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ABSTRACT
The historical context of early post-Kantian debates on politics reveals the emergence of a new type of perfectionist ethics no longer based on the state-sponsored promotion of happiness, as the dominant German tendency in the eighteenth century had been, but on individual freedom. Post-Kantian perfectionism focused on maintaining and enhancing the conditions for rightful interaction among self-defining individuals. Rather than isolating and alienating, Kantian negative freedom enabled a new conception of social interaction based on the idea of right and the progressive extension of rightful relations. Humboldt, Schiller, Fichte, and Marx exemplified this new approach, despite their differences.
Notes
1 Yack (Citation1986, 10 ff., 252, 281-82) distinguishes his own approach to left Kantianism from religious or messianic interpretations of utopian movements, such as Talmon Citation1960.
2 Yack’s claims (Citation1986, 123-24) can be compared with versions of German apoliticism such as Oz-Salzburger Citation2002, 197-226.
3 An English translation appeared in 1854. The text was appreciatively cited by John Stuart Mill ([Citation1859] Citation1991, 64; [Citation1873] Citation1960, 179).
4 Owen Ware (Citation2020) interprets Fichte’s moral perfectionism as an ethic of wholeness.
5 Hobbes ([Citation1651] 2005, 566) polemically redefines Stoic horme/aphorme as a mechanical pull or push exerted by the object on a subject, rather than as a rationally motivated practical judgment. On Kant’s response, see Allison Citation1990, 5-6, 39-40, 60-61, 85, 191-98.
6 Kant’s specific concept of negative freedom differentiates him from ideas of right associated with John Locke and the emergent liberal paradigm. Though the argument cannot be developed here, Kant is closer to modern republicanism (Moggach Citation2016).
7 Though not identical, because even in actions of this type, Kantian subjects are not merely naturally determined, but are able to act on self-given maxims.
8 For his comments on Schiller’s earlier work, see Kant [1795] 1998, 48-49n.