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Abstract
In his early text, The Limits of State Action, Wilhelm von Humboldt raises the Kantian question of the permissibility and legitimate extent of political and juridical coercion, as his contribution to a debate amongst Kantians launched by the publication in 1785 of Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In arguing for a minimal state, concerned exclusively with internal and external security of its members but not at all with their felicity, Humboldt inflects Kantian political thought in the direction of a liberal laissez-faire state, in marked contrast to the strong interventionism that his fellow-Kantian Fichte derived from similar Kantian grounds. The article argues that the underlying conception of the individual retained by Humboldt has markedly Leibnizian traits, namely the notion of freedom as the spontaneous unfolding of a highly personal, monadic developmental trajectory toward perfection, which ought not to be impeded or homogenized by unnecessary state intervention. Humboldt thus represents not only a ‘rightist’ libertarian reading of Kant, but a particular appropriation of significant Leibnizian themes. His combination of these sources is compared with that of other contemporary theorists like Hufeland and Fichte.
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Notes
1. Lipton, Ernst Cassirer, 50–69.
2. Cassirer, Leibniz’ System, 457–58; Cassirer, Freiheit und Form, 66ff.
3. Cassirer, Freiheit und Form, 22ff.
4. After completing The Limits of State Action, Humboldt was unable to have it published because of Prussian censorship regulations. However, in 1792 Friedrich Schiller, Humboldt’s close friend, published chapter 2 and part of chapter 3 in his journal Neue Thalia; the same year he also published chapters 5, 6 and 8 in the Berlinische Monatsschrift (Burrow, “Editor’s Introduction,” xvii). The “complete, or almost complete” German edition of the Limits of State Action was edited by Humboldt’s brother, Alexander von Humboldt, and published for the first time in 1852 (ibid., xviii). The English version, translated by Joseph Coulthard, was published as The Sphere and Duties of Government in 1854.
5. Kant, Groundwork, 95–96.
6. Lüth, “Humboldt’s Theory of Bildung,” 44. Burrow, “Editor’s Introduction,” xvii.
7. Boyle, Goethe, vol. 2, 32–33.
8. Beaulieu-Marconnay, Karl von Dalberg, Bd.1, 168–200.
9. Bubner, Innovations of Idealism; Sweet, Wilhelm Von Humboldt, vol. 1, 24. According to Humboldt, “the Greeks as a nation matured to final perfection” and they represented the “highest and richest human existence” (Roberts, Humboldt and German Liberalism, 47).
10. Sweet, Wilhelm Von Humboldt, vol. 1, 69.
11. Burrow, “Editor’s Introduction,” xiv.
12. Sweet, “Young Wilhelm von Humboldt,” 471.
13. Sorkin, “Wilhelm Von Humboldt,” 58.
14. Leroux, Guillaume de Humboldt, 109, 116.
15. Roberts, Humboldt and German Liberalism; Sweet, Wilhelm Von Humboldt, 2 vols.; Burrow, “Editor’s Introduction.”
16. In June 1788, Humboldt thoroughly studied Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Sweet, Wilhelm Von Humboldt, vol. 1, 38).
17. Roberts, Humboldt and German Liberalism, 2–3.
18. Kant’s Critique of Judgement (1790) mainly influenced Humboldt’s views pertaining to art and aesthetics (Quillien, “La Tâche de l’Historien,” 341).
19. Quillien, Humboldt et la Grèce, 23, 24, 27–47.
20. Burrow, “Editor’s Introduction,” xliii. Humboldt adopted Kant’s practical imperative, “[a]ct in such a way as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of anyone else, always as an end and never merely as a means” (Kant, Groundwork, 29).
21. Roberts, Humboldt and German Liberalism, 73.
22. Burrow, “Editor’s Introduction,” li.
23. Humboldt, Limits of State Action, 32.
24. Schiller, Aesthetic Education of Man, passim.
25. Roberts, Humboldt and German Liberalism, 3; see also ibid., 58, on “the unity of the aesthetic and moral ideals.”
26. Hufeland, Versuch.
27. Kant, “Rezension zu Hufeland,” 127–30.
28. Reinhold, Briefe. Fichte, Der geschloßne Handelsstaat, 388–400.
29. Allison, Essays, 189–200.
30. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, §8.
31. Wolff, Institutiones juris naturae; Stipperger, Freiheit und Institution; Schneewind, Invention of Autonomy.
32. Kant, “Theory and Practice,” 74.
33. Moggach, “Freedom and Perfection,” 1003–23.
34. The classic reference is to Hobbes’s Leviathan.
35. Humboldt, Limits of State Action, 7, 12, 67, 79, 56, 57.
36. See, for example, Chytry, Aesthetic State.
37. Knoll and Siebert, Wilhelm von Humboldt, 33–35.
38. Ashmore, “Formation of Character,” 21.
39. Schui, Rebellious Prussians, 178–85.
40. Sweet, “Young Wilhelm Von Humboldt,” 471. Sweet, Wilhelm Von Humboldt, vol. 1, 51. Sweet also underlines that Humboldt combined this influence of “the Leibnizian tradition” with “the Greek view of life” (52).
