Summary of Dissertation
“Heidegger’s Concept of Freedom: His Confrontation
with the Ethics of Kant and Schelling”
Rex Gilliland,
The issue of freedom has received very little attention in the secondary literature on Heidegger. Since freedom is one of the central concepts of Heidegger’s thought, this omission has unfortunately led to serious misconceptions about Heidegger. My dissertation addresses this problem by providing a close examination of the development of Heidegger’s concept of freedom from Being and Time to the 1940’s, as well as a brief sketch of its subsequent development. This dissertation is motivated by two common criticisms of Heidegger: First, many people claim that Heidegger’s thought is deficient because Heidegger fails to provide an ethics. Second, some critics ground the previous criticism in a claim about Heidegger’s concept of freedom. They argue that Heidegger’s failure to provide an ethics arises from his concept of freedom, which, they claim, is voluntaristic in his early thought and fatalistic in his later thought. In the dissertation, I argue that these claims are wrong because Heidegger provides sufficient notions of normative obligation and individual human freedom throughout the course of his thought, despite the fact that his concept of freedom goes through significant changes.
In the first chapter, “The Tripartite Structure of Freedom in Fundamental Ontology,” I examine the emergence of Heidegger’s concept of freedom in Being and Time and other texts. In Being and Time, Heidegger conceives freedom in terms of the relationship of choice to the constraints that shape its possibilities, i.e., thrownness and authenticity. Heidegger maintains that this relationship is one of unity, a unity that is grounded in the tripartite structure of ecstatic temporality. In texts such as Metaphysical Foundations of Logic and On the Essence of Ground, Heidegger further develops his understanding of the unity of freedom and necessity in such notions as transcendence, the bind (Bindung), leeway (Spielraum), and the free brace (freier Widerhalt). I conclude the chapter by examining the reasons for Heidegger’s abandonment of the project of fundamental ontology and the implications of this for his concept of freedom.
The second chapter, “Causality and Freedom: Heidegger’s Interpretation of Kant,” discusses Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant’s concept of freedom and moral philosophy in the 1930 lecture course On the Essence of Human Freedom. Heidegger finds resources in Kant for his own concept of freedom, especially in Kant’s notion of practical freedom. However, he is highly critical of Kant’s attempt to grasp freedom as a type of causality. Heidegger points out that, since Kant grounds practical freedom in transcendental freedom – the ability to make changes in the phenomenal world, Kant’s practical philosophy is guided by the cosmological problematic of the Third Antinomy. By conceiving practical freedom in terms of the causality of reason, Kant transfers the concept of causality to the noumenal realm, which he explicitly forbids in the First Critique. While Heidegger finds much in common between the account of the experience of obligation in Kant’s discussion of the fact of reason and his own concept of authenticity, he criticizes Kant’s attempt to explain the nature of obligation (and practical freedom) by providing specific formulations of the categorical imperative, since the latter depends on the notion of the causality of reason.
The third chapter, “Situating Heidegger within the Debate between Universalism and Particularism in Ethics,” takes a detour from the discussion of the development of Heidegger’s concept of freedom in order to clarify Heidegger’s position on ethics. After examining the debate between universalism and particularism, I argue that Heidegger defends a version of moral particularism. However, this claim faces a major difficulty: Particularists reject all general moral principles, which includes Heidegger’s notion of authenticity. I argue, however, that since particularism asserts the possibility of moral judgment, it is indeed committed to a type of exceptionless moral principle, i.e., an indeterminate moral principle such as the notion of authenticity.
The fourth chapter is entitled “The Double Reversal in On the Essence of Truth (1931-32) and Freedom as the Openness of Truth.” In it, I argue that a crucial shift occurs in Heidegger’s concept of freedom in the early 1930’s due to the growing prominence of the issue of truth, a shift that is closely linked to the “turn” in the focus of Heidegger’s thought from Dasein to being. In fundamental ontology and the 1930 version of the essay On the Essence of Truth, there is a parallel priority of freedom over necessity and truth over untruth: The issue of necessity is encompassed within the issue of freedom, and the same relationship is found between the issues of untruth and truth. Similarly, there is a priority of freedom over truth. However, in the published version of the essay (1943), these priorities are each reversed: Freedom is conceived in terms of truth, and the notions of concealment and necessity gain priority over unconcealment and freedom, respectively. This double reversal is closely connected to the shift in emphasis in Heidegger’s later thought from Dasein to the way that human being is constituted by the history and concealment of being. I maintain, however, that the double reversal happens quite early: It can be seen already in the 1931-32 lecture course On the Essence of Truth. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the relationship of truth and freedom in Heidegger’s later thought, focusing on the concepts of releasement (Gelassenheit), openness, and the clearing (Lichtung).
In the fifth chapter, “Heidegger’s Interpretation of Schelling: Freedom in the Jointure of the Historicity of Being,” I examine the way in which Heidegger elucidates the place of individual human freedom within the history of being in his 1936 lecture course on Schelling. In Schelling’s book On the Essence of Human Freedom and Related Matters, the relationship of human freedom to God is explained via the claim that God is revealed through the progressive development of human history, which emerges as individual human wills unify themselves with and rebel against the universal will of God. In connection with this, Heidegger transforms his notion of authenticity by formulating the relationship of human freedom to the whole greater than itself as the jointure (Fug) of being, a concept that is also prominent in his 1946 essay The Anaximander Fragment. Despite the fact that Heidegger finds many resources in Schelling for his concept of the history of being, he takes issue with various aspects of Schelling’s concept of history. Heidegger is especially critical of the teleological determinism of Schelling’s concept and his reliance on the Christian notion of evil. I conclude the chapter with a discussion of the role of individual human freedom in the later permutations of the history of being, focusing on the concepts of historical decision and the destiny of being.
While the dissertation only provides a sketch of the development of Heidegger’s concept of freedom in the 1950’s and 60’s, it presents enough detail to support the claim that the concept of freedom in Heidegger’s later thought is not fatalistic. According to Heidegger, the proper response to the issue of technology and the possibility of another beginning in the history of being can only arise from individual human freedom. In addition, the dissertation also shows that the concept of freedom in Heidegger’s early thought is not voluntaristic because authenticity provides normative constraints for human action. Although these criticisms of Heidegger are unfounded, they arise from an important insight, namely, that there is a close relationship between Heidegger’s concept of freedom and the issue of ethics, a relationship that lies at the heart of his thought.