Resumen Este artículo defenderá la tesis de que es posible identificar los cimientos de la filosofía de la libertad desarrollada a partir de Kant en el pensamiento y la obra de Rousseau, en especial en su concepción de la relación esencial entre libertad y humanidad. Por medio de una metodología hermenéutica y crítica, el análisis estará concentrado en dilucidar el sentido histórico y filosófico de la concepción antropológica consolidada por Rousseau principalmente en sus dos primeros Discursos, para demostrar que la (...) libertad adquiere en ellos la significación inaudita de ser el principio que configura la humanidad del hombre y su destino. Se pondrá en evidencia también que esta nueva idea de humanidad sienta la base común desde la que parte el pensamiento filosófico posterior. En tal sentido, la argumentación mostrará la significación decisiva de la obra de Rousseau en relación con la conciencia moderna de la libertad.This paper will demonstrate that it is possible to identify the foundations of the philosophy of freedom that began with Kant in the work of Rousseau, specifically in his vision of an essential relationship between freedom and humanity. By means of a critical and hermeneutical method, the analysis focuses on elucidating the historical and philosophical meaning of the anthropological conception consolidated in his first two Discourses. The aim is to show that freedom acquires the unprecedented significance of becoming the principle of humanity and the ground that determines humankind's destiny. The results of this study suggest that this idea of humanity, defined by freedom, sets the basis for subsequent philosophical thinking and evidence the decisive importance of Rousseau for the modern consciousness of freedom. (shrink)

The goal of this essay is to analyse the influence of Johann Bernhard Basedow and Rousseau on Kant’s cosmopolitanism and concept of cosmopolitan education. It argues that both Basedow and Kant defined cosmopolitan education as non-denominational moral formation or Bildung, encompassing—in different forms—a thin version of moral religion following the core tenets of Christianity. Kant’s encounter with Basedow and the Philanthropinum in Dessau helps to understand the development of Kant’s concept of cosmopolitanism and educational theory ‘in weltbürgerlicher Absicht’. Rousseau’s role (...) is more complex: he clearly influenced Kant; he is usually considered a precursor of modern nationalism and national education; and recent studies have stressed the cosmopolitan dimension of his educational programme. I claim that the dilemma of education according to Rousseau is that one has to choose between education of homme or education of citoyen, and that there is no way to avoid or go beyond this stark alternative. Kant’s reinterpretation of Rousseau is favourable and creative and has found many followers up to the present, but is misleading, as he ignores the dilemma and imposes his own conception of cosmopolitanism, of cosmopolitan education and of (possible) progress in history on Rousseau while claiming that this was actually Rousseau’s message. (shrink)

It is well known that Kant uses the notion of the holy will in theGroundworkso as to contrast it with the finite wills of human beings. It is less clear, however, what function this contrast is supposed to perform. I argue that one role of the holy will is to illustrate transcendental idealism’s account of the relation between moral knowledge and moral practice. The position is one intended to negotiate between ostensibly competing traditions. Kant uses the holy will as a (...) way of endorsing the metaphysical picture of the scholastic tradition’s so-called ‘ethics of freedom’, whereby the ideal of moral perfection is conceived as the perfection of one’s power of freedom to the point where one is constitutively incapable of immoral action. This position is married however with the claim that the holy will’s inaccessibility to human cognition motivates a subject-oriented moral epistemology more usually associated with Enlightenment humanism. I conclude by claiming that the nuanced role for the holy will can be understood as part of Kant’s expansion of the value of religious faith [Glaube] to the domain of practical inquiry in general. (shrink)