Abstract

IN HIS EARLY, UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS ON ETHICS, Schleiermacher sketched the framework for a theory of human agency in which he defends a soft determinist view of freedom. He developed his theory as an alternative to noumenal causality, which he had come to reject as inconsistent with a comprehensive scientific conception of the world. Even as a young student, Schleiermacher was convinced that some form of naturalism is inescapable—we are firmly rooted within nature and history—and that, accordingly, our conceptions of morality and religion, to some extent, must be carved out within a naturalistic framework. Naturally, Schleiermacher found transcendental freedom to be an indefensible exception to natural causation and to our interconnectedness with the natural world. Equally important, he found it to be unnecessary for and an obstacle to a sound moral theory. In his early notebooks we find the following entry: “Speculative reason’s concept of transcendental freedom is indispensable only for an otherworldly subject.” Yet, on the first page of his treatise on freedom, Schleiermacher highlights the impasse between Kantian and Leibnizian conceptions of freedom and intimates his dissatisfaction with both theories. The dissatisfaction with Leibniz, though never directly stated, stems from Leibniz’s atomistic conception of causality and inspires Schleiermacher to think seriously about issues in moral psychology which had been ignored or left undeveloped in the Leibnizian and, as it turns out, Kantian views. As we shall see, Schleiermacher discerned that human action originates from a complex constellation.