Leibniz, this study argues, is the genuine initiator of German Idealism. His analysis of freedom as spontaneity and the relations he establishes among freedom, justice, and progress underlie Kant's ideas of rightful interaction and his critiques of Enlightened absolutism. Freedom and Perfection offers a historical examination of perfectionism, its political implications and transformations in German thought between 1650 and 1850. Douglas Moggach demonstrates how Kant's followers elaborated a new ethical-political approach, 'post-Kantian perfectionism', which, in the context of the French Revolution, promoted the conditions for free activity rather than state-directed happiness. Hegel, the Hegelian School, and Marx developed this approach further with reference to the historical process as the history of freedom. Highlighting the decisive importance of Leibniz for subsequent theorists of the state, society, and economy, Freedom and Perfection offers a new interpretation of important schools of modern thought and a vantage point for contemporary political debates.
Moggach
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Weitere Infos & Material
1. Thinking freedom; 2. Leibniz: spontaneity, justice, and perfection; 3. Receptions of Leibniz: Wolff and Herder; 4. The Kantian revolution; 5. Foundational arguments: Humboldt and Dalberg on the scope and end of the state; 6. Friedrich Schiller: perfection, freedom, and beauty; 7. Fichte: the labour of spontaneity; 8. Hegel as post-Kantian perfectionist; 9. Hegelian perfectionism before 1848; 10. Karl Marx: historical perfectionism; Conclusion; Select bibliography; Index.
Moggach, Douglas
Douglas Moggach is Distinguished University Professor in Political Studies and Philosophy at the University of Ottawa, and Honorary Professor, School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the University of Sydney. Publications, in nine languages, include Philosophy and Politics of Bruno Bauer (Cambridge, 2003); The New Hegelians (Cambridge, 2006); Politics, Religion, and Art (2011); and (as co-editor), The 1848 Revolutions and European Political Thought (Cambridge, 2018).
