Schelling, Heidegger, Freedom

Posted on July 1, 2008
Filed Under Free Will, Heidegger, Philosophy |

Not strictly Heidegger but worth reading (and I think ultimately reflective of Heidegger’s own philosophy)

We are familiar with this question [the nature of human freedom] under the common expression: “The problem of the freedom of the will.” One proceeds as if the human will is free or unfree and figures how that could be proven in a way sufficiently convincing. Freedom is supposed to be a property of man. One believes that one already knows what or who man is. It is only still uncertain whether the property of freedom can be attributed to him and his faculty of will or whether it must be denied him.

Schelling’s treatise [On the Essence of Human Freedom] has nothing to do with this question of the freedom of the will, which is ultimately wrongly put and thus not a question at all. For freedom is here, not the property of man, but the other way around: Man is at best the property of freedom. Freedom is the encompassing and penetrating nature, in which man becomes man only when he is anchored htere. That means the nature of man is grounded in freedom. But freedom itself is a determination of true Being in general which transcends all human being. Insofar as man is as man, he must participate in this determination of Being, and man is, insofar as he brings about this participation in freedom.

(Heidegger, Schellings Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, 9)

Comments

2 Responses to “Schelling, Heidegger, Freedom”

Why “not strictly Heidegger”? He says pretty similar things in other places, such as his The Essence of Human Freedom: “The question concerning the essence of freedom is the fundamental problem of philosophy, even if the leading question thereof consists in the question of being.” (p. 205)

He does, but while Heidegger is very influenced by Schelling I don’t want to make it seem like they are identical. That is I don’t think Schelling and Heidegger hold exactly the same position.

But you’re right that Heidegger says this about freedom in many places. My favorite is the end of his class on Leibniz that is translated as The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic.

To add this position is interestingly a place where Levinas attacks Heidegger - since Heidegger is obviously focusing not on individuals existing but on Being itself. The freedom isn’t human freedom but freedom of Being or for Being.

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