Abstract for the Kant in Asia International Conference

at Hong Kong Baptist University

20-23 May 2009

Hans Feger, “Kant’s Idea of Autonomy as the Basis for Schelling’s Theology of Freedom”

Kant’s concept of freedom that is linked to the idea of autonomy is based on a timeless, transcendental act. In Kant’s view, an action is only free as a specific kind of causality: namely, as a spontaneous, timeless causality born out of freedom. This already reveals what critics of this concept of freedom have always objected to: namely, that Kant does not provide any theoretical proof of a transcendental freedom, since only something that is itself unrecognizable can serve him as a justifiable ground. Nevertheless, on the other hand, it is precisely this lack of provability that also constitutes the strengths and the incontestability of the Kantian concept of freedom. In this respect Schelling developed the Kantian metaphysics of freedom further by integrating in its lack of provability a second argument: “Only thus is a beginning possible – a beginning that never ceases to be a beginning, a truly endless beginning. For it is also essential that the beginning must not know itself. Once an act has been done, it has been done forever”.

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