Abstract

This dissertation examines the development of Heidegger's concept of freedom from Being and Time to Gelassenheit in order to counter the prevailing view that Heidegger is a voluntarist in his early thought because he lacks a substantive concept of obligation, and a fatalist in his later thought since he lacks a substantive concept of freedom. Although there is a significant shift in emphasis from freedom to necessity in the course of his thought, Heidegger continually insists that these concepts are intrinsically related. For Heidegger, the issue of freedom concerns the relationship of human freedom to the constraints and possibilities that shape it, especially the possibility of authenticity---a type of obligation compatible with moral particularism. Heidegger turns to Kant's concepts of transcendental and practical freedom in order to clarify the relationship of human freedom to physical constraints and moral obligation. At the same time, he takes issue with the moral universalism in Kant's ethics and its underlying assumption that freedom is a type of causality. As the focus of his thought shifts away from Dasein, Heidegger turns to Schelling in order to elucidate the place of human freedom within the history of being, though he is critical of the teleological determinism of Schelling's concepts of history and ethics. The dissertation concludes by examining how Heidegger's interpretation of Schelling leads to such concepts as the jointure of being and historical decisions