Thinking Liberation. Conceptualisation of individual and collective subversion and transgression based on Kant's critical philosophy

• Applicant: Dr. Larissa Wallner
• Subject Area: History of Philosophy
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 551074479

The project explores how liberation can be conceived in the light of Kant. Although liberation is one of the central interests not only of Western civilisations, we do not understand how the possibility of liberation and its manifestations can be philosophically understood beyond particular scenarios. The ability to think liberation without contradiction and in a critical way is a condition for the realisation of the necessary transformations in response to the crises of the present. In particular, the subject of liberation and its deliberating capacities, liberation’s place and time, as well as the difference between liberation and evolution, but also the nature of domination and the normative basis of liberation, need to be clarified. The central thesis of the project is that liberation is not unified because there are different forms of bondage and domination to be overcome. Thus, the liberation of collective subjects is realised under different parameters than that of individuals, and the liberation of living persons takes place in a different way than when an a priori subject of knowledge is assumed. Nevertheless, all instances and practices of liberation are related, because liberation can be philosophically understood as noetic transgression and subversion, which presupposes specific capacities: it lies in the adoption of a cognitive and affective attitude that is different from the previous state, which is expressed in alternative beliefs and practices and can be understood either as active or passive undermining (subversion) or as productive overcoming of a prevailing order towards a new standpoint (transgression). The research project takes its systematic starting point in Kant’s critical philosophy, especially in his understanding of enlightenment and freedom. It develops the concept of liberation in five thematic complexes. First, it works out Kant’s explicit positions on liberation and exploits the potentials of Kant’s transcendental philosophy, which have received little attention: Kant’s position on receptivity and his conception of socio-historical, regulative ideas of reason. Secondly, positions will be taken up that extend Kant’s thought where necessary, while remaining faithful to it. Thirdly, it is important to take up approaches that rightly criticise Kant’s thinking on liberation with regard to the dependence of subjects on their social and historical background. The analysis thus proceeds from the deliberative potential of the abstract subject of knowledge to the conditions of liberation of situated, socially characterised individual and collective subjects of the present. Finally, fourth and fifth, the research project is devoted to two concrete, exemplary subject areas in which liberation takes place: aesthetics as the level of individual self-overcoming and law as the arena of collective emancipation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants