The Essence of Human Freedom between Heidegger and Kant: Seinlassen and freie Gunst in the Contemplative Experience of the Being of Beings

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide a new reading of some crucial stages of Heidegger’s inquiry into human freedom. Moving from Heidegger’s critical interpretation of Kant’s concepts of trascendental and practical freedom in the 1930 lecture course Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Einleitung in die Philosophie, I adress some of the most relevant questions this lecture raises. The lecture indeed seems to intriguingly open up a further hermeneutic perspective, which Heidegger only slightly touches upon but which nonetheless lays the premises for developing the peculiar sense that the notion of Freiheit assumes in Kant’s third Critique. Building on such an assumption, my guiding hypothesis is that the main outcomes of the 1930 lecture course should be integrated with Heidegger’s ontological radicalization of Kant’s notion of freie Gunst in terms of Seinlassen, as presented in the lectures on Nietzsche (1936-1939) qua the supreme mode of accomplishment of the essence of human freedom.