Abstract

In this chapter, Acosta shows that the well-known Horen-Dispute—the epistolary polemic in the summer of 1795 initiated by Schiller’s rejection of an article submitted by Fichte for publication in Die Horen—actually represents the tip of the iceberg in the philosophical disagreement between Schiller and Fichte. According to Acosta, this controversy is better understood as a confrontation between two ways of resolving the Kantian antinomy between freedom and necessity after Kant and after the French Revolution. Whereas Fichte develops a dialectic based on the primacy of practical reason and the principle of absolute identity, Schiller’s dialectic is guided by the primacy of aesthetical reason and by the postulate of an original irreducible duality in human nature. In doing so, both thinkers contribute to the foundation of so-called German idealism.