Manja Kisner / Jörg Noller (eds.), The Concept of Will in Classical German Philosophy. Between Ethics, Politics, and Metaphysics, Berlin and Boston 2020 (original) (raw)

2020, Symphilosophie. International Journal of Philosophical Romanticism

This volume, which is the result of a conference in Munich in 2017, contains thirteen articles, all expounding the broad topic of the notion of "will" in classical German philosophy from Kant to Schelling and Schopenhauer. Most of the perspectives developed in this book are primarily concerned with questions of ethics and practical philosophy in general. However, this naturally implies discussions about the very foundations of theoretical thought and of metaphysical conceptions as well. In this regard, the close interrelation between the different disciplines of philosophy that is characteristic for classical German thought is adequately highlighted by this volume as a whole. The book is divided into two main parts: the first one (7-85) deals exclusively with Kant's practical philosophy. The second, more extensive part (89-262) offers a broad collection of studies on various post-Kantian thinkers, not only on the most famous representatives of German Idealism (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), but also on some less popular, yet important authors (Reinhold, Maimon, Jacobi, Bouterwek). In the following review, some-not all-of the articles in the volume will be presented in a short, concise way. Markus Kohl (29-48) argues that two different types of selfdetermination by rational beings can be identified in Kant's ethics. Since no such thing as completely lawless freedom of action is possible in Kant's moral philosophy, at least some kind of determination generally has to be included. While there is a model of "absolute unconditional necessity" that "excludes any form of contingency" (29), a second model "involves a form of contingency which entails alternative possibilities for determining oneself" (ibid.). In this case, "absolutely spontaneous intelligence is affected by sensible conditions whose influence inveighs against reason, which makes it contingent whether or not the agent acts in accordance with right reason" (41). Kohl identifies this type of self-determination as "executive freedom," whereas the first type can be called "legislative freedom" (ibid.