The Idea of a Speculative Philosophy of Objective Spirit

Freedom is the core topic of modern philosophy. When it is viewed as a philosophical epoch, a new perspective arises concerning how humans conceive of themselves and their relationship to the world. Then human thought and action are no longer held to be determined by external factors (heteronomy) but are held to be self-determined (autonomy), and hence freed from external factors functioning as grounds for their determination. The philosophical paradigm for mastering this impetus of freedom is reason. With his “Copernican,” that is to say, his transcendental turn, Kant gave reason a form that suits the modern understanding of humans as self-determined agents. Reason transpires to be the source of all validity, and hence of any normativity of human thought and action. Objectivity, of whatever type, is from the start framed by the conditions of reason, or as it is also called in the discourse, of “subjectivity.”