomy and HeteronomyVI. Freedom and Human NatureVII. Living Gestalt and Human WholenessVIII. The Seriousness of PlayIX. A Criticism and the Question of ContradictionX. Nobility or Bourgeois Aestheticism?3. The Dark Roots of Life: Organic Form as a Symbol of Freedom in Schelling’s NaturphilosophieI. The Philosophy of the FutureII. The Origins of Schelling’s NaturphilosophieIII. The Impoverishment of NatureIV. The Impoverishment of SpiritV. Naturphilosophie and the Place of the OrganismVI. Natural FreedomVII. Freedom or Form?4. From Organism to Incarnation: The Fall and Redemption of Finite Form in Schelling’s Late PhilosophyI. Ontological FreedomII. The Fate of the Real in the Early SystemsIII. The Positivity of Finite FreedomIV. The Actuality of Evil and Love in HistoryV. Creation as TheogonyVI. Love, Nature, and Freedom: A Final Assessment5. Freedom as the Concrete Form of Reason in Hegel’s Philosophy of RightI. Introduction: Hegel’s UniquenessII. Preliminary ConsiderationsIII. Rational PoliticsIV. Political ReasonV. On the Meaning of ActualityVI. Philosophical SourcesVII. The Importance of Being FiniteVIII. The Will as Concrete FreedomIX. Conclusion6. “The ‘I’ That Is ‘We’ and the ‘We’ That Is ‘I’”: On the Sociality of Freedom in Hegel and Its ExcessesI. The Controversy Surrounding Hegel’s Conception of the StateII. Communal SpiritIII. Sittlichkeit as Social FormIV. Freedom and Absolute Spirit7. A Dramatic Conclusion: Opening Up Actual PossibilityBibliographyIndex