Glück und Autonomie. Die deutsche Debatte über den Eudämonismus zwischen Aufklärung und Idealismus
Abstract
Can happiness be achieved by means of human will and reason or does it depend on natural conditions which escape the control of man? Is it an expression of autonomy or of heteronomy? The Enlightenment gives manifold answers to this question. Sometimes -above all in England and France -happiness is defined in terms opf pleasure and thus heteronomy is stressed; in other cases -above all in Germany -happiness is conceived as perfection, hence it is rather autonomy that is emphasized. For his part Kant neatly contrasts happiness with autonomy, both from the ethicalpractical standpoint and from the technical-practical one . Such a contrast, which still leaves room for happiness in Kant's view, is carried to extremes in the idealistic tradition that comes to drastically anti-eudemonic results, since the latter either completely rejects happiness as expressing heteronomy or deprives it of its sensitive constituents and embodies it into interior bliss