Johann Christoph Schwab, “On the Two Kinds of I, and the Concept of Freedom in Kant’s Ethics,” Philosophisches Archiv 1(1) (1792), 69–80

Summary

In “On the Two Kinds of I, and the Concept of Freedom in Kant’s Ethics” (1792), Johann Christoph Schwab treats Schmid’s claim that the sensible self is grounded in a supersensible I, which parallels Kant’s distinction between the empirical and intelligible character. Schwab echoes Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s charge that such a supersensible posit is guilty of an illicit extension of the categories beyond the sphere of possible experience. Moreover, Schwab maintains, even if this supersensible posit is granted, nothing could be predicated of it and yet Schmid makes several claims about it, e.g. it is the ground of all our actions, it is the ground of space and time, it is unalterable, etc. Schwab concludes the essay by taking issue with Schmid’s claim that on the Leibnizian-Wolffian view, the determining grounds of action are entirely beyond the agent’s control. In response to this charge, Schwab appeals to the Leibnizian-Wolffian conception of spontaneity and claims that the determining grounds of free action are contained within the agent itself.