41. Humboldt, Limits of State Action, 48.
42. Hostler, Leibniz’s Moral Philosophy, 34.
43. Leibniz, Shorter Leibniz Texts, 75. While not standard practice, reference to an anthology appears justified in this instance because of the diffuse exposition of Leibniz’s thought. The claim is not being made that Humboldt was familiar with each of the cited texts, but that close affinities exist between his thinking and that of Leibniz on the question of perfection. The more detailed examination of the textual connections between the two thinkers is the subject of ongoing research.
44. Humboldt, Limits of State Action, 13, 48, 57, 50.
45. Moggach, “Freedom and Perfection,” 1003–23.
46. Dalberg, “Wahren Grenzen,” 45–54.
47. Humboldt, Limits of State Action, 15.
48. Leibniz, Shorter Leibniz Texts, 74.
49. Humboldt, Humanist without Portfolio, 57.
50. Humboldt, Limits of State Action, 31.
51. Hostler, Leibniz’s Moral Philosophy, 34.
52. Leibniz, Shorter Leibniz Texts, 75.
53. Humboldt, Limits of State Action, 13, 21, 13; cf. p. 19; cf. Leroux, Guillaume de Humboldt, 109, 110.
54. Humboldt, Humanist without Portfolio, 57.
55. Humboldt, Limits of State Action, 18.
56. Ibid., 48.
57. Humboldt, Humanist without Portfolio, 57.
58. Humboldt, Limits of State Action, 10.
59. Bodéus, Leibniz-Thomasius Correspondance, 55ff.
60. Leibniz to Wolff, May 18, 1715, in Philosophischen Schriften, Bd. III, 233–34; cited in Beiser, Diotima’s Children, 35 n. 16: “Perfection is the harmony of things, that is, the state of agreement or identity in variety.”
61. Leibniz, “Two Notions for Discussion with Spinoza.” In Philosophical Papers and Letters, 167: “By perfection I mean every simple quality which is positive and absolute, or which expresses whatever it expresses without any limits.” Cited in Beiser, Diotima’s Children, 35 n. 15.
62. Redding, Continental Idealism, 20.
63. Leibniz, Political Writings, 105.
64. Leibniz, Shorter Leibniz Texts, 94, 196.
65. Specifically, Humboldt stated that “the highest ideal of coexistence among human creatures… would be the development of each one for himself, out of himself, and for his own sake” (Humboldt, Humanist without Portfolio, 73).
66. Burrow, “Editor’s Introduction,” liv; cf. Leibniz, Shorter Leibniz Texts, 196.
67. Humboldt, Humanist without Portfolio, 153.
68. Roberts, Humboldt and German Liberalism, 29. Humboldt, Limits of State Action, 13.
69. On Bildung, see Willoughby and Wilkinson, “Introduction,” in Schiller, Aesthetic Education.
70. Roberts, Humboldt and German Liberalism, 49.
71. Burrow, “Editor’s Introduction,” xxix.
72. Leroux, Guillaume de Humboldt, 313.
73. Humboldt, Limits of State Action, 10.
74. Ibid., 4.
75. Burrow, “Editor’s Introduction,” liv.
76. Humboldt, Limits of State Action, 10, 48.
77. Ibid,. 13, 11, 18, 27.
78. Ibid., 10, 12, 18, 12.
79. Burrow, “Editor’s Introduction,” xxxii.
80. Leroux, Guillaume de Humboldt, 271, 148.
81. Leibniz, Monadology, §9.
82. Rutherford, Rational Order of Nature, 134.
83. Strickland, Leibniz Reinterpreted, 54, 55.
84. Ibid., 93.
85. Leibniz, Shorter Leibniz Texts, 190; cf. 75.
86. Strickland, Leibniz Reinterpreted, 96.
87. Humboldt, Humanist without Portfolio, 332.
88. Roberts, Humboldt and German Liberalism, 62.
89. According to Humboldt, individuals are “incapable of development if they isolate themselves” (Niezen, “Aufklärung’s Human Discipline,” 191).
90. Roberts, Humboldt and German Liberalism, 42.
91. Humboldt, Humanist without Portfolio, 331.
92. Humboldt described “the secret of nature” as a “mutual interaction” (ibid., 332).
93. Lüth, “Humboldt’s Theory of Bildung,” 52.
94. Humboldt, Limits of State Action, 27.
95. For Humboldt, human fulfilment can be found in the assimilation of one’s “outer world” into one’s “inner world” (Lüth, “Humboldt’s Theory of Bildung,” 46). Wulf, “Perfecting the Individual,” 246.
96. Humboldt, Humanist without Portfolio, 339.
97. Humboldt, Limits of State Action, 58.
98. Wulf, “Perfecting the Individual,” 246.
99. Humboldt, Humanist without Portfolio, 153.
100. Humboldt, Limits of State Action, 32.
101. Leibniz, Shorter Leibniz Texts, 46.
102. Redding, Continental Idealism, 21.
103. Ibid., 37. See Kant’s discussion of the amphiboly in the Critique of Pure Reason, A 267–68, 275; B 322–34.
104. Moggach, “Construction of Juridical Space,” 201–9.
105. Sweet, Wilhelm Von Humboldt, vol. 1, 22; cf. Humboldt, Humanist without Portfolio, 382.
106. Mill, Autobiography, 179.
107. Mill, On Liberty, 64.