In this paper, we intend to examine the notions of human freedom and divine freedom in Christian Wolff’s philosophy. Our goal is to show how freedom, for Wolff, is the same faculty in human beings as in God: the faculty to choose spontaneously what the intellect regards as the best motive (representation of the good) among different motives. The difference lies in the degree and scope of human and divine freedom. In the first section, we present Wolff’s account of human freedom in his German and Latin works. In the second section, we consider his account of divine freedom. Finally, in the third section, we offer two remarks on the relation between human and divine freedom, moving toward Kant’s account of this relation.
According to the consensus in the existing literature, Kant rejects intellectual intuition on the grounds that, by definition, it is impossible to apply it to human cognition, which always requires sensibility as raw material for knowledge. In this article, I attempt to show that the reason behind this proscription is not entirely speculative, but also moral. I argue that, for Kant, the endorsement of intellectual intuition implies an attack on the virtue of humility. To achieve my goal, I follow Kant’s own voice as he defines and dismisses intellectual intuition throughout his works. This allows me to evaluate the traditional view of specialised literature for the exclusion of this type of intuition from human cognition. However, upon a thorough examination of the Critique of practical Reason, I find out that intellectual intuition in its moral meaning challenges the traditional consensus in literature that attempted to explain Kant’s proscription. This is especially problematic considering the latter vindication of this same kind of intellectual intuition by J. G. Fichte. I therefore propose a more robust alternative thesis that advocates a moral proscription of intellectual intuition, based on Kant’s arguments about the fundamental role of humility and the danger of moral arrogance.
In this article, I address Fichte’s claim from his 1794–1795 Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre that practical and theoretical philosophy form a unity and that our theoretical capacity to know that something is the case, to know that “S is F,” is grounded in our practical capacity to make moral judgments, to have a concept of that which is good. I argue that such a unity involves the notion of “faith” that Fichte inherits from Jacobi. Fichte is looking to explicate the form of judgment as absolute, which is to say, as resting on itself. A judgment about the world is a judgment in which I express my agreement with the fact that “S is F.” I attribute to Fichte’s 1794–1795 Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre the view that the notion of agreeing to, i.e. assenting to, the truth of a judgment about the world, must rest on a stronger notion of finding something, some fact about the world, agreeable. My readiness to commit to a judgment about the world as it is, must, according to Fichte, be grounded in my faith that the world can exhibit something, some good fact, that is truly worthy of commitment.
Falling ill means feeling assailed by an illness that unexpectedly erupts into our lives, interrupting the normal flow of an established existence. In this painful condition, the sick person feels inadequate and almost no longer up to the standards or expectations they previously managed to easily meet. As a result, they risk losing a positive outlook on themselves, and in some cases, they no longer feel worthy of the esteem due to a “healthy” person. Through narrative practice, space and opportunities for self-reconstruction are created. Narration involves a movement that involves reassembling the past in preparation for the acceptance and meaning of future events. In the therapeutic context, narrative becomes particularly effective in making people more aware of their illness experience. Patients identify the time preceding the onset of the illness very well, nostalgically perceiving its richness, and being able to define with equal clarity the transformations brought about by the onset of pain and the associated suffering. In telling their stories, as they gradually enrich their narrative with further details, they can reconstruct the various phases, from the first symptom to the various and progressive manifestations of the illness’s progression. Narrative work proves particularly rich and fruitful for personal experience because it is practiced in relationships with others, through which one’s own experience, including that of illness, is shared. Through encounters, discussions, and dialogue with others, previously unknown meanings can emerge, allowing one to perceive one’s own experience of illness differently and discover unexpected resources of meaning.
This paper compares Schopenhauer’s subject of representation in Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (hereafter WWR) and Wittgenstein’s metaphysical subject in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (hereafter TLP). While Wittgenstein’s affinity with Schopenhauer is often discussed through solipsism, ethics, or the mystical, the structural comparison of their conceptions of the self has remained underdeveloped. In Schopenhauer, the subject of representation is the transcendental condition of representation and never an object within the world it conditions. In Wittgenstein, the metaphysical subject is likewise not a part of the world, but is its formal limit: it cannot be encountered, represented, or stated propositionally, but only shown. To compare these heterogeneous positions without collapsing their differences, the paper develops a quasi-formal method of heuristic mapping and structural-role analysis. The comparison shows that the deepest analogy between the two thinkers lies in the relation between field and frame: in both systems, the subject functions as a non-objective boundary condition of worldhood. Yet the analogy remains partial rather than exhaustive since the two systems diverge in their treatment of the internal organization of what appears within the field. The result is a weak architectural correspondence that clarifies both the Schopenhauerian background of Wittgenstein’s early thought and the limits of that comparison.